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Rosa Robota was a female teenager who lived during the Holocaust. Her life started off where she was born in Poland. Once the Holocaust came around, she was placed in an all women's concentration camp in Auschwitz. Later, she was put in the camp in Birkenau where the women's camp was relocated. Here, she worked in the clothing labor unit. This was where the clothes of the ones killed were sorted out and taken out in wagons. She made a huge impact on our world even if we don't always realize it: she was a female motivator. Although what she did was not something you want your children to look up apon, the thought of what she did was in her defense, right. She fought for what she believed in and never gave up or gave in.

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Through all of what she went through, Rosa resisted and refused to speak any names. The men that were being tortured did speak on the other hand. Between the men and the secret agent were the main causes of the discoveries of being found out for being involved. Rosa Roberta's last visitor in her torture cell was a man named Noah Zabludowicz who witnessed her last words. She told him that she had not betrayed anyone, she gave no one up. He was also given a letter from Rosa to the rest of her friends telling them to be strong and never give up. Rosa was then hung publically at night along with Ala Gertner followed by Ester Wajsblum and Regina Safirsztajn the next morning.

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Once Roza was placed in the concentration camp in Auschwitz, she was placed in the clothing labor unit. Over the years, the people that Roza worked with formulated a plan to make the concentration camp explode. They worked through their plan by placing gunpower under their fingernails and in the wagons made for corpses. After more than a year and a half of this process the leaders of the camp found out. The women involved in this revolt aside from Roza were: Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn, and Ester Wajsblum. There were about 20 others involved in this revolt and most of which were females but there were a few men involved too. Once the resistors knew that the Germans had known about their plan, they set it off early. On October 7, 1944 the plot began. This was known as the Revolt of the Sonderkommando while the revolt began, crematoriums began to explode. Specifically, crematorium 4 was damaged far worse than the others and was never to be used again. The Germans could not find out any names of those who had organized the revolt so they send in an undercover agent named Eugene Koch. Koch found out that Roza helped to organize it all and she was arrested and tortured. Even with everything happening around her and to her, she stayed strong.

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The note from Rosa to her comrades had the message to never give up and remain strong. The note for her friends said "Be strong and of good courage!"

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This video is of a survivor of the Holocaust and someone that was friends with Rosa. She tells the interviewer what she remembers happening at that time.

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The Women Behind the Sonderkommando Uprising | Lusia Haberfeld | USC Shoah Foundation

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Photo is of Ala Gertner

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October 7, 1944

On October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center rebel after learning that they were going to be killed.

For months, young Jewish women, like Ester Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain, had been smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke, a munitions factory within the Auschwitz complex, to men and women in the camp's resistance movement, like Róza Robota, a young Jewish woman who worked in the clothing detail at Birkenau. Under constant guard, the women in the factory took small amounts of the gunpowder, wrapped it in bits of cloth or paper, hid it on their bodies, and then passed it along the smuggling chain. Once she received the gunpowder, Róza Robota then passed it to her co-conspirators in the Sonderkommando, the special squad of prisoners forced to work in the camp's crematoria. Using this gunpowder, the leaders of the Sonderkommando planned to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria, and launch the uprising.

On October 7, 1944, having learned that the SS was going to liquidate much of the squad, the members of the Sonderkommando at Crematorium IV rose in revolt. The Germans crushed the revolt. Nearly 250 prisoners died during the fighting and guards shot another 200 after the mutiny was suppressed. Several days later, the SS identified five women, four of them Jewish, who had been involved in supplying explosives to blow up a crematorium used to burn the bodies of Nazi murder victims. All five women were killed.

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On October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to Crematorium IV at the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center rebel after learning that they were going to be killed.

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19-year-old Ester Wajcblum and her 14-year-old sister Hana arrived at Auschwitz in spring of 1943. They were assigned to work in the munitions factory where they met Regina Safirsztain and Ala Gertner, women engaged in resistance activities. Together with Roza Robota, who worked in the clothes depot, they began to smuggle gunpowder to the men in the adjoining camp, sometimes using bodies of friends that were en route to the Sonderkommando for disposal.

