Opinion

January 27th 2012

HEROINES OF AUSCHWITZ
By: Bernie M Farber
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On Oct. 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando revolted, attacking the SS with stones, axes and homemade grenades produced from smuggled gunpowder

On Jan. 27, 1 945, 67 years ago today, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz. From 1942 to late 1944, the concentration camp became the center of the wholesale murder of European Jewry. There were others Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, to name just a few. But it was Auschwitz that was to become the archetype of genocide. The gas chambers of Auschwitz took the lives of an estimated 1.1 million people, almost a million of them Jews.

Sist ers Anna, Sabina and Ester Heilman pose for a photograph in 1932.

Yet within Auschwitzs horror there were unique acts of bravery from which we must always take heart. The courage of Anna (Wajcblum) Heilman and the women of the Auschwitz munitions factory is one such story. Anna was born to an assimilated middle-class Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland on Dec. 1, 1928. Her childhood ended in September 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Nazis established the Warsaw ghetto, where overcrowding, starvation and disease killed many awaiting deportation to the death camps. In 1943, the remnants of Jews trapped in the ghetto fought back to no avail; amongst them were 14year old Anna and her older sister Ester. (Her oldest sister, Sabina, had escaped with her fianc to the Soviet Union.) Anna, Ester and their parents originally were sent to the camp of Majdanek, where Annas parents were gassed upon arrival. Anna and Ester then were transported to Auschwitz to work as slave laborers at a munitions factory. By mid 1944, the inmates knew that Germany was losing the war. Believing they would die anyway, Anna and her friends wanted to find a way to fight back, to give their deaths meaning. Ester, Anna, and a few other female prisoners began to smuggle gunpowder from the factory, a tiny amount at a time, hidden in their kerchiefs or sleeves. Being caught meant instant execution. The young women gave the smuggled gunpowder to a young Polish Jew named Rosa Robota, who in turn passed it on to the Sonderkommando, a detail of Jewish male slave crematoria workers. These Sonderkommando included Soviet prisoners of war who knew how to make improvised explosives. On Oct . 7, 1944, t he Sonderkommando revolted, attacking the SS with stones, axes and homemade grenades produced from the smuggled gunpowder. Several SS were killed. One of the four crematoria was severely damaged by the improvised explosives. It was never used again, saving many lives. The Sonderkommando were all killed. The SS traced the gunpowder back to the munitions plant. Annas sister Ester and three other young women, Ala Gertner, Rosa Robota and Regina Safirstajn, were tortured f or months by the SS. But they gave up only the names of the Sonderkommando, who were already dead. They did not betray Anna or the others involved.

The four young women were hanged as saboteurs in January 1945, less than two weeks before the Nazis evacuated Auschwitz. In a smuggled note she wrote shortly before her execution, Ester asked her friend Marta Bindiger to look after Anna. Marta kept Anna going on the 700 km westward death march to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany. Prisoners who faltered or fell were immediately shot. Anna and Marta were liberated by the Soviet army in May, 1945. Emigrating to Israel a short time later, Anna married another survivor, Josh Heilman, and eventually moved to Ottawa, where Anna became a social worker with the Childrens Aid Society. In a Belgian displaced-persons camp after liberation, Anna rewrote from memory the confiscated diary she had kept in Auschwitz. She told no one about the diary for over 45 years. Encouraged by Marta, Anna worked hard to get recognition for the sacrifice and heroism of her sister and the three other young women. In 1991, Yad Vashem, Israels Holocaust museum, dedicated a monument to the Four Martyred Heroines of Auschwitz. Working with her son-in-law, Anna developed her diary into a book titled Never Far Away. It won the 2002 City of Ottawa Book Award. Anna Heilmans life was seared by the Holocaust. But, as much as she had lost, as much as she had already given, Anna had much more to give. In her later years, Anna took pride in a new role as witness, teacher and advocate. She returned with groups of young students to Auschwitz several times through a Holocaust-education program called The March of the Living. In her eighties and in ill-health, she lobbied Canadian parliamentarians to take action on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. This heroine of Auschwitz died on May 1, 2011, aged 82. On this day above all others, her story is worth remembering a rare and uplifting tale of survival from the very heart of the Nazis kingdom of death. -30Bernie M Farber the former CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress is the son of a Holocaust survivor. Anna and Josh Heilman and their daughters Ariella and Noa were friends of the Farber family in Ottawa