31. Smuggling Explosives to the Death Camp’s Sonderkommando
Over a period of months in 1944, the quartet of Ella Gartner, Regina Safirsztajn, and sisters Ester and Hana Wajcblum, engaged in a nerve-wracking conspiracy, whose discovery would have meant their deaths. They painstakingly hid small amounts of explosives from the munitions factory in which they toiled. With the help of Roza Robota, who worked in the clothes depot, they smuggled them out, using ingenious methods such as false the bottoms of food trays, or secreting them in the nooks of corpses sent for cremation.
The explosives made it to the men of the Sonderkommando, who fashioned them into makeshift bombs and grenades. They were stashed away, along with knives, axes, other makeshift weapons, and a few pistols smuggled in by partisans. The goal was to launch a revolt during which the death camp’s gas chambers and crematoria would be destroyed while facilitating a mass breakout and escape.
