Ala’s boss at her post in Sosnowitz was Moshe Merin, who “promoted the principle of ‘rescue through work,’ arguing that the Nazis would be less likely to deport Jews who were productive. He sacrificed those who could not work to save the lives of those who could. Merin supplied the Nazis with a census identifying the work eligibility of every Jew. Using this list, Nazis deported able-bodied Jews to labor camps. The same list also facilitated selection of the weak, the elderly, and children for death camps.”
Sala returned to Geppersdorf alone, but her friendship with Ala endured. For years, the two would exchange “rare, optimistic, loving and energetic correspondence.” In Sosnowitz, Ala reunited with Bernard Holtz, a man she’d met while he was imprisoned, and the two married.
“I sent you pajamas and a nightgown to keep you warm,” Ala wrote to Sala in the letters Sala would hide and cherish in secret through seven camps, the end of the war, and her eventual travel to the United States. She shared the letters with her children only in her old age, in 1991. “Please write what else you need. I’m at your disposal any time.”
Ala wrote, “In the camp, I protected you... Don’t be afraid. I always think of your release.”
“[M]any Judenrat leaders operated under the assumption that they and their towns could escape virulent antisemitism through cooperation with the Nazis,” the NYPL historians said. “Were they trying to save themselves first? Did they think they could outlast the evil? Were they justified in sacrificing some Jews to protect the larger group?” Ultimately, compliance saved no one: Ala, her husband, her boss, and the rest of the Judenrat were sent to Auschwitz during the “final liquidation” of Sosnowitz in 1943.
That year, Regina, Ester, and Ala were all stationed in the Weichel-Union-Metalworke, a factory preparing munitions, when Roza Robota contacted them for their help.
For months, the three women smuggled gunpowder out of the factory day by day, teaspoon by teaspoon, hidden in the hems of the dresses or in handkerchiefs. “Roughly twenty other Jewish women prisoners took part in the operation, among them Hannaleh Wajsblum (Ester’s sister), Faige Segal, Mala Weinstein, Hadassah Zlotnicka, and others whose names are unknown,” according to the Jewish Women’s Archive. The names of Rose Grunapfel Meth, Marta Bindiger, Genia Fischer, and Inge Frank have also been connected to these secretive efforts.
Some of the contributors may only have understood their involvement in retrospect. As a survivor shared years later, and preserved on the German Resistance Memorial Center website, “One day Ester Wajcblum 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, [Roza] Robota, who worked in the clothing section, came to me and asked for the parcel. This happened several times... I later found out that the parcel contained gunpowder smuggled out of the Union factory. Ester never spoke about it, only once did she say to me: ‘We could free ourselves from this hell...’”
Roza passed this pilfered gunpowder to the men of the Sonderkommando. Dr. Jennifer Putnam, writing for the National World War II Museum, said, “It took a year to prepare and amass supplies. The Sonderkommando prisoners who went to get the daily ration of soup for their group were able to make contact with the Polish Underground and other prisoners. They also bribed guards to allow them into the women’s camp. The guards assumed this was to visit girlfriends, but the Sonderkommando members instead used this time to coordinate with women who had access to gunpowder and explosive materials through their work assignments.”
It's a matter of debate how many of those involved expected to live. “None of the members of the Sonderkommando had any illusion of surviving the uprising,” Thomas wrote, “but their goal was to die honorably rather than survive.” Yet, the Polish Underground, with their ears trained to news from outside the camp, wanted to time their actions for when Soviet forces were nearby, when the chance of rescue was at its highest.
They did not get the opportunity to wait for the perfect time. The SS soldiers overseeing the Sonderkommando became suspicious and took one of their number for interrogation. They shot him for his refusal to reveal information and organized a “preemptive strike.” As Jennifer explained, the Sonderkommando were forced to launch their plan early, on Oct. 7, 1944. They grabbed the knives and pole weapons they’d sharpened or fashioned by hand and attacked.
“During the ensuing battle, several Sonderkommando members rushed into Crematorium IV and set the place ablaze. The gunpowder and grenades they had stored in the walls ignited, and the building crumbled to the ground. Other prisoners ran to the fence and cut the wire so that they could escape. They then fled to the nearby forest, leaving in their wake 12 injured and three dead SS men.”
