Rózia Robota

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Rózia Robota, before 1939

Rózia Robota ( 1921 in Ciechanów , Poland - January 6, 1945 in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) other spellings of her first name Rojza , Rozia or Rosa , was executed as one of four women who took part in the 1944 (second) armed uprising of the Jewish prisoner special command were involved in crematoria III and IV in the German Birkenau concentration camp .

biography

In her youth, Robota belonged to the Zionist Hashomer-Hatzair movement.

In Auschwitz, from 1942, she was forced to work in the effects room , also known as “Canada” , sorting out the prisoners who had since been gassed . She initially participated in secretly spreading news among the inmates. Hadassa Zlotnicka, also from Ciechanów, is said to have recruited R. Robota for this resistance activity. She met Ala Gertner there and made friends with her. For months they both participated with others in the smuggling of three teaspoons of explosives a day to the prisoners of the Sonderkommando in order to prepare an outbreak.

Ala Gertner , Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum were hanged with her . After months of torture , the execution took place in January 1945 a few days before the camp was closed on the roll call square in front of all the prisoners. Shortly before her execution, Rózia Robota said: "It is easier to die when you know that the others are going on". Calls from the four prisoners were handed down to show that they were morally unbroken.

Their 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.

Commemoration

On October 7, 1994, a memorial plaque in honor of Rózia Robota, Ala Gertner, Esther Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn was unveiled in the Auschwitz main camp at a commemorative event marking the 50th anniversary of the Sonderkommando uprising in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum .

In memory of Robota, the Rosa Robota gates were named in Montefiore Randwick (Sydney).

In 2014 choreographer Jonah Bokaer showed a multimedia exhibition entitled October 7, 1944 at the Center for Yewish History in Manhattan .

literature

  • Yuri Suhl: Rosa Robota - Heroine of the Auschwitz Underground. In: ders .: They Fought Back. New York 1969, pp. 219-224 (PDF) .
  • Lore Shelley: The Union Kommando in Auschwitz: The Auschwitz Munition Factory Through the Eyes of Its Former Slave Laborers. University Press of America, Lanham 1996, ISBN 0-7618-0194-4 (English).
  • Brana Gurewitsch: Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust. The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL 1998, ISBN 0-8173-0931-4 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yad Vashem - Robota, Rosa
  2. ↑ Quoted from In the fight against occupation and the "Final Solution". Resistance of the Jews in Europe 1939–45. Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main, April 26 to June 29, 1995, p. 214.
  3. ↑ Rebecca Milzoff: The quiet bravery of a doomed revolt. In: International New York Times , November 15, 2014, p. 18.
personal data
SURNAME Robota, Rózia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Robota, Rojza; Robota, Rozia; Robota, pink
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish resister in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Ciechanów
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1945
Place of death Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp