Auschwitz Revolt

When the time comes, and it looks like it will certainly come soon, will we show the same courage that these women showed? 

Ella Gärtner. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Anna and Joshua Heilman

By September 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau was the only remaining Nazi killing center still in operation. The Operation Reinhard camps—Treblinka, Sobibór, and Belzec—had been closed down. Chelmno, originally closed in 1943, reopened for a brief period in spring-summer 1944. At the end of July 1944, Majdanek was liberated by Soviet troops.

For the prisoners at Auschwitz, liberation seemed close at hand. The Soviet army had moved deep into German-occupied Poland, and US planes had begun bombing the I.G. Farben synthetic oil and rubber factory located near Auschwitz III, less than five miles from Birkenau. In Warsaw, the Polish Home Army had risen up in revolt against German occupation forces. Within the Auschwitz complex, the resistance movement—composed of Jews and non-Jews alike—made plans to launch its own uprising.

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