The Sonderkommando Uprising, October 7th 1944 – Part 2

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By: Yaakov Rosenfeld, Ganzach Kiddush Hashem

In this chapter, we will shed light on the lives and deaths of the three victims who wrote and documented what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I will briefly describe the Sonderkommando, and on this occasion I will bring heart-wrenching testimonies, precisely from the mouths of these very people, about the spiritual heroism of the holy Jews, the prisoners of Auschwitz.

Their role was impossible, and clearly inhumane. They were forced to perform disturbing tasks. Just imagine the shock of a man who arrived by train with his loved ones – his wife and children – and after less than a day he is standing over their corpses and having to deal with their limbs, and sometimes – to pull out the gold teeth in their mouths… Therefore, it was known that the Sonderkommando men were neither respected nor admired. They wore an animalistic look and worked almost automatically, without thinking and without delving deeply. This was what was thought, at least until the discovery of the manuscripts of some of these men, Jews from the Sonderkommando who met their deaths during the uprising of October 7th, 1944. The manuscripts of three holy Jews, among the organizers of the uprising, shed some light, as far as that word can be used in this situation, on the period and their mindset.

Pile of shoes of Auschwitz victims

In fact, from a study of the materials and books of the time, those that have won the trust of the historians and the survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we have learned that the mocking accusation that those who were burned “went like sheep to the slaughter,” which for many years was the claim of many of those who were not “there” and did not understand what the Auschwitz prisoners faced, is pure nonense, since every attempt of uprising and rebellion, and there were countless such, were immediately met with brutal slaughter both of those involved in the “conspiracy” and of their innocent friends and neighbours.

Such was also the result of the uprising in question, which took place on October 7th, 1944. Not even one of the Sonderkommando resisters survived, and without the important discovery of their hidden manuscripts, we would know nothing about these people today.

The facts of the planning of the rebellion and its failure are described in various books and we will not be able to present them all in this article, and so we will present a memorial here to the Jewish victims who sanctified the Name of Heaven in their lives and in their deaths, and did not lose their G-dly image both in the hell of Auschwitz and when standing on the brink of the abyss.

Since my main source for the story of the three victims is Ber Mark’s book “The Auschwitz Scrolls,” I cannot refrain from bringing two beautiful passages that Mark quotes in his book; these passages caught my eye because they objectively tell the story that we, in Ganzach Kiddush Hashem, want the world to know.

Quote from page 96:

In September 1944 (Elul 5704, exactly 80 years ago. Y.R.) shipments began to arrive in Birkenau from destroyed Warsaw, which was surrounded by the flames of the general uprising. (This is not the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that took place in April 1943 – Nissan 5703, but the Polish General Uprising, Av – Elul 5704 about which we wrote here previously. Y.R.)

As a sign of solidarity and assistance, the two thousand Jewish women from Hungary and Slovakia, who were in Birkenau at the time, gave their food rations for a day to the men and women who had just arrived (…)

At the same time, the Jewish women from Hungary and Slovakia organized a clothing collection enterprise, and especially warm clothing for the exiled Poles.

Zofia Kosakowicz (a Polish gentile) who was then imprisoned in Birkenau, directly followed this rescue operation of the Jewish women, and adds a personal note about it in her book:

“I wish to express my emotional appreciation for this action. I did not imagine that Jewish women, who lost all their loved ones, and saw the deaths of the people closest to them, would show so much warmth towards those who were still alive. (While) our people did not help the Jews but very little because it involved danger” (…)

This quote, that the author Ber Mark translated from the original Polish, illuminates the figure of the Jewish women who, even while walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, after losing everything dear to them, did not lose their G-dly image and within their tortured bodies, Jewish hearts were beating, which radiated an aura of goodness and kindness to all around them.

And also on page 57, after quoting testimonies about “the Hungarian Jews who were committed to their rabbis, who recited aloud and without pause, chapters of the Psalms and thus lead their community to death with dignity” and additional testimonies about groups and individuals who lived in Auschwitz with faith and serenity out of faith and trust in G-d, the author concludes with this wonderous passage:

And last but not least, it is interesting to note from my perspective as a non-Jew, those Jewish prisoners of Auschwitz who were devout in their religious faith. The Polish prisoner Bayorski lives in Warsaw, spent time in Pawiak prison and Auschwitz (number 76887), a former member of the PPS-left and the Patriotic Fighter underground organization, gives his impression of the pious Jews in Auschwitz:

“There were many rabbis in Auschwitz. One of them was from Krakow. He was still young. I talked to him a lot. He worked in the D.A.W. as a glazier. There were also many chassidim who despite the nutritional difficulties, did not eat any unkosher foods from the boiler. They would sell their portion of soup for a slice of bread and some raw potatoes that they somehow fried on a tin. Their lives were very difficult and yet they fought relentlessly not to break the laws of the Torah and not to eat unkosher. They prayed in secret because the Germans forbade public prayer. They would gather near block 19 on its south side. They were unusually consistent and kept the commandments of their religion. They kept their faith in the terrible conditions of the concentration camp, and that’s why I appreciated them. They were stubborn and fearless when it came to keeping the commandments of their faith. This indicated that they were strong in spirit. There was a lot of human power in them. These religious Jews did not succumb to the evils of the Hitlerites’ work, as has often happened to others.”

Ber Mark’s study is an important historical document published in many languages. The author died in Warsaw in the year 5726 (1966) after completing his book. Mark worked until the last drop of his blood on collecting the evidence and obtaining the documents, but he did not get to see the book “The Auschwitz Scrolls” get published. In the book, he shed light on the daring rebellion of the Sonderkommando and at its culmination – he published the notes, the manuscripts that were hidden among the ruins of Auschwitz, manuscripts written in blood, notes that break the heart when reading, but more on this later.

As mentioned, in the middle of the year 5704 (1944), with the increasing turn on the war front to Germany’s detriment, prisoners in Auschwitz began to seriously prepare for the possibility of an uprising. The plan was for the Sonderkommandos, who enjoyed some immunity and a certain freedom of action, relative to the other prisoners, to blow up or set fire to the gas chambers and crematoria.

Jews performing forced labour outside the Auschwitz camp

In the episode, there were 77,000 Jews in Auschwitz, of which 34,000 were fit for battle and the rest were disabled. The various underground people who were active throughout Poland at the time, who were initially at the forefront of the rebellion plans, quickly withdrew from the idea and the initiative remained the sole initiative of the Sonderkommando.

Ber Mark devoted entire chapters of his research on the general initiative of the uprising; about its failure and the reasons for the failure. However, as told in the first chapter, what is clear is that in practice, the only group that actually carried out the miracle of the rebellion was the Sonderkommando group. In the continuation of “The Auschwitz Scrolls,” Mark presents the diary of the three victims, who also died in the failed uprising. We will delve into this in the next chapter.