This was the “shooting and terrible explosions” that survivor Lusia Haberfeld still remembered decades later. Throughout the camp, believing a revolt was underway, prisoners grabbed whatever weapons they had, attacked their guards, and fled.
Eventually, however, all the escapees were relocated and murdered. In all, Jennifer reported, “Around 250 prisoners were killed in the uprising, including the leaders of the Sonderkommando resistance.”
Following these quick deaths and regaining power, the Nazi investigation into the uprising began. Interrogation of the few survivors yielded four names: Roza Robota, Regina Safirsztajn, Ester Wajcblum, and Ala Gertner.
All four women were viciously tortured, including beatings, sexual assault, and electric shocks. None of them shared a single name of any conspirator still living.
In early January 1945, Ala and Roza were executed before the prisoners during the night. Ester and Regina were executed in the daylight. Ala was 32 years old, Regina was not yet 30, Roza was no older than 24, and Ester was just days shy of her 20th birthday. Noah Zabludowicz, a member of the Polish Underground, shared that Roza’s last words to her friends were “Hazak ve-amatz (be strong and of good courage)!” Not even two full weeks later, with the war resolutely against them, the Nazis abandoned Auschwitz and all its remaining prisoners.
Ester’s little sister Anna, only 16, survived the war, though it was decades before she told her story. In a 1996 interview at the age of 67, she said, “There is no question in my mind that when you meet with adversity in life, you have to stand tall, and you have to do what is right, because you can’t divorce yourself from yourself. By the same token, I paid too big a price. Perhaps if we weren’t so ‘right,’ my sister would still be alive.”
Anna’s point is a meaningful one. It’s easy to lionize these women, or slot them into line beside heroic, tragic figures of fiction. They were certainly tragic and undoubtedly heroic, but this was not their destiny, nor the fulfillment of their character. The foundational disruption of an oppressive government narrowed their world to a nightmare inside a barbed wire fence. The lives they’d wanted had been stolen from them long before they were executed.
In the preface to his book, “Weapons of the Weak,” James C. Scott, an anthropologist and political scientist, shared this observation about resistance in environments not unlike those faced in the camps: Rigid control, deprivation of resources, the threat of instant and random violence. He wrote, “For all their importance when they do occur, peasant rebellions—let alone revolutions—are few and far between. The vast majority are crushed unceremoniously. ... The rare, heroic, and foredoomed gestures of a Nat Turner or John Brown are simply not the places to look for the struggle between slaves and their owners. One must look rather at the constant, grinding conflict over work, food, autonomy, ritual—at everyday forms of resistance.”
Roza, Regina, Ester, and Ala stand out in history—notable for the daring and impact of what they did—and perhaps stories like theirs can inspire the smaller, constant bravery needed from the rest of us. “Everyday forms of resistance make no headlines,” James continued. “But just as millions of anthozoan polyps create, willy-nilly, a coral reef, so do the multiple acts of peasant insubordination and evasion create political and economic barrier reefs of their own. It is largely in this fashion that the peasantry makes its political presence felt. And whenever, to pursue the simile, the ship of state runs aground on such reefs, attention is usually directed to the shipwreck itself and not to the vast aggregation of petty acts that made it possible.”
Anna was proud of her own actions, and even of the sacrifice of her sister, though she wished for a kinder world that hadn’t demanded it. She said, “The world is not going to change unless we believe in changing the world, but we have to pay a very, very high price. I know that for me, the answer is to stand for what I believe in.”
Sources:
Jewish Women’s Archive: Roza Robota
Auschwitz: The Arrival
Jstor: Threat, Resistance, and Collective Action: The Cases of Sobibór, Treblinka, and Auschwitz by Thomas V. Maher
Jewish Virtual Library: The Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia: Prewar Portrait of Ala Gertner, Sonderkommandos, Prisoner Revolt, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
National WWII Museum: The Sonderkommando Uprising in Auschwitz-Birkenau
New York Public Library: Letters to Sala
USC Shoah Foundation: Lusia Haberfeld on the Women Behind the Sonderkommando Uprising; Was Her Sister’s Life Too High A Price?
German Resistance Memorial Center: Ester Wajcblum
European Holocaust Research Infrastructure: Safirsztajn and Gold families' photograph
Wikipedia: Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn, Ester Wajcblum, Anna Heilman, Rose Meth, Hashomer Hatzair, Ciechanów