Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

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Yuli
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Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#1

Post by Yuli » 12 Feb 2017, 15:08

In the memoires of the Jewish Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Bella Hazan (incarcerated as a Polish underground activist under the assumed Polish name Bronislawa Limanowska; prisoner number 24458), written in April 1945 shortly after her liberation, she tells a fantastic story. During late 1944, when the Red Army was approaching Auschwitz-Birkenau and the extermination of the Jews was at its peak, an organized group of Jewish women whom she joined in Birkenau, decided to save Jewish girls from being gassed. In several dark nights and when the guards were drunk, they dug a path under the fence separating the train ramp from the Women's camp, and pulled through it into the camp about 14 girls that were unloaded from the trains and were waiting for their turn to be murdered. Once inside the women's camp, they gave them the uniforms of dead prisoners and then took care of them, providing them with food and hiding them during roll calls. I could not find any other testimonial confirming this incredible story. I wonder if anybody has confirmatory material. It is not unlikely that besides Bella Hazan some other of the women involved in these heroic acts on both sides of the fence, have survived to testify.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#2

Post by wm » 12 Feb 2017, 23:08

It seems to be a quite fantastic story. The SS overseers sometimes got drunk on duty, but the guards didn't even have a chance for that especially so close to the main camp where they were plainly visible (it happened sometimes in some distant, secluded locations). So not much chance for doing something outside - after all it was not only the guards but the kapos too, who watched them.
And young girls didn't need help, they usually were sent to work, not gassed. It was people unfit to work, the elderly and children who really needed rescue.

And really this is the fence, it was simply impossible, it would require a quite large tunneling project.

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Sergey Romanov
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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#3

Post by Sergey Romanov » 13 Feb 2017, 03:52

http://www.infocenters.co.il/gfh/notebo ... g&site=gfh

"She also describes a HeHalutz assembly in Camp B in Auschwitz in Passover 1943 and the digging of a tunnel under the fence in order to smuggle 14 girls who had arrived on a transport from the Terezin and Lodz ghettos."

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#4

Post by wm » 13 Feb 2017, 17:51

An assembly was passably possible, especially if camp functionaries were among them, but she also describes the actions of Menachem Grabowski in Auschwitz, "who had contact with partisans and managed to bribe several groups of Jewish inmates from the camps to the forest". Which is a pure invention.
But in her defence it should be said Auschwitz was not only a factory of death, but a factory of rumours too. Every day a few "fake news" similar to this one were invented and put into circulation. The imminent collapse of the Nazi Germany or improvements of living conditions were the most popular subjects.
The occupied territories were no different in this regard.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#5

Post by Sergey Romanov » 13 Feb 2017, 19:07

It should also be taken into consideration that the testimony was written down by a third (unknown) person. Maybe something got distorted on the way.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#6

Post by Yuli » 13 Feb 2017, 21:52

Probably we will never find more details corroborating the actions of Menachem Grabowski. However, there are several testimonies about SS men being bribed by escapees, and it is well documented that hundreds of prisoners have escaped from Birkenau in small groups or individually, many of which were Jews. Therefore to describe Hazan's testimony about Grabowski as "pure imagination" might do wrong to both of them.

Regarding the main issue - smuggling the girls from the ramp into the women's camp - this cannot be dismissed as a rumor or "faked news". Of course, it is difficult to believe it really happened, as it would require extreme courage and bravery of young women who were about 20 years old at the time. Other stories of brave Jewish women at Birkenau, like that of Roza Robota and her friends at Union factory who smuggled explosives to the sondercommando (later to be caught and hanged), or that of Mella Cemetbaum who escaped the camp with her Polish lover (later to be caught and hanged), are well known.

