[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 145 (Friday, October 7, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                              ROZA ROBOTA

  (Mr. Yates asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. YATES. Mr. Speaker, this year and next we mark the 50th 
anniversaries of a series of military achievements leading across 
Europe and the Pacific toward the end of World War II. As we remember 
and celebrate the heroic progress of the Allied Forces, let us also 
remember and celebrate other heroes of whom we know less--those who 
struggled against the Nazis and their collaborators even while in their 
very grasp. Few survived to tell their stories; it is for us to speak 
on their behalf.
  Fifty years ago this week on October 7, 1944, prisoners assigned to 
work the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau revolted, blowing up one of 
the four crematoria and killing several SS. Virtually all the resisters 
where killed as they tried to flee. Their bravery was made possible by 
the bravery of others--women who over a period of weeks smuggled 
explosives from their forced labor in a nearby factory. Today I want to 
tell you the story of those women and the women who led them.
  Already politically active, 18-year-old Roza Robota became involved 
with the resistance when the Germans occupied her hometown of 
Ciechanow, Poland, in 1939. In 1942, her family was departed from the 
ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her parents were immediately sent 
to their deaths. Roza was selected for the slower death of slave labor. 
Unlike most of the women, who were assigned to a factory that produced 
detonators for grenades, she was assigned to a clothing warehouse.
  Knowing of her work in the ghetto, the camp underground soon 
contacted Roza. An uprising was being planned, and she was assigned to 
procure the explosives for bombs to be used during the revolt. Roza 
recruited other women from Ciechanow who worked in the factory's powder 
pavilion. Despite the scrutiny of guards, despite their own fears, they 
agreed to steal explosives while working, smuggling them out to Roza 
during the night shift.
  For weeks, 20 Jewish women carried small quantities of explosives out 
of the factory, concealing the powder in their head scarves and mess 
tins. Each night, Roza collected their offerings and turned them over 
to her underground contact. The powder eventually made it way to a man 
we know only as Filatov, a Russian prisoner of war who served as the 
underground's bombmaker.
  The bombs were made, but the planned uprising never came--time and 
again, circumstances forced postponement. But for the Sonderkommando, 
the prisoners forced to spend their days loading piles of corpses into 
the crematoria, postponement had become intolerable. They saw first-
hand the cost of delay. They had waited in vain for an uprising to save 
the 400,000 Hungarian Jews who comprised one of the last mass 
transports to Birkenau. They could wait for the underground uprising no 
longer. On October 7 they acted.
  The enraged SS soon traced the explosives used by the Sonderkommando 
back to the factory. Three weeks after the revolt, they arrested Esther 
Wajsblum, Ella Gertner, and Regina Saphirstein, powder pavilion 
workers. They also arrested Roza Robota.
  Three months of torture followed. All four suffered terribly, with 
Roza Robota, as the chief suspect of the SS, subjected to singular 
cruelty. SS suspicions were correct--only Roza, as the direct link 
between the smugglers and the underground, knew the names of all 
involved. Knowing the brutality Roza faced, her underground comrades 
expected the worst. But their fears, although understandable, were 
misplaced. Torture destroyed Roza's body, but not her spirit. She named 
no names. She betrayed no one. She asked only that others continue her 
struggle. ``It is easier to die,'' she told one of the last to see her, 
``when you know that the others will go on.''
  All four women were hanged on January 6, 1945--6 days before the Red 
Army liberated Auschwitz. Roza was 23 years old when she died.

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