19-year-old Ester Wajcblum and her 14-year-old
sister Hana arrived at Auschwitz in spring of 1943.
They were assigned to work in the munitions factory where they met Regina
Safirsztain and Ala Gertner, women engaged in resistance activities.
Together with Roza Robota, who worked in the clothes depot, they began
to smuggle gunpowder to the men in the adjoining camp, sometimes using
bodies of friends that were en route to the Sonderkommando for disposal.
The Sonderkommando were Jewish prisoners who worked the death
camps in return for special treatment and privileges. Every few
months, the current sonderkommando was liquidated and the first task
of their successors was to dispose of the bodies of the previous group.
Since a sonderkommando usually comprised men from incoming transports,
their second task often consisted of disposing of the bodies of their
own families. The sonderkommando did not participate in the actual killing
-- that was carried out by the Nazis.
The sonderkommando duties included guiding the new arrivals into the gas chambers, removing
the bodies afterwards, shaving hair, removing teeth, sorting through
possessions (much of which they were given as reward), cremating the
bodies, and disposing of the ashes. Their knowledge of the internal
workings of the camp marked them for certain death. Someone selected
for the sonderkommando had a choice: die then or die in four months
time.
As the time of their execution grew nearer, the members
of the 12th Sonderkommando crystallized their plans of revolt and escape.
Besides the gunpowder being smuggled by the women, which the men fashioned
into crude grenades using sardine tins, there were some small arms that
had been slipped through the fence by local partisans. In addition,
knives and small axes had been made and hidden throughout the crematoria.
Much of the gunpowder was used in creating demolition charges. There
was talk of a general uprising that would coincide with the arrival
of the approaching Soviet armies, but some sonderkommando were certain
that they would not live until that day.
On October 7th, 1944,
at about 3 in the afternoon, the Poles in Crematorium
1 begin the revolt. Hungarians in Crematoria
3 and 4 join in while the sonderkommando of Crematorium
2 break through the wires of the camp. An especially sadistic Nazi
guard in Crematorium 1 is disarmed and stuffed into an oven to be burned
alive. Small arms fire rattles from the second floor of the crematoria
until the Germans bring in heavy machine guns and riddle the wooden
roof.
The guards counterattack and penetrate the buildings,
indiscriminately shooting at all prisoners they encounter. The sonderkommando
in Crematorium 4 drag their demolition charges into the oven rooms and
detonate them in a defiant suicide. The revolt is quickly suppressed
and the escaped men recaptured with the help of local citizens. Approximately
200 sonderkommando are forced to lie face down outside the crematoria
where they are executed with single shots to the back of the head. Some
of the men are spared for interrogation, but the bodies of the 12th
Sonderkommando are soon disposed of by the 13th Sonderkommando.
The men give up names, including those of some women
who were engaged in smuggling gunpowder. Despite months of beatings
and rape and electric shocks to their genitals, the only names given
up by the women are those of already dead sonderkommando.
On January 5, 1945,
the four women are hanged in front of the assembled women’s camp.
Roza Robota shouts “Be strong and be brave” as the trapdoor
drops.
Crematorium 4 was damaged beyond repair and never
used again. On November 7th, 1944, the Nazis destroyed the gas chambers
to hide their crimes. Twelve days after the hanging of the four women,
the camp personnel forced 56,000 prisoners on a Death
March into what remained of the Third Reich; 7,500 prisoners left
behind were liberated by advancing Soviet armies on January 27th.