In the second imperialist world war the German Nazi government of Adolf Hitler attempted to carry through the “Final Solution,” the slaughter of the world’s Jews. With the help of the democratic imperialist leaders in Washington, London and others, who shut their borders to Jews before, during and after the war, Hitler’s Nazis were able to slaughter 6 million Jews — two-thirds of those living in Europe.
A key part of this murderous horror was the series of death camps they constructed, the largest of which was at Auschwitz in occupied Poland. Over 1.1 million people, 1 million of them Jews, died there.
More and more stories of courageous resistance to the Nazi murderers in these camps have come to light. Some inmates escaped, got the word out about the camps, and joined underground resistance fighters attacking the Nazi troops.
Other escapees were hidden and sheltered by Polish working people. The camp commander complained the local population was “ready to do anything against the hated camp SS garrison. Every prisoner who manages to escape can count on all possible help as he reaches the first Polish homestead.”
One recent article describing some of the most daring efforts at rebellion is “Testimonies from Auschwitz reveal a network of women who saved lives and prepared for rebellion,” published by the Israeli paper Haaretz March 15.
It describes how four young women, Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztejn and Ester Wajsblum, part of a larger group of 30 Jewish women prisoners, organized to steal gunpowder and pass it along to others planning to sabotage the gas chambers and furnaces in 1944.
Forced to labor in a nearby armaments factory, the women risked their lives for seven months, smuggling out small amounts of gunpowder and explosives wrapped in scraps of paper or cloth. Afterward the material was hidden in the straw mattresses in Block 6 where the group’s leader, Robota, and several others of the women slept.
Some only fully understood later what they had done together. “One day Ester Wajsblum handed me a small, light parcel, asking me to keep it safe until she came for it or sent someone else. … A few days later Robota, who worked in the clothing section, came to me and asked for the parcel,” a survivor testified. “Later I found out the parcel contained gunpowder. … Ester never spoke about it. Only once did she say to me, ‘We could free ourselves from this hell.’”
In the dark of night, and at the risk of being shot on sight, one of the women would take the gunpowder to the fence between the women’s camp and Crematorium II, leaving it in a hole that had been dug at an agreed-upon place. Passing through the hands of a network of resisters, the gunpowder and explosives made their way to a Russian prisoner, Borodin, who constructed primitive grenades encased in empty sardine cans.
The Sonderkommando were a group of Jewish prisoners forced by the Nazis to operate the gas chambers, and as eyewitnesses to this horror, they knew their time would come. In 1944 they began to organize a rebellion, one they hoped would spread across the entire camp. Along with sabotaging the gas chambers and furnaces, the plan was to breach the electrified fence that encircled the camp, allowing a mass escape of prisoners.
But their hand was forced before everything they planned was in place. In September, as Hitler’s losses in the war mounted, German soldiers murdered 200 of the Sonderkommando. On Oct. 7, as the guards ordered a roll call, prisoners began to throw hammers, crowbars, axes and stones. Some escaped to Crematorium IV, which they set on fire, igniting gunpowder and grenades they had stored there, leveling the building. At the sound of the shots and sight of the flames, prisoners working in Crematorum II realized an uprising was breaking out and attacked the guards there.
Some 250 prisoners were killed by the guards during the battle, while another 200 were murdered after the rebellion was crushed.
During an investigation after the revolt, the Gestapo followed a trail back to Robota, Gertner, Safirsztejn and Wajsblum. They were brutally beaten, sexually assaulted and tortured with electrical shocks. But none of them revealed the names of others in the group, many of whom survived the war.
On Jan. 6, 1945, three weeks before the camp was liberated, the four women were hung. Gertner was 32 years old, Safirsztejn not yet 30. Robota was 24 and Wajsblum just a few days shy of her 20th birthday.
Witnesses said Robota sang “Hatikvah,” a song about hopes for a Jewish homeland, in her final moments. Today it is Israel’s national anthem.