Regina Safirsztajn

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Regina Safirsztajn (born on 1915 in Będzin , Poland ; died on January 6, 1945 in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp ) - other spellings of her family name Szafirztajn , Sapirsztajn , Saphirstein , Safirstein or Safir - was a Jewish resistance fighter in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

In 1944 she was involved in the (second) armed uprising of the prisoner special command in crematoria III and IV and was murdered by hanging by SS forces together with Ala Gertner , Rózia Robota and Ester Wajcblum a few weeks before the concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army .

biography

Relatively few biographical details are known from the life of Regina Safirsztajn. She was born to Josef Safirsztajn and Roza Gold Safirsztajn and had six older siblings and a younger brother. Her father ran a restaurant and bar in the front part of the family house in Będzin. Her sisters were named Chana Gitla (1899), later married Ickowicz, Tonia and Cesia (1912), her brothers were Mordechai, who emigrated to the United States , Isaak, Ezel, who married after Łódź , and David, the youngest. The children attended Polish schools, but at home, with their parents, they spoke Yiddish . When Brother Mordechai got married in the United States, the family that remained in Będzin celebrated the event and gathered for a group picture. This photograph was taken between March and June 1930, it has been preserved and is available on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. Regina Safirsztajn is shown on the far right of this picture.

The mother of the eight siblings died long before the German attack on Poland , and the father had a fatal heart attack shortly after the local ghetto was established. He had lived with his children, and they made a decent burial. While in the ghetto, Regina married Josef Szaintal or Szajntal on an unknown date . Since her husband died shortly afterwards, she used her maiden name again.

In August 1943 she was deported - together with a number of family members - to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where she was selected for forced labor . She has been characterized as a "little woman with a big heart". She had to work in the Auschwitz ammunition factory Weichsel-Metall-Union , where she became a foreman. Regina Safirsztajn was one of the few concentration camp inmates who had access to explosives. Her friend Ala Gertner recruited her for resistance work. A network of at least fifteen women - including Marta Bindiger, Genua Fischer, Inge Frank and Hadassah Zlotnicka - began to smuggle small amounts of explosives out of the so-called "powder room" every day and passed it on - via a highly complex chain of distribution - to prepare for resistance Detainees of the Sonderkommando . The women hid the explosives between their breasts and in the headscarves. They were all taking an extremely high risk as they were searched regularly and detection of such resistance would have been punished with immediate execution . Despite this, the smuggling of explosives went undetected for more than a year.

When crematorium IV was blown up on October 7, 1944 as part of the Auschwitz uprising , the SS forces took draconian measures and shot every third prisoner in the Sonderkommando, at least 451 people. The camp Gestapo could not explain how the prisoners had come into possession of explosives and immediately started extensive investigations. They eventually found out that the explosives came from the Weichsel-Metall-Union. A series of arrests followed, which, however, did not lead to any useful result. For the camp SS it was inconceivable that Jews would be capable of such an act of resistance. Only through denunciation of her lover, a Gestapo - spy , Ala Gertner was identified as an accomplice. She is said to have betrayed three of her comrades: Rózia Robota , Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum . The four women were tortured for weeks in order to identify other accomplices, but to no avail. In particular, Rózia Robota, who had taken over the contact with the Sonderkommando, remained steadfast and only mentioned the names of prisoners who had already been shot.

Although the end of the Nazi regime was imminent and the Red Army was rapidly moving towards Auschwitz, the Nazis made one last example and hanged two of Regina Safirsztajn, Ala Gertner , Rózia Robota and Ester Wajcblum on January 6, 1945 in front of the inmates who had gathered on the roll call square Weeks before the concentration camp was abandoned and three weeks before the arrival of the Red Army. Prior to their execution, the women are said to have shouted perseverance slogans such as “Be strong!” Or “Vengeance” and sang the anthem of the Zionist movement Hatikvah .

Regina Safirsztajn was 29 years old when she was executed.

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:

   

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.

Fate of relatives

On September 6, 1939, her brother-in-law Abel Ickowicz, who had three children with Chana Gitla, was abducted by the Germans and shot together with 28 other Jews from Będzin . Together with Regina Safirsztajn, a number of family members were deported to Auschwitz in August 1943. Immediately after arriving in Auschwitz, the following were murdered in the gas chambers :

  • Tonia, her sister, and their two small children
  • Marek, born in 1931, the son of her sister Chana Gitla
  • the wife of her brother Isaac and their common toddler

Jadzia, the wife of the youngest brother David, was selected for forced labor despite having a young child. She stayed with Chana Gitla and their daughters Bronia and Roza. Chana Gitla died of typhus in February 1944. In the end, only two of the relatives survived:

  • the brother Mordechai and who emigrated to America in time
  • the niece Roza Ickowicz (born on January 15, 1926), who, like her mother Chana Gitla, fell ill with typhus in early 1944 and had already been selected for the gas chamber, but escaped murder for unexplained reasons. In autumn 1944 she missed an appeal and was sentenced to be flogged, decided to flee and, through fortunate circumstances, ended up in a group of women who were transferred to Bergen-Belsen . There she was liberated by the British in April 1945. She ended up in an Allied camp in Schwandorf, met Simon Lajb Rechnic, one of the few survivors from her hometown of Będzin, and married him on August 15, 1945. In autumn 1946, the couple emigrated to the United States.

Commemoration

Memorial for the four hanged resistance fighters from Auschwitz, created by Joseph Salomon in 1989

In 1991 a memorial was erected in Yad Vashem in honor of the four who were executed. The initiative for this came from Ester Wajcblum's sister Hanika, who was now Anna Heilman , and from Rose Meth geb. Gruenapfel, both also involved in the acts of resistance.

On October 7, 1994, a memorial plaque in honor of Ala Gertner, Rózia Robota, Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum 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 2014 the choreographer Jonah Bokaer showed a multimedia exhibition entitled October 7, 1944 at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan .

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d United States Holocaust Memorial Museum : The Safirsztajn family gathers to celebrate the marriage of Mordechai Safirsztajn who had immigrated to the United States , Photograph 77570, accessed on April 24, 2016 (with a group picture of the Safirsztajn and Gold families).
  2. ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum : Portrait of Regina Szafirsztajn, one of the four women who was hanged for her participation in the Auschwitz uprising , Photograph 77570A, accessed on April 24, 2016.
  3. ^ Regina Safirsztajn in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  4. ↑ Arno Lustiger: Der Aufstand On today's film release of “Grauzone”: The truth about the revolt of the special commandos of Auschwitz , Die Welt , January 27, 2005, accessed on April 19, 2016.
  5. ^ Special command of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , accessed on April 19, 2016.
  6. ↑ Shik, Na'ama: Roza Robota . In: Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia . Jewish Women's Archive , February 27, 2009. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  7. ↑ Caroline Pokrzywinski: Unheard Voices: The Story of the Women Involved in the Sonderkommando Revolt , May 15, 2014, accessed on April 19, 2016.
  8. ↑ Rebecca Milzoff: The quiet bravery of a doomed revolt , in: New York Times , November 14, 2014, p. 18.
personal data
SURNAME Safirsztajn, Regina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Szafirztajn, Regina; Sapirsztajn, Regina; Sapphire stone, Regina; Safirstein, Regina; Safir
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish resistance fighter in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Będzin , Poland
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1945
Place of death Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp