Rose meth

Rose Gruenapfel Meth , also called Ruzia or Reisel , ( November 10, 1925 in Zator , Poland - October 12, 2013 in New York City ) was a resistance fighter in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . She was involved in the armed uprising of the Sonderkommando of Jewish prisoners on October 7, 1944.

Life

Rose Gruenapfel was the daughter of Shlomo Zalman Gruenapfel (born 1890) and Rivka Miriam, née Offen (1895). She had three sisters and two brothers, Eliezer (1911), David, Pearla (1922), Sarah Ethel (1928) and Chaya (1929).

She was deported to Auschwitz in August 1943 and assigned to work in the Union works at the end of 1944 . She had to work twelve hours a day in the so-called powder room , together with a close friend, Ester Wajcblum , called Estuscha. The two were often mistaken for sisters. In March 1944 she joined the underground organization and a chain of smuggling black powder began in very small portions, which reached through various messengers to the men who used them to build explosive devices. At the beginning of the chain was the powder room, where Genia Fischer and Regina Safirsztajn worked alongside the two women . Two full spoons could be collected and set aside every day. The powder was hidden in small pieces of cloth that the women smuggled out in bras or bags. In some cases, when it came to body checks, it had to be spread a little. This succeeded in the waiting time. The resistance work was well organized, so that the SS guards did not become suspicious for almost a year.

“I knew we were planning a mass escape. The men should go out first, and then maybe the women. There was great doubt that anyone would survive at all. But at least we wanted to try. That was our main goal. "

- Rose Gruenapfel : Uprising in Auschwitz by Gideon Greif , Itamar Levin , p. 191

In the camp, Rose Gruenapfel exchanged bread for paper so that she could write down what she experienced and saw so that she could later bear testimony. She remembered her father's admonition to take careful note of everything that happened there. Some of the notes are in the Yad Vashem archives today . On January 6, 1945, like many other prisoners, she was forced to attend the execution of Ala Gertner , Rózia Robota , Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum , her best friend, all of whom were involved in the uprising. They were hanged on roll call square two weeks before the concentration camp was abandoned. Due to the chronic malnutrition, she developed boils on her feet and was temporarily unable to walk. Still, she eventually survived Auschwitz and a death march .

In 1946 Rose Gruenapfel emigrated to the United States , on board the first civilian passenger ship after the end of the Second World War. She initially lived in Chicago , Illinois , and worked as a fashion designer. In 1948 she married Irving Meth and moved to New York. The couple had three sons. The family lived in Bensonhurst , Brooklyn , New York . Together with Anna Heilman , Ester Wajcblum's sister, she initiated a memorial in honor of the four women who were executed in this resistance action: Ala Gertner, Rózia Robota, Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajcblum. It was built in Yad Vashem in 1991 .

She spent the last ten years of her life in Kew Gardens Hills , Queens , New York. Her husband died in 2005

Her parents and 86-year-old grandmother were murdered on July 2, 1942 in the Belzec extermination camp . Her brother Elieser was deported via the Płaszów ghetto to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where he died. All other siblings mentioned above and the sister-in-law Rachel were murdered in Auschwitz , the sisters aged 14, 15 and 21 in December 1943 in the gas chambers .

Commemoration

In 2016, her children and grandchildren created the song Rose Meth, The Unsung Heroine .

literature

• Gideon Greif , Itamar Levin : Uprising in Auschwitz , The revolt of the Jewish »Sonderkommando« on October 7, 1944, Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar 2015
• 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)
• Andreas Kilian : The “Sonderkommando Uprising” in Auschwitz-Birkenau , New research results and findings on the history, course and consequences of the most legendary prisoner uprising in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, March 1943-November 1944, In: Future needs memory , accessed on 22 February 2020
• 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

Web links

• Oral history interview with Rose Meth
• My Participation in the Revolt at Auschwitz , text by Reisel Grünapfel-Meth (Eng.)
• The Wajcblum Sisters: Auschwitz Saboteurs
• Rose Gruenapfel papers , copies of the documents in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (not digitized)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gideon Greif , Itamar Levin: Uprising in Auschwitz. The revolt of the Jewish "Sonderkommando" on October 7, 1944 . Translated from the Hebrew by Beatrice Greif. Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22473-8 , p. 199
2. ↑ Rose Meth , accessed July 4, 2020
3. ↑ Carol Ann Rittner, John K. Roth: Different Voices , Women and the Holocaust, Paragon House 1993, ISBN 1-55778-503-1 , pp. 132-140
4. ^ Rose Meth , accessed April 25, 2020
5. ↑ Yad Vashem , all entries accessed on February 22, 2020:
   * SHLOMO GRUNAPFEL , based on the Yizkor Books, Rabat Gan 1967
   * RIFKA MIRIAM GRUENAPFEL , memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth,
   * FRIMET GRUENAPFEL , memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth.
6. ↑ Yad Vashem , all entries accessed on February 22, 2020:
   * ELIESER GRUENAPFEL , memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth,
   * RUCHEL GRUENAPFEL , based on the persecuted list in Krakow,
   * PEARLA PEPKA GRUENAPFEL , memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth,
   * DAVID GRUENAPFEL , Memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth,
   * SALA SARA ITEL GRUENAPFEL , memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth,
   * CHAYA HELA GRUENAPFEL , memorial sheet, submitted by Rose Meth.