Bella Hazan survived Birkenau and after the death march and imprisonment in other camps in Germany was liberated in May 1945 by the American army. In December 1945, a month after arriving in Palestine, she wrote in Hebrew a comprehensive account of her WW2 story which is kept at the archive of the Ghetto Fighters Museum and also published later as a book (Bronislawa Was My Name). The book contains several descriptions of courageous acts (e.g. smuggling of orphan Jewish babies from the Vilna Ghetto to orphanages in Bialystok) that have been confirmed by other sources. Below is a literal translation of the section describing the smuggling of the girls in Birkenau:

Bella Hazan, Bronislawa Was My Name, Pages 97-98
I met again with Hinda’s Jewish youth movement group of girls (young women –Yuli). I suggested we dig a ditch under the barbed wire fence, through which we will pass young Jewish women, so to rescue them from the gas chambers. The train with the transports arrived about fifty meters from the fence of our camp. When the trains were emptied, the people whom arrived were placed within the narrow space separating the two camps (men’s camp and women’s camp). They were surrounded by many S.S. guards. But during evening hours when a transport arrived, they were completely drunk. Our goal was to smuggle into our camp as many girls as we could from this bulk of people.

Men from the sewage kommando hid digging tools for us. In dark nights we went digging. Two girls were digging while four of us were hiding around them to spot the arrival of guards. When an observer gave a warning sign, we hid the tools and ran away.

One time we managed to pass through the ditch two fifteen years old girls, Hava and Ruth, originally from Germany. Standing in line to the gas chambers the girls did not comprehend what was happening around them. They were stunned when asked by a women prisoner to be quiet and to go through the tunnel under the fence. I was standing at an observation spot nearby with other girls to watch for arrival of guards. When the girls arrived into the camp – we were happy as never been before.

During the first night the girls sobbed continuously, as they left behind their families. It was difficult to converse with them. We tried to calm them down, to explain how they should behave so they will not be caught as illegal in the camp - they were not registered in the office and were not tattooed. This could be of advantage, we thought, so that if we manage to escape from the camp, they might not be identified outside as fugitive prisoners.

It was necessary to watch over the girls, furnish them with supplies and hide them during roll calls. I gave them clothes of prisoners who died in the revier (infirmary – Yuli). We used to collect some clothes of dead prisoners and hide them away for prisoners who needed a change of clothes, like those who fell out of weakness into the sewage canal at the lavatories or were pushed into the canal deliberately. We arranged a hiding place for them at the roof of the lavatory, where they hid during roll call. One of the girls in our group was assigned to cleaning the lavatory. When the whistle was heard for roll call, immediately she sent the girls to their hiding place, and then went herself to be counted. When roll call was over she was first at the lavatory to let them out. Then she closed the door so they would not be noticed coming down.

Food was not enough, and I began to steal from the kitchen potatoes and carrots for the girls. Prisoners working at the kitchen placed food at hidden spots around the kitchen block, and I collected it during dark ours. As fleigerin (“nurse” – Yuli) at the revier, I was free to walk around the camp at night. The girls noticed the red triangle on my chest inscribed with a P – a sign of being a Pole – and wondered what a Pole is doing among Jews.

Not many souls were we able to rescue in this manner, few were the possibilities for that. But our few successes gave us extreme satisfaction, inspired our will to live. We felt as if we have gained the force to act. Most importantly, not to remain passive staring at our brothers and sisters being carried into the oven.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#7

Post by wm » 13 Feb 2017, 23:27

Yuli wrote: Of course, it is difficult to believe it really happened, as it would require extreme courage and bravery of young women who were about 20 years old at the time.
I've never doubted that they were capable to do it, especially if they were Hechalutz pioneers, people who were trained to be resourceful and brave.

