23. “Be Strong and Be Brave!“
As Auschwitz guards opened fire with machineguns, some prisoners cut through the barbed wire and fled into nearby woods. It was a brief taste of revenge for those marked for death, who chose to meet their end fighting while taking as many as their oppressors with them as possible. At least three guards perished, and about a dozen were injured. Inevitably, the Nazis rushed in reinforcements, and suppressed the revolt with overwhelming firepower. In a final act of defiance, Crematoria IV’s Sonderkommando retreated into the building and set off their explosives, ending their own lives. The Auschwitz-Birkenau revolt was crushed, and most escapees were exterminated or recaptured. 451 Sonderkommando perished that day: about 250 met their end in the fighting, and another 200 were executed immediately afterwards.
Some were temporarily spared for interrogation, and were tortured into giving up names, including the names of the women who had smuggled the explosives. Roza Robota, Ella Gartner, Ester Wajcblum, and Regina Safirsztajn, were seized. They were made of stern stuff. Despite months of beatings, torture, electric shock to their genitals, and rape, they only gave the names of already-dead Sonderkommando. On January 5th, 1945, the four heroines were hanged in front of the camp’s assembled women. Roza Robota went out like a total boss. With the noose around her neck, and just before the trapdoor dropped, she shouted her last words: “Be strong and be brave!“
