Ala Gertner

Ala Gertner (1943)

Ala Gertner , also Alla , Alina , Ela , Ella Gärtner (born on March 12, 1912 in Będzin , Vistula region , Russian Empire ; died on January 6, 1945 in Auschwitz-Birkenau ), was preparing for the prisoner's armed uprising Special detachments in crematoria III and IV in the Birkenau concentration camp were involved in smuggling explosives and after weeks of torture by the camp Gestapo, they were murdered by the SS in a staged execution in front of the prisoners who stood in front of them .

biography

Ala Gertner was born in Poland as one of three children to a wealthy family. Her parents made it possible for her to attend grammar school in Będzin.

On October 28, 1940, she was deported from the Sosnowiec train station to the labor camp in Geppersdorf (today Rzędziwojowice) , where she was forced to do forced labor in the construction of the motorway by the Schmelt organization (section of the A 4 autostrada ). She had to work in the kitchen and laundry there. Because of her knowledge of German, she came to the camp administration. There she met fellow prisoner Bernhard Holtz , whom she married after being released from forced labor.

Auschwitz concentration camp

After a stop at the Bedzin assembly camp , she was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp sometime between July and August 1944 with the survivors of this ghetto . In Auschwitz, Gertner was forced to work in the effects room sorting the belongings of inmates who had meanwhile been gassed . There she got to know Rózia Robota , among others , and befriended her. Robota was a member of a secret resistance group at the camp. Ala Gertner then came to the office of the Union Munitionsfabrik . There she and others participated in smuggling explosives to the prisoners of the Sonderkommando for months in order to prepare for an outbreak. She managed to get more women to participate in this dangerous plan.

Rózia Robota, Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum were hanged with her .

Legacy, commemoration

Ala Gertner was able to send 28 letters from the labor camp to Sala Kirschner (née Garncarz), which have been handed down. There are no known relatives who survived.

On October 7, 1994, a memorial plaque in honor of Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Esther Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn was unveiled in the Auschwitz main camp at a commemorative event on the 50th anniversary of the Sonderkommando uprising in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum . There are other memorials in Israel and Australia .

The last known letter from Gertner from Będzin to Sala Garncarz read:

Kamionka

July 15, 1943
Dearest Sarenka,

I'm in the post office, today is the post office and how could I not write to my dear Sara? My little Bernhard was visiting. He seems to be fine and feels fine. I would like to know how you are?
We're all ok and expect to come to the camp. Today is a kind of strange day, but we are in good spirits and confident. Do not despair, everything will be fine. Cheer up, it will be fine. Greetings from the whole family and from my Bernhard

Your little Ala kisses you

literature

• Lore, Shelley: The Union Kommando in Auschwitz: The Auschwitz Munition Factory Through the Eyes of Its Former Slave Laborers . Lanham, University Press of America, 1996. 421 pages. ISBN 0-7618-0194-4 (A description of the "Union" munition factory in Auschwitz through the eyes of 36 former prisoners. It encompasses the women's resistance movement in the camps, recounts how gun-powder was smuggled to the Sonderkommando for the October 7th uprising, and reveals post-war coverup of the story.)
• Brana Gurewitsch: Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust , Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8173-0931-4 .
• Anna Heilman , Sheldon Schwartz (Eds.): Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles of Anna Heilman , Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 2001. ISBN 1-55238-040-8 .
• Ann Kirschner , Deborah Dwork, Robert Jan Van Pelt, Jill Vexler: Letters to Sala: A Young Woman's Life in Nazi Labor Camps, The New York Public Library, 2006. ISBN 0-87104-457-9 (means her mother Sala Garncarz- Kirschner, who was a Nazi prisoner for 5 years).
• Judith Sternberg-Newman: In the Hell of Auschwitz: The Wartime Memoirs of Judith Sternberg Newman, New York: Exposition Press, 1963. OCLC 1426388 .

Web links

• Report at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, of ​​the Auschwitz revolt (with portrait photo from the pre-war period)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ on the date of death see calendar of events in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp 1939–1945, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-00884-6 .