On 7 October 1944, prisoners of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau rose up against the SS. They set fire to Crematorium IV, attacked the guards with hammers, axes and homemade explosives, and some of them broke through the fences. It was the only armed uprising in the history of Auschwitz. Almost all of the insurgents were killed, but their revolt remains one of the most remarkable acts of resistance during the Holocaust.
Who were the Sonderkommando?
The Sonderkommando, or “special unit”, was the name the SS gave to the groups of prisoners forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Birkenau. Almost all of them were Jews. They had to lead the victims into the undressing rooms, remove the bodies from the gas chambers, take out gold teeth, cut off hair and burn the bodies in the crematoria or in open pits.
The members of the Sonderkommando were kept separate from other prisoners, because they were witnesses to the mass murder. They knew that the SS periodically murdered the units and replaced them with new prisoners, so that as few witnesses as possible would survive. Despite this, some of them secretly wrote down what they saw and buried their notes in the ground near the crematoria. Several of these manuscripts were found after the war and are among the most important testimonies of the Holocaust.
Preparing the revolt
By the summer of 1944 the members of the Sonderkommando knew that their own deaths were approaching. The mass deportations from Hungary were coming to an end, and the SS was reducing the size of the unit. A plan for an uprising was prepared together with the camp’s resistance movement, which hoped for a general revolt in the camp.
An essential part of the preparations was gunpowder. Young Jewish women working in the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke munitions factory near the camp secretly took small quantities of gunpowder from the factory, hiding it in matchboxes and in their clothes. Through a chain of women prisoners, including Roza Robota, it reached the Sonderkommando, where it was used to make simple grenades.
7 October 1944
The revolt broke out earlier than planned. On 7 October 1944 the SS announced that several hundred members of the Sonderkommando from Crematorium IV were to be transferred, which the prisoners understood as a death sentence. They refused to obey, attacked the SS with whatever they had, and set Crematorium IV on fire.
When the prisoners working at Crematorium II heard the fighting, they also rose up, overpowered a guard and cut through the fence. Some of them escaped towards the village of Rajsko, but the SS quickly organised a pursuit. Most of the escapees were surrounded and killed; none of them, as far as is known, reached freedom.
Three SS men were killed during the revolt. About 450 members of the Sonderkommando died in the fighting, during the escape and in the executions that followed.
The women who supplied the gunpowder
The SS investigation eventually traced the gunpowder to the women in the munitions factory. Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajsblum were arrested and tortured, but did not betray the others involved. On 6 January 1945, less than three weeks before the liberation of the camp, they were hanged in front of the other women prisoners. It was the last public execution in Auschwitz.
The results of the revolt
The revolt did not stop the killing, and it did not lead to a general uprising in the camp. Yet it had lasting effects. Crematorium IV was so badly damaged that it was never used again and was later demolished. Within a few weeks, in November 1944, the gassings at Birkenau came to an end, and the SS began to dismantle the remaining gas chambers and crematoria to destroy evidence of the crime.
Above all, the revolt showed that even in the place designed to destroy them most completely, prisoners chose to resist. Today the ruins of Crematorium IV can be seen at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. You can learn more in the Memorial’s podcast about the revolt.
For the wider history of the camp, read our short history of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Next to the crematoria stood the barracks where the victims’ property was sorted, known to prisoners as Kanada.
For other forms of resistance in the camp, read about escapes from Auschwitz.
Frequently asked questions
The units of mostly Jewish prisoners forced by the SS to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Birkenau.
Sonderkommando prisoners rose up against the SS, set fire to Crematorium IV and tried to escape. Three SS men were killed and about 450 prisoners died in the revolt and its aftermath.
Jewish women working in a munitions factory near the camp. Four of them, Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, Regina Safirsztajn and Ester Wajsblum, were hanged on 6 January 1945.
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