FIVE WOMEN ,STOLE GUNPOWDER FROM AUSCHWITZ ,BLAST 1944 OCTOBER 7

FIVE WOMEN ,STOLE GUNPOWDER FROM AUSCHWITZ ,BLAST 1944 OCTOBER 7

vநாம் சாவது உறுதி ஆகிவிட்டது .என்றாலும் நாம் மனித வதை கூடத்தை வெடி வைத்து தகர்ப்போம்
ஐந்து பெண்களின் துணிச்சல்
.தகர்த்த நாள் 1944 OCTOBER 7,

On October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center rebel after learning that they were going to be killed.

For months, young Jewish women, like Ester Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain, had been smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke, a munitions factory within the Auschwitz complex, to men and women in the camp’s resistance movement, like Róza Robota, a young Jewish woman who worked in the clothing detail at Birkenau. Under constant guard, the women in the factory took small amounts of the gunpowder, wrapped it in bits of cloth or paper, hid it on their bodies, and then passed it along the smuggling chain. Once she received the gunpowder, Róza Robota then passed it to her co-conspirators in the Sonderkommando, the special squad of prisoners forced to work in the camp’s crematoria. Using this gunpowder, the leaders of the Sonderkommando planned to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria, and launch the uprising.

On October 7, 1944, having learned that the SS was going to liquidate much of the squad, the members of the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV rose in revolt. The Germans crushed the revolt. Nearly 250 prisoners died during the fighting and guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS identified five women, four of them Jewish, who had been involved in supplying explosives to blow up a crematorium used to burn the bodies of Nazi murder victims. All five women were killed.

Roza was transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in a Holocaust train during the liquidation of the Ciechanów Ghetto in 1942.[2] She survived the "selection" and was assigned to Auschwitz-II Birkenau labor commando for women, where she got involved in the underground dissemination of news among the prisoners. No one else from her family in Europe is known to have survived. She worked in the clothing depot at the Birkenau Effektenlager adjacent to Crematorium III of Birkenau, where the bodies of gas chamber victims were burned. She had been recruited by men of the underground whom she knew from her hometown, to smuggle "Schwarzpulver" (gunpowder; or dynamite according to other sources)[4] collected by women in the Krupp "Weichsel" munitions factory, and then transferring it to a Sonderkommando man named Wróbel,[5] who was also active in the resistance. This schwartzpulver was used to manufacture primitive grenades to help blow up the crematorium during the Sonderkommando revolt. In her work, she was assisted by Hadassa Zlotnicka and Asir-Godel Zilber, both also from Ciechanów, whom Robota apparently enlisted in the resistance. Together with a few other women who worked in the Nazi "pulverraum" factory, they were able to obtain, hide, and turn over to the men of the underground no more than one to three teaspoons of the schwartzpulver compound per day, and not every day. The Sonderkommando blew up Crematorium III on 6 October 1944.[6]

Robota and three other women – Ala Gertner, Estusia Wajcblum, and Regina Safirsztajn – were arrested by the Gestapo and tortured in the infamous Bloc 23 but they refused to reveal the names of others who participated in the smuggling operation. They were hung on 6 January 1945 – two women at the morning roll-call assembly, two others in the evening. Robota was 23 years old. According to some eyewitness accounts, she and her comrades shouted "Nekamah" ("Vengeance!"), or "Be Strong" to the assembled inmates before they died. Some say they shouted, "Chazak V'amatz" – "Be strong and have courage", the Biblical phrase that God uses to encourage Joshua after the death of Moses. This is also the motto of Hashomer Hatzair, the youth organization she belonged to.

The Sonderkommando Revolt caused some 70 fatalities among the SS and kapos, and blew the roof off one crematorium, yet the Nazis knew the advancing Russian Army was very close to liberating the camp. It was clear to the Nazis that all evidence of the war-time atrocities had to be concealed, so the Germans attempted to destroy the other four crematoria themselves.

Róza was born and raised in Ciechanów, Poland. In November of 1942, her family was deported to Auschwitz and Róza was the only one who was not gassed on arrival. She was selected to work in the Bekleidungskommando in the Birkenau area of the camp, which had the job of sorting the confiscated belongings of the prisoners and the murdered. Róza put together a resistance group that distributed news that members of the camp's underground had obtained by listening to radio broadcasts in secret. Eventually Róza found out about a revolt that the men in the Sonderkommando were planning, and recruited a number of other women to help out. She contacted Ala Gertner,

Hanka and Ester (Estusia) Wajcblum, Hadassah Zlotnicka, Ruzia Grunapfel, 

Marta Bindiger, 




Inge Frank, 

Regina Safirsztajn, 

Genia Fischer,

and a number of other women who were working in the Union Munitions factory, which made rocket parts for V2s. The particular room of the factory these women worked in was the only place in Auschwitz where inmates had access to gunpowder. The women would set aside a small amount of gunpowder each day, at great personal risk to themselves, and smuggle it back to Róza, who in turn passed it along to Asir-Godel Zilber, who was from her hometown. The smuggling chain continued until it made its way to a group of Sonderkommandos who assembled it into bombs and grenades. It took over a year for them to smuggle enough gunpowder to make the revolt and attempted escape a reality. On 7 October 1944, Crematorium IV was blown up, although the uprisings in the other crematoria were put down before they were able to get that far. In retribution for what had happened, every third Sonderkommando was shot. An investigation into how this could have happened went on for weeks, and the gunpowder was finally traced back to the Union Munitions factory. All of the women who worked there were tortured and interrogated for weeks, and eventually Róza was betrayed, along with Regina, Ala, and Estusia. Although these four women were tortured and interrogated even further over the next few months, they refused to give up any information and only named names of Sonderkommandos who had already been killed. During this time, Noah Zabladowicz, one of the underground leaders in the camp, managed to steal a visit to Róza, who urged him and the other members of the underground to keep on with their resistance work. Her final message, which was smuggled out of her cell, was a note saying "Hazak v'amatz," Hebrew for "Be strong and brave." Róza and the other three women were publicly hanged in the women's camp on 5 January 1945, two weeks before the camp was evacuated. Their last words, according to survivors, were said to be either "Be strong!" or "Revenge!" In 1991 a memorial at Yad Vashem was dedicated to Róza, Regina, Estusia, and Ala, recognising their act of heroism.