 | This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Roza Robota" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(January 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Roza Robota | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Photograph from Robota's high school years, courtesy of Rosa Robota Foundation. | |
| Born | 1921 Ciechanów, Poland |
| Died | 5 January 1945(1945-01-05) (aged 23–24) |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Known for | Holocaust resistance |
Roza Robota (1921 – 6 January 1945)[1] orRóża Robota inPolish,[2] referred to in other sources as Rojza, Rózia or Rosa, was the leader of a group of four womenHolocaust resistors hanged in theAuschwitz concentration camp for their role in theSonderkommando prisoner revolt of 7 October 1944.
Born inCiechanów,Poland, to a middle-class family, Róża had one brother and one sister. She was a member ofHashomer HatzairZionist-socialistyouth movement, and joined that movement's underground, upon the 1939 Nazi Germaninvasion of Poland. Róża often used her Hebrew name, Shoshanah. In the home of Izajasz (Isaiah) Robota at Żydowska 4 Street in Ciechanów was the Perec Library, the most active Jewish cultural society in the city, organizing discussions about the Polish, Jewish and world literature, as well as theatre performances, lectures, and dances.[3]
Roza was transported to Auschwitzconcentration camp in aHolocaust train during the liquidation of the CiechanówGhetto in 1942.[2] She survived the "selection" and was assigned to Auschwitz-IIBirkenau labor commando for women, where she got involved in the underground dissemination of news among the prisoners. No one else from her family in Europe is known to have survived. She worked in the clothing depot at the BirkenauEffektenlager adjacent to Crematorium III ofBirkenau, where the bodies ofgas chamber victims were burned. She had been recruited by men of the underground whom she knew from her hometown, to smuggle "Schwarzpulver" (Black powder, gunpowder; or perhapsdynamite according to other, possibly less reliable sources)[4] collected by daring young women who were forced to work in theKrupp "Weichsel" munitions factory. Robota then transferred the Schwarzpulver to aSonderkommando man named Wróbel,[5] who was also active in the resistance. This Schwarzpulver was used to manufacture primitive grenades to help blow up the crematorium during theSonderkommando revolt.
In her work, Róża was assisted by Hadassa Zlotnicka and her male counterpart, Godel Silber, both also from Ciechanów, whom Robota apparently enlisted in the resistance. Together with several other women and girls (estimated at 8–16 in total) who worked in the Nazi "Pulverraum" factory, they were able to obtain, hide, and turn over to Róża no more than one to three teaspoons of the Schwarzpulver compound per day, and not every day. She and other women, some unknowingly, hid the explosive material until Robota was able to smuggle it to the men of the Jewish underground. These men of theSonderkommando blew up Crematorium III on 7 October 1944.[6]
Robota and three other women –Ala Gertner,Ester Wajcblum, andRegina Safirsztajn – were arrested by theGestapo and severely tortured in the infamous Bloc 11 but they refused to reveal the names of others who participated in the smuggling operation. They were hanged on 5 January 1945 – two women at the morning roll-call assembly, two others in the evening. Robota was 23 years old. According to some eyewitness accounts, she and her comrades shouted "Nekamah" ("Vengeance!") to the assembled inmates before they died. Other witnesses state they shouted, "Chazak V'amatz" – "Be strong and have courage", the Biblical phrase that God uses to encourage Joshua after the death of Moses. This is also the motto of Hashomer Hatzair, the youth organization to which she belonged.
TheSonderkommando Revolt caused some 70 fatalities among the SS and kapos and blew the roof off one crematorium. The Nazis knew the advancingRussian Army was very close to liberating the camp. It was clear to them that all evidence of the war-time atrocities had to be concealed, so the Germans attempted to destroy the other four crematoria themselves. Their partial ruins are preserved today.
Roza Robota's memory lives on, in the naming of the Roza Robota Gates at Montefiore Randwick (Sydney, Australia). This initiative was made possible by Sam Spitzer, a resistance fighter during World War II and now a resident of Sydney. He named the gates in honour of his war-time hero, Robota, and his late wife, Margaret. Spitzer's sister was in Auschwitz with Robota.
AtYad Vashem inJerusalem, a monument was built to honor Robota and the three other executed women. It stands in a prime location in the garden.
In the United States, the Rosa Robota Foundation, Inc., a not-for-profit educational organization in New York State has been active in the dissemination of information and has offered audio-visual presentations to student and civic groups since 1994. The Foundation also arranged a fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of the Sonderkommando Revolt at the site of a destroyed crematorium in the Auschwitz Museum.