Roza Robota

Roza Robota (1921, Ciechanów – January 5, 1945), referred to in other sources as Rojza, Rozia, or Rosa, was the leader and one of four women hanged in the Auschwitz concentration camp for their role in the Sonderkommando revolt of October 7, 1944.

Biography

Born in Ciechanów, Poland, to a middle class family, Rosa had one brother and one sister. She was a member of Hashomer Hatzair Zionist-socialist youth movement, and joined that movement's underground upon the Nazi occupation. Roza often used her Hebrew name, "Shoshanah." She was transported to Auschwitz in 1942, and was sent to Auschwitz-II, the adjacent Birkenau labor camp for women, where she was involved in the underground dissemination of news among the prisoners. No one else among her family in Europe is known to have survived.

Robota worked in the clothing depot at the Birkenau Effektenlager adjacent to Crematorium III of Birkenau, where the bodies of gas chamber victims were burned. She had been recruited by men of the underground whom she knew from her home town, to smuggle "schwartzpulver," a rapidly-burning compound collected by women in the "Weichsel" munitions factory, transferring it to a member of the Sonderkommando named Wróbel, who was also active in the resistance. This schwartzpulver was used to manufacture primitive grenades and possibly to help blow up the crematorium during the Sonderkommando revolt. In her work she was assisted by Hadassa Zlotnicka, another native of Ciechanów, whom Robota apparently enlisted in the resistance. Together with a few other women who worked in the Nazi factory's "pulverraum," they were able to obtain, hide, and turn over to the men of the underground no more than one to three teaspoons of the schwartzpulver compound per day, and not every day. The Sonderkommando blew up Crematorium III on October 6, 1944.

Robota and three other women — Ala Gertner, Estusia Wajcblum, and Regina Safirsztajn — were arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated in the infamous Bloc 23 under extreme torture, but they refused to reveal the names of others who participated in the smuggling operation. They were hanged on January 5, 1945, two women at the morning roll-call assembly, two others in the evening. Rosa was 23.

According to some eyewitness accounts, Rosa and her comrades shouted "Nekamah," ("Vengeance!") or "Be Strong" to the crowd of assembled inmates before they died. Some say they shouted, "Chazak V'amatz", --'Be strong and have courage', the Biblical phrase that God uses to encourage Joshua after the death of Moses.

The Sonderkommando Revolt had managed to cause a few casualties among the Nazis, and to blow off the roof of only one of the crematoria, yet the Nazis knew that the advancing Russian Army was very close to liberating the camp. It was clear to the Nazis that all evidence of the war-time atrocities had to be concealed, so the Germans attempted to destroy the other four crematoria themselves. As a result of the bravery of these four women, countless Jewish deaths were averted.

Legacy

Rosa Robota's memory lives on, in the naming of the Rosa 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. Mr. Spitzer named the gates in honour of his war-time hero, Robota, and his late wife, Margaret. Mr. Spitzer's sister was in Auschwitz with Rosa Robota.

At Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, a monument has been erected to Rosa and her three sisters-in-martyrdom. It stands in a prime location in the garden.

Further reading

• Gurewitsch, Brana. Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust, The University of Alabama Press, 1998. (ISBN 0-8173-0952-7)

• Shelley, Lore. The Union Kommando in Auschwitz: The Auschwitz Munition Factory Through the Eyes of Its Former Slave Laborers, University Press of America, 1996. (ISBN 0-7618-0194-4)