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JEWISH RESISTANCE IN THE SONDERKOMMANDO

THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN AUSCHWITZ

JEWISH RESISTANCE IN THE SONDERKOMMANDO

The aforementioned secret group set up by the Jews working in the Sonderkommando was of the greatest significance in the history of the Jewish resistance movement at Auschwitz. Its leaders included Załmen Gradowski, Jankiel Handelsman and Kamiński. Its clandestine activity encompassed all the four crematoria with gas chambers in Birkenau. The group also established contacts with the organisation of Russians in the camp, mostly to agree on cooperation in case of an uprising.

Portrait photograph of a middle-aged man. Gaze directed to the side of the camera, serious, focused face, slight grimace. High forehead. Dark hair and eyes. Dressed in a jacket, a shirt and a tie.

Source: A-BSMA

Załmen Gradowski.

Portrait photograph of a middle-aged man. Gaze directed to the side of the camera, serious, focused face, slight smile. High forehead. Dark hair and eyes. Dressed in a jacket, a shirt and a tie.

Source: A-BSMA

Jankiel Handelsman.

In late summer 1944 its members took photographs of the surroundings of the Crematorium V at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, one of the most heartrending testimonies of the Holocaust. They were taken by the following Jews from the Sonderkommando working in the crematorium: Alex (Alberto Errera) from Greece, and Szlama Dragon, his brother Abram and Alter Fajnzylberg, from Poland. Participating indirectly was another member of the Jewish resistance, Dawid Szmulewski—a scribe from one of the barracks in the men’s camp (BIId) at Birkenau.

On 7 September 1944, a secret letter (a stiff) was smuggled from the camp with a message from Polish inmates, Józef Cyrankiewicz and Stanisław Kłodziński:

We are sending you photographs from Birkenau—from a gas killing action. The photograph shows one of the pyres in the open air where the dead bodies are burned when the crematorium cannot catch up with the incineration. Lying in front of the pyre are dead bodies waiting to be cast on the pyre. Another photograph presents a spot in the grove where people are undressed, allegedly for a bath, and later taken to be gassed. … Send the enclosed photographs immediately to Tell [Teresa Lasocka-Estreicher]—we believe that the blown up photographs can be sent on further.

Source: A-BSMA, Resistance Movement Materials, vol. 2, p. 136, a fragment of a letter smuggled to the secret group of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in Brzeszcze.

Photographs taken illegally by members of the Sonderkommando in 1944, showing naked women being herded by SS men to the crematoria and the burning of the bodies of those murdered in the gas chambers.

Source: A-BSMA

Jewish women on the way to the gas chamber, and the burning of the bodies of the murdered. Photographs taken by Sonderkommando inmates in 1944 and sent in secret to the Polish resistance in Cracow.