The Sonderkommando were Jewish prisoners who worked the death camps in return for special treatment and privileges. Every few months, the current sonderkommando was liquidated and the first task of their successors was to dispose of the bodies of the previous group. Since a sonderkommando usually comprised men from incoming transports, their second task often consisted of disposing of the bodies of their own families. The sonderkommando did not participate in the actual killing -- that was carried out by the Nazis. The sonderkommando duties included guiding the new arrivals into the gas chambers, removing the bodies afterwards, shaving hair, removing teeth, sorting through possessions (much of which they were given as reward), cremating the bodies, and disposing of the ashes. Their knowledge of the internal workings of the camp marked them for certain death. Someone selected for the sonderkommando had a choice: die then or die in four months time.

As the time of their execution grew nearer, the members of the 12th Sonderkommando crystallized their plans of revolt and escape. Besides the gunpowder being smuggled by the women, which the men fashioned into crude grenades using sardine tins, there were some small arms that had been slipped through the fence by local partisans. In addition, knives and small axes had been made and hidden throughout the crematoria. Much of the gunpowder was used in creating demolition charges. There was talk of a general uprising that would coincide with the arrival of the approaching Soviet armies, but some sonderkommando were certain that they would not live until that day.

On October 7th, 1944, at about 3 in the afternoon, the Poles in Crematorium 1 begin the revolt. Hungarians in Crematoria 3 and 4 join in while the sonderkommando of Crematorium 2 break through the wires of the camp. An especially sadistic Nazi guard in Crematorium 1 is disarmed and stuffed into an oven to be burned alive. Small arms fire rattles from the second floor of the crematoria until the Germans bring in heavy machine guns and riddle the wooden roof.

The guards counterattack and penetrate the buildings, indiscriminately shooting at all prisoners they encounter. The sonderkommando in Crematorium 4 drag their demolition charges into the oven rooms and detonate them in a defiant suicide. The revolt is quickly suppressed and the escaped men recaptured with the help of local citizens. Approximately 200 sonderkommando are forced to lie face down outside the crematoria where they are executed with single shots to the back of the head. Some of the men are spared for interrogation, but the bodies of the 12th Sonderkommando are soon disposed of by the 13th Sonderkommando.

The men give up names, including those of some women who were engaged in smuggling gunpowder. Despite months of beatings and rape and electric shocks to their genitals, the only names given up by the women are those of already dead sonderkommando.

On January 5, 1945, the four women are hanged in front of the assembled women's camp. Roza Robota shouts "Be strong and be brave" as the trapdoor drops.

Crematorium 4 was damaged beyond repair and never used again. On November 7th, 1944, the Nazis destroyed the gas chambers to hide their crimes. Twelve days after the hanging of the four women, the camp personnel forced 56,000 prisoners on a Death March into what remained of the Third Reich; 7,500 prisoners left behind were liberated by advancing Soviet armies on January 27th.

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19-year-old Ester Wajcblum and her 14-year-old sister Hana arrived at Auschwitz in spring of 1943. They were assigned to work in the munitions factory where they met Regina Safirsztain and Ala Gertner, women engaged in resistance activities.

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Czech, D. Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945. London/New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1990.

Gutman, Israel. "Introduction." In Anashim ve-Efer: Sefer Auschwitz-Birkenau, edited by Israel Gutman in conjunction with a group of prisoner-comrades (Hebrew). Merhavia: Sifriyat Po'alim, 1957.

Gutman, Israel, and M. Berenbaum, ed. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington, IN/Washington, DC: Indiana University Press, 1994, 1998.

Kagan, Raya. Women in the Chamber of Hell (Auschwitz Chapters) (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Po'alim, 1947.

Marek, B. Scroll of Auschwitz (Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978.

Weinstein, M. "Memoirs from the Auschwitz Revolt" (Hebrew). Yediot Yad Vashem 34 (April 1965).

Zabludowicz, Noah. "A Visit with Roza in the Bunker." In Anashim ve-Efer: Sefer Auschwitz-Birkenau, edited by Israel Gutman in conjunction with a group of prisoner-comrades (Hebrew). Merhavia: Sifriyat Po'alim, 1957.

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A member of the Jewish underground in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, Roza Robota was one of the organizers of an operation to smuggle explosives for use by members of the Sonderkommando (Jewish forced-labor unit of concentration camp prisoners) in the October 7, 1944 revolt at the camp.