But you you've seen the fence. It was actually two fences and no-man's land between them. The barracks were quite away from them as shown here:
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BI is "her" camp, KII, KIII are gas chambers. From the main guard tower all the length of the fence was easily observable. And this really was a large and high tower:

Image

As seen today:
B2a.jpg
b2b.jpg

The people were usually (always?) detrained in the middle, between the tracks:
rampa.jpg
see how far it was, to the fence? And the small guard towers?
The people who planned this weren't idiots, they knew what there were doing.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#8

Post by Yuli » 14 Feb 2017, 14:58

Yes they were Hechalutz pioneers.
wm wrote:
But you you've seen the fence. It was actually two fences and no-man's land between them. The barracks were quite away from them as shown here

The people were usually (always?) de-trained in the middle, between the tracks:
The people destined to crematorium II (number 1 in Birkenau; this crematorium consumed about 350,000 lives between March 43 and October 1944) were de-trained between the tracks and then crossed to the path running along the Women's camp BI, just a few meters from the fence. The point of crossing was likely the intersection between camps BIa and BIb, as seen in the following photos (note in the first photo the lack of watchtowers along this section of the fence:
Image

Image

Image

Another photo of the same path appears in the previous post. It is clear this path runs a few tens of meters from blocks 6,7,18,19 in BIb and 6,7,18,19,30 in BIa. There is only one fence, not two, separating the path from the women's blocks. There is no no-man's land between fences. I have visited this place a couple of times and even managed to crawl under the intact fence at several places without getting scratched or entangled (of course it was not electrified, but also there was no ditch dug below the fence that would make it safer to crawl). By the way, there have been reports of people who escaped the camp by crawling under the electric fence.

wm wrote[/b]:
From the main guard tower all the length of the fence was easily observable. And this really was a large and high tower
The distance from the main building to the end of camp BI was many hundreds of meters. How far could you see over this distance in moonless nights even from a high tower? It is also possible that the ditch for smuggling the girls was dug under the fence separating camp BIb and crematorium II, where people gathered before being driven inside. This would be out of sight from the main tower, especially after trees were implanted there to hide the crimes.

All these details indicate that such actions could be carried out, of course, with immense risk. Thus Bella Hazan's story cannot be discredited on these grounds.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#9

Post by michael mills » 15 Feb 2017, 04:04

During late 1944, when the Red Army was approaching Auschwitz-Birkenau and the extermination of the Jews was at its peak, an organized group of Jewish women whom she joined in Birkenau, decided to save Jewish girls from being gassed.
Contrary to historical fact.

The Red Army did not approach Auschwitz-Birkenau until January 1945, by which time the mass extermination of Jews had long ceased, by order of Himmler issued at the end of October 1944 if I remember rightly. The last time large convoys of Jews arrived for extermination was in the late summer or early autumn of 1944.

After the Himmler order, which is mentioned in all competent histories of Auschwitz, no further homicidal gassings were carried out in any of the Birkenau crematoria, and the cellars in Crematoria II and III were used to house the rabbits that were being bred for the fur used to line the well-known Waffen-SS anoraks. Crematorium I in the main camp had long since been converted into an air-raid shelter.

The time period in which Hazan's story is set can only have been during the Hungarian deportations in the early summer of 1944, or of the deportations from Lodz in the mid to late summer. But as has been pointed out, during those deportations young girls, ie teenagers and young women in their twenties, did not pass along the fence-line between the railway line and the women's camp, since they had all been selected for labour. The only persons who passed along that route on their way to the crematoria were old people and young children.

The convergence of evidence leads to the conclusion that the Hazan story lacks credibility.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#10

Post by michael mills » 15 Feb 2017, 04:17

We tried to calm them down, to explain how they should behave so they will not be caught as illegal in the camp - they were not registered in the office and were not tattooed.
That is another element contrary to historical fact. In the summer and autumn of 1944 there were thousands of unregistered and non-tattooed prisoners held in the Birkenau camp. These were the so-called "depot prisoners" who had arrived on transports and were being held temporarily at Birkenau pending their transfer to other camps or places of forced labour.

Thus, young girls who had not been registered would not have stood out, and would not have needed to be hidden. They could just have mingled with the thousands of depot prisoners.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#11

Post by Yuli » 15 Feb 2017, 10:01

The two latter comments are correct and I acknowledge and apologize for my mistake above, attributing the time of this event to late 1944. The saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau must have taken place much earlier, as indeed can be concluded from Hazan's own testimony.

