Anna Heilman

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Anna Heilman (also Hanka or Chana Weissman ), born as Hana Wajcblum , ( December 1, 1928 in Warsaw - May 1, 2011 in Ottawa ) was a Canadian Holocaust survivor of Polish origin. In 1944 she was involved in the (second) armed uprising of the prisoner special command in crematoria III and IV in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp .

She was the younger sister of Ester Wajcblum , who was hanged on the roll call ground of Auschwitz on January 6, 1945 because of her participation in the uprising.

biography

Anna Heilmann was the youngest of three children from Jakub and Rebeka Wajcblum, both of whom were deaf . This impairment was not passed on to the three children. Jakub's father owned a factory ( Snycerpol ) in which wooden handicraft products were made. Deaf people worked here, including Anna, Sabina and Ester Wajcblum's (Estusia) nannies. The products made in Jakub's factory were presented at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris and again in 1939 at the World's Fair in New York .
The Wajcblum family lived on Mila Street, which became part of the Warsaw Ghetto that was established in mid-1940 . Sabina was able to flee with her future husband in time. The rest of the family stayed in the ghetto. Anna was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement , the Warsaw group took part in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising . Anna decided to stay with her parents and not fight. In May 1943, was carried deportation of the family to the Majdanek concentration camp . The journey in cattle wagons took two days, there was neither water nor food, and almost a third of the deportees died on the way. Once in Majdanek, Anna's parents Jakub and Rebeka were murdered immediately. Anna and her sister Ester were transferred to Auschwitz in September 1943 .

In 1944 Anna and Ester had to work in a munitions factory, when Anna had the idea of smuggling gunpowder out. Some prisoners knew of the planned uprising of the Sonderkommando, to which the women wanted to send the powder (including Hana's sister Ester, Rózia Robota , Regina Safirsztajn and Ala Gertner ). The powder was smuggled in small bags inside the clothing, in the knot of the headscarf and even under the fingernails. On October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando rebelled and with the help of black powder, crematorium IV was so badly destroyed that it could no longer be used. But there was a betrayal and Ester, Rózia Robota, Regina Safirsztajn and Ala Gertner were tortured for months in a bunker, but kept Anna's name and the names of other people involved a secret. The four women were hanged on January 6, 1945 . The entire women's camp had to attend the execution , and Anna also witnessed the death of her sister Ester.

Completely in the shadow of the four executed are the at least eleven previously known resistance fighters, who also risked their lives to supply the resistance fighters of the Sonderkommando with explosives. According to Caroline Pokrzywinski these were - besides Anna Heilman:

   

The Auschwitz uprising and the associated delays in the murder machinery may have led to the survival of many prisoners who otherwise would have been gassed by the SS .

Shortly before the execution, Ester asked her friend Marta Cigé to take care of Anna. Indeed, after her sister was executed, Anna tried to commit suicide several times. She was hospitalized and Marta Cigé did not leave her side. On January 17th, the “evacuation” of the camp began as the Red Army approached Auschwitz. Anna had to go on a death march and first came to Ravensbrück , in February she was taken to the Neustadt-Glewe concentration camp, where she was liberated by the Red Army on May 2, 1945.

After her liberation, she first emigrated to Belgium and then went to Palestine , graduated from school and became a social worker . In Palestine she met her sister Sabina again and got to know Hoshua Heilman, whom she married on March 7, 1947. The couple became parents of two daughters - Ariela (born 1951) and Noa (born 1953). Joshua was a Hebrew teacher, he got a job in Boston and the family moved there in 1958. In 1960 he got the offer to become headmaster in Ottawa and they moved again. Here Anna Heilman worked as a social worker for the Children's Aid Society until her retirement in 1990.

Anna Heilmann had kept a diary in Auschwitz, but this was found and destroyed by the SS, but she had rewritten it from memory in a refugee camp in 1945. Her diary was translated into English and published in 2001 under the title Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles of Anna Heilman , and in 2002 the book received the Ottawa Book Award . In 2003 the documentary Unlikely Heroes was released , which also tells Anna Heilman's story.
Anna Heilman died of cancer on May 1, 2011 in Ottawa.

literature

  • Fritz Bauer Institute, Study and Documentation Center on the History and Effects of the Holocaust (Dossier No. 1): The Uprising of the Special Command in Auschwitz-Birkenau , accessed on April 19, 2016
  • 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 (English; 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 (English)
  • Shmuel Krakowski: The unimaginable fight, in: Barbara Distel (ed.): Women in the Holocaust , Gerlingen 2001, pp. 289-300.

Web links

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Caroline Pokrzywinski: Unheard Voices: The Story of the Women Involved in the Sonderkommando Revolt , May 15, 2014, accessed on April 19, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Heilman, Anna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weissmann, Hanka; Weissmann, Chana
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish resistance fighter in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 2011
Place of death Ottawa