Presenter: Allan Mallenbaum
Format: Download MP3 Audio

Jews did not walk like "Lambs to the slaughter" during the Holocaust; they fought back. In virtually every ghetto, every concentration camp, there was active resistance. Jews fought in Allied armies, in partisan militias, in small isolated groups deep in the forests. Inside Auschwitz the Resistance requested help from a few Jewish slave laborers, women who worked in the powder room of the munitions factory. My cousin, Rosa Robota, organized the women, accumulated the tiny amounts of "schwartzpulver," hid it in various places, and turned it over to the men of the Jewish Underground. It was fashioned into grenades and used by Sonderkommando men during the only successful armed revolt in the history of Auschwitz. My cousin Rosa and three other women were publicly hanged. My family knew nothing about the incident, which I uncovered doing genealogical research. Rosa has been honored at Yad Vashem and the USHMM in Washington.