Roza Robota

Following Germany’s annexation of Poland in September 1939, the Third Reich commandeered Auschwitz, a former army barracks near the village of Oswiecim in Upper Silesia, and converted it into a concentration and death camp. Initially the camp held Polish political prisoners, but it was quickly expanded to facilitate mass murder in German-occupied Europe. Those whom the Nazis sent to the camp were predominantly Jews, but also included other marginalized groups such as male homosexuals and Roma and Sinti. By March 1942, construction of a second site, Birkenau, or “Auschwitz II,” was complete, expanding both the number of prisoners held and the gas chambers in which to murder them.    

Among the Birkenau inmates was a special prisoner group, the Sonderkommando, or “Special Unit,” (also known as Hilflinge, “Helpers,” or Arbeitsjuden, or “Jews for Work.”)  These various euphemisms obscured the group’s actual purpose – to remove corpses from the crematoria and dispose of them, either in mass graves or by additional burning.  Although the Sonderkommando was composed primarily of Jewish prisoners, the Nazis needed them to remain strong in order to perform their gruesome duties. Thus, the Germans kept the Sonderkommandos separated from their fellow inmates; they had better living quarters than their peers, including more personal space and the freedom to retain some comforts such as cigarettes.  

Auschwitz-Birkenau was both a death camp and a concentration camp with many subcamps which housed prisoners who worked in different factories, including some involved in the creation of munitions for use by the German army.  The Weichsel Metall Union Werke was one such factory devoted to this task. This proved to be instrumental in Robota’s resistance efforts.

The revolt that Robota helped orchestrate was by no means the first by concentration camp prisoners. An Insurrection had taken place at the Treblinka camp in 1943, a year prior to the Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz. In that instance, prisoners broke into an arms depot and opened fire, allowing their fellow captives to flee the camp and escape into the surrounding Polish countryside. While the Nazis subsequently gunned down or captured some escapees, approximately 200 successfully fled.

Early Life and Background

Robota was born in 1921, in Ciechanów, a city in the north-central part of Poland. Like many other Ashkenazi Jews, her family had deep ties to the region – huge numbers of Jews settled there as far back as the 16th to 18th centuries when it was an independent Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.    

By the 1930s, Jews constituted approximately 30 to 40% of the population of the city, and though a portion of Jewish families lived on the edge of poverty, the more established ones proved vital to its economy, working in trades like cobbling and textiles. The Jewish community was centered around the Market Square portion of the city, where there were numerous Yeshivas, markets, shuls, and other visible indications of vibrant Jewish life.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Robota family, like many other European Jews and specifically those of Ciechanów, were inspired by Zionism and became active in Palestinian resettlement campaigns.  In addition to funding emigrations, Ciechanów was home to many organizations designed to prepare Jewish families for the migration process by hosting programs in Hebrew instruction, agricultural techniques, and physical fitness.  Ciechanów Jews exhibited a socialist bent to their beliefs, devoted to a communal vision for the new Jewish state in Palestine, one where Jews cohabited the region peacefully with the local Arab population. There were factions amongst the community and various splinter groups, and one of the most dominant organizations was the Hashomer Hatzair or “The Young Guard.” Not only did Robota belong to this group, but her family was one of the more active ones in the wider Palestinian movement. In fact, many literary discussions, philosophical seminars and other cultural activities occurred in the home of her relative, Isaiah Robota.

Resistance

Upon arriving at Birkenau, the Nazis separated Roza Robota from her family, who were later killed. She survived the initial “selection” and was assigned to work in a clothing depot near Crematorium II. Among the prisoners at Birkenau were others from her hometown of Ciechanów, and these former neighbors soon recruited her into a clandestine effort to collect Schwarzpulver (gunpowder). The goal was to create explosives to destroy the crematoria and aid in a mass breakout. This operation was a key part of a larger resistance effort led by Kampfgruppe Auschwitz, the underground resistance organization within the camp.

Even though Robota herself didn’t work in the Weichsel munitions factory, she maintained secret contact with the women stationed there, acting as a middleman between their smuggling operation and the Sonderkommando co-conspirators who collected the gunpowder.  Robota was not only indispensable to the operation, but at the heart of it, entrusted with the names of agents on both sides.  This included a Sonderkommando named Wróbel, fellow workers Hadassa Zlotnicka, Godel Silber, and a dozen other operatives, including Jehuda Laufer, Israel Gutman, and Noah Zabludowicz.

The Nazi’s escalation of killing at the camp, including the execution of hundreds of members of Sonderkommando, forced the group to act more quickly than they had intended. They feared that if they didn’t, they would be executed before they had a chance to carry out their plans.

Therefore, on October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando and other workers from Crematoria IV and V began to open fire and set the facilities ablaze; however, the resistance fighters in the other Crematoria either didn’t join the revolt or altered their original intentions. Those in Crematoria III refused to participate outright, while those in Crematoria II used the munitions Robota helped provide to escape. Some have estimated that 80 people from Crematoria II managed to escape, but their fate has not been confirmed by historians. Of the original 80 people, 27 are believed to have survived the war. In all, 472 Sonderkommando lost their lives, while only three German soldiers suffered the same fate. The resistance fighters did successfully destroy Crematoria IV.  The Germans did not return the other crematoria to operation, dismantling them before retreating from the Soviet forces.

Following the conclusion of the Sonderkommando Revolt, the Nazis imprisoned Robota and her fellow co-conspirators, but she refused to reveal a single name of Kampfgruppe Auschwitz operatives. Robota and the other women were released, only to be betrayed by Eugen Koch, a spy the Germans placed into their ranks. The Gestapo tortured and interrogated her again, yet she still refused to share any intelligence. Noah Zabludowicz, a fellow rebel from Ciechanów, managed to see Robota in her cell before her hanging, at which time she insisted she didn’t betray their comrades.  He claimed her final words were hazak ve-amatz, or “be strong and of good courage,” the same words God said to Joshua upon Moses’s death in scripture.  It was also the slogan of Hashomer Hatzair.  On January 6, 1945, the Nazis hanged Robata and her co-conspirators in front of the other prisoners. She was 23 years old.