On October 7, 1944, in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, prisoners who were involved in the Sonderkommando, a special squad for burning the corpses of prisoners killed by the Nazis, revolted. They managed to blow up the crematorium and kill three guards. Several hundred prisoners escaped, but most of them were caught and destroyed. Four girls who gave the organizers of the uprising powder for making explosives were executed for intimidating other prisoners.
Officially, the concentration camp prisoners working near the crematoria were called in German documents “working furnaces”, and semi-officially – “Sonderkommando”, that is, a special brigade consisting of Jews and called to perform the most terrible work in the Nazi death camps – escorting prisoners into the gas chambers, and then destroy the corpses. During the war, more than 3,400 people were recruited to work in these brigades, most of them in Auschwitz. None of the members of the Sonderkommando joined it voluntarily, the selection was carried out by SS officers.
In May 1944, several Jews managed to escape from Auschwitz and reach Slovakia. Meanwhile, the Red Army continued to advance successfully on the fronts, and the number of echelons arriving at the death camp was decreasing every day, and therefore the Nazis' need for Sonderkommando was also decreasing. Realizing that they would soon die, the members of the Sonderkommando began to prepare an uprising in order to die with honor and human dignity.
As the camp housed a large munitions factory, several female prisoners who worked there (Rosa Robota, Ella Gertner, Regina Safirstein, Ester Weisblum and Rosa Grunapfel), managed to carry gunpowder and explosives. Underground activists gave the Sonderkommando sharpening tools they had made, and home-made grenades and mines were made from ordinary tin cans.
It was assumed that the uprising would begin simultaneously with all four Sonderkommandos working near the camp stoves. However, these plans were confused. When an SS team arrived at Crematorium No. 4 on October 7, 1944 with a list of 300 of the 451 Sonderkommando members to be exterminated, the workers attacked the Nazis and threw grenades at them. Three SS members were killed and about 30 wounded. Having taken away their weapons and locked them in the building, the Sonderkommando members decided to blow it up and set it on fire. As a result of their actions, crematorium No. 4 was destroyed and never operated again.
Flames were seen in other parts of the camp, and security immediately blocked the exits from other crematoria. At the same time, the SS began to withdraw large forces to crematorium No. 4. The Sonderkommando began to break through, but most of its members were killed. Only some of the escapees managed to reach a nearby village, where they were shot the same day. Only a few managed to survive, lost in the crowd of prisoners who did not participate in the escape.
Almost all of the 200 Sonderkommando workers who planned the mass escape were killed.
After the suppression of the uprising, an investigation began, during which all the workers of “Porokhova” were arrested. On January 6, 1945, Rosa Robota, Ella Gertner, Ester Weisblum and Regina Safirstein were hanged in front of the inmates of the women's camp. When the floor of the scaffold opened, one of the girls, 23-year-old Rosa Robota, shouted: “Be strong and brave!”.
On January 19, 1945, the prisoners of Auschwitz – about 56 thousand people – were sent on a “death march” to Ravensbrück. On January 27, the camp and the 7,500 prisoners who remained there were liberated from the Nazis.
At Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, a monument was erected in honor of Rosa Robota and three other executed women. 15,000 kilometers from the place where the scaffold stood that ended the lives of four women – in Sydney, Australia, – in memory of them there is a memorial named “Gate of the Rose Robota”. Among other things, words are stamped on it: “Tens of thousands of people – the descendants of survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau – owe their existence to the courage and silence of these women”.