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Auschwitz concentration camp, also known as Oświęcim concentration camp, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question.
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centers, in Central Europe, primarily Occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site.
Sonderkommandos were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp Sonderkommandos, who were always inmates, were unrelated to the SS-Sonderkommandos, which were ad hoc units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945.
The ghetto uprisings during World War II were a series of armed revolts against the regime of Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1943 in the newly established Jewish ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe. Following the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, Polish Jews were targeted from the outset. Within months inside occupied Poland, the Germans created hundreds of ghettos in which they forced the Jews to live. The new ghettos were part of the German official policy of removing Jews from public life with the aim of economic exploitation. The combination of excess numbers of inmates, unsanitary conditions and lack of food resulted in a high death rate among them. In most cities the Jewish underground resistance movements developed almost instantly, although ghettoization had severely limited their access to resources.
Roza Robota or Róża Robota in Polish, referred to in other sources as Rojza, Rózia or Rosa, was the leader of a group of four women Holocaust resistors hanged in the Auschwitz concentration camp for their role in the Sonderkommando prisoner revolt of 7 October 1944.
The Grey Zone is a 2001 American historical drama film written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson and starring David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, and Daniel Benzali. It is based on the book Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account written by Dr. Miklós Nyiszli.
Henryk Mandelbaum was a Polish Holocaust survivor. He was one of the prisoners in the Sonderkommando KL Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who worked in the crematory. Only 110 out of 2,000 Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz-Birkenau survived the war. As of the death of Dario Gabbai in 2020, no former Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommandos are known to be alive.
Ala Gertner, referred to in other sources as Alla, Alina, Ella, and Ela Gertner, was one of four women hanged in the Auschwitz concentration camp for her role in the Sonderkommando revolt of 7 October 1944.
Rose Grunapfel Meth born as Ruzia Grunapfel, also known as Reisel Grunapfel Meth, was one of several Jewish participants in the October 7, 1944 "Sonderkommando uprising" of inmates in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Anna Heilman, born Hana Wajcblum, referred to in other sources as Hanka or Chana Weissman, was one of the surviving prisoners from Auschwitz who plotted to blow up the crematoria. She, along with her elder sister (Estusia) and other women, smuggled gunpowder out of the Union munitions factory. They were then able to pass it from insider to insider until it reached the Sonderkommando. The women involved in the gunpowder smuggling chain include Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn, Rose Grunapfel Meth, Hadassa Zlotnicka, Marta Bindiger, Genia Fischer, and Inge Frank, among others.
The Będzin Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the Polish Jews in the town of Będzin in occupied south-western Poland. The formation of the 'Jewish Quarter' was pronounced by the German authorities in July 1940. Over 20,000 local Jews from Będzin, along with additional 10,000 Jews expelled from neighbouring communities, were forced to subsist there until the end of the ghetto history during the Holocaust. Most of the able-bodied poor were forced to work in German military factories before being transported aboard Holocaust trains to the nearby concentration camp at Auschwitz where they were exterminated. The last major deportation of the ghetto inmates by the German SS – men, women and children – between 1 and 3 August 1943 was marked by the ghetto uprising by members of the Jewish Combat Organization.
Five Chimneys, originally published 1946 in French as Souvenirs de l'au-delà, is the memoir of Olga Lengyel about her time as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.
Henryk (Tauber) Fuchsbrunner was a Polish Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp during the Holocaust, who gave detailed testimony at the end of World War II. Tauber was his mother's maiden name. His parents were married by a rabbi and never filed for a civil licence due to quotas on the number of Jewish marriages in Galicia then under Austrian rule. Henryks father's name was Abraham Fuchsbrunner and Fuchsbrunner was the name by which he was known. Henryk Fuchsbrunner shortened his name to Henry Fuchs after he arrived in the United States in 1952.
Leib Langfus, or also Leyb Langfus, was one of the victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau. A rabbi and Dayan in Maków Mazowiecki, he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, where he was forced to work as a Sonderkommando. After the war, a diary Langfus kept was unearthed in the grounds of Birkenau, which was published with several other diaries, under the title, The scrolls of Auschwitz. Between 1945 and 1980, a total of eight caches of documents were found buried in the grounds of Crematoria II and III in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The accounts written by Langfus are considered one of the most important historical documents dealing with subject of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, and the Holocaust in general.
The Sonderkommando photographs are four blurred photographs taken secretly in August 1944 inside the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. Along with a few photographs in the Auschwitz Album, they are the only ones known to exist of events around the gas chambers.
Alberto Israel Errera was a Greek-Jewish officer and a member of the anti-Nazi resistance. He was a member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau from May to August 1944.
Frumka Płotnicka was a Polish resistance fighter during World War II; activist of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and member of the Labour Zionist organization Dror. She was one of the organizers of self-defence in the Warsaw Ghetto, and participant in the military preparations for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Following the liquidation of the Ghetto, Płotnicka relocated to the Dąbrowa Basin in southern Poland. On the advice of Mordechai Anielewicz, Płotnicka organized a local chapter of ŻOB in Będzin with the active participation of Józef and Bolesław Kożuch as well as Cwi (Tzvi) Brandes, and soon thereafter witnessed the murderous liquidation of both Sosnowiec and Będzin Ghettos by the German authorities.
Ester (Estusia/Esterka) Wajcblum (1924–1945) was a Jewish resistance fighter in the Auschwitz underground and one of four women hanged in the Auschwitz concentration camp for her role in the Sonderkommando revolt of 7 October 1944.
Daniel Bennahmias was a Greek-born Jewish Italian national captured by the Nazis in Greece during World War II and transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He was used by the camp guards in a sonderkommando, a euphemism for a group forced to dispose of the corpses of fellow prisoners under the threat of execution. He was one of eleven Greeks in sonderkommandos who survived the Holocaust.
The Sonderkommando revolt in Auschwitz occurred on 7 October 1944, when a large group of Sonderkommando members in the crematoria area of Birkenau camp rebelled against the Nazi guards of the camp. The revolt was suppressed after Crematorium IV was blown up, killing three German guards and 452 members of the Sonderkommando.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Portrait of Regina Szafirsztajn, one of the four women who was hanged for her participation in the Auschwitz uprising. - Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum". collections.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
- 1 2 3 "Prisoner Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau". www.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
- ↑ Kirschner, Ann (2006). Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story. New York: Simon and Schuster.
- ↑ "Teaching about Women and Resistance". teaching-about-women-and-resistance.html. Retrieved 2021-04-20.