I reexamined the original testimony and there is no mentioning of any date in the chapter describing Hazan's interactions with the group of Jewish pioneers and the smuggling of girls under the fence. She does, however, describe events that happened prior to, and after, the saving of the young girls, so an approximate time frame can be deduced.

In the immediately preceding chapter of that testimony she describes how she and another Jewish underground fighter passing as a Pole, Krystyna Kossowska, have contracted typhus and were hospitalized together in the revier. According to archives, Kossowska died on April 13, 1943. It was after she recovered from typhus that Hazan tells how she met the group of Jewish pioneers and organized the smuggling of the girls. After that section Hazan tells how she was sent to Babice for several months and then was punished to join the penal Kommando and then returned to Birkenau and worked as a nurse in the revier, where she befriended Gerda Shneider (a famous German political prisoner). Later on in her testimony she describes Mala Zimetbaum’s escape (June 1944). So according to Hazan’s description of the sequence of events, although the precise dates cannot be determined, the time frame at which the saving of young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau supposedly had happened, was between mid 1943 and mid 1944. It is known that during this period crematorium II was functioning in full capacity.

Thus Hazan's own testimony cannot be discredited on the basis of dates.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#12

Post by wm » 17 Feb 2017, 04:37

michael mills wrote:The Red Army did not approach Auschwitz-Birkenau until January 1945, by which time the mass extermination of Jews had long ceased, by order of Himmler issued at the end of October 1944 if I remember rightly. The last time large convoys of Jews arrived for extermination was in the late summer or early autumn of 1944.
It's not quite correct.
In July 1943 the Red Army was over 1000 km from Auschwitz. In March 1944 - only 320 km.
In July 1944 they crossed the Vistula, and in August were less than 150 km from Auschwitz.
They needed half a year to mount another offensive, but by military standards they were very close, and Auschwitz was well in range of their Tactical Air Force. Later they needed about 8 days to reach Auschwitz's vicinity.
This rapid advance, especially in 1944 made a great impression on everybody, including concentration camps guards - in the latter case resulting in better treatment of prisoners.
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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#13

Post by wm » 17 Feb 2017, 04:51

michael mills wrote:That is another element contrary to historical fact. In the summer and autumn of 1944 there were thousands of unregistered and non-tattooed prisoners held in the Birkenau camp. These were the so-called "depot prisoners" who had arrived on transports and were being held temporarily at Birkenau pending their transfer to other camps or places of forced labour.
Yes, they were, but they were placed in sections BIIc and BIII, but this story happened in section BIb. BIb was a "normal" concentration camp. It was impossible to mingle there openly.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#14

Post by wm » 17 Feb 2017, 05:52

Yuli wrote:The distance from the main building to the end of camp BI was many hundreds of meters. How far could you see over this distance in moonless nights even from a high tower?
How much digging can you do in a moonless night?
And it's not only the tower, there is a guardhouse at the intersection between camps BIa and BIb. It's a large building, not without a reason.
The fence was lamp-lit, the lamps are clearly visible here:
Image

The wooden watchtowers are visible too, you have to use better pictures to see them:
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The distance between the fence and the path was about 20 meters (the guardhouse with free space on both sides is there), according to aerial photos from 1944. The distance between barracks and the fence seems was the same. Too much open space to stay there for long without anybody noticing something.
Looking at the photos the Aushwitz album there was nicely-maintained grass on both sides of the fence, any digging there would be easily noticeable.


Assuming it was a short tunnel, let's say 5 meters long, 1 meter wide and high, at the dept of 1 meter - this means you have remove about 7 tons of dirt. And hide it somewhere, otherwise it will be easily noticeable. And mask both ends, how are you going to mask the other end?
At least the roof of the tunnel has to be supported otherwise it will collapse immediately.

Birkenau was built on marshy ground. In some places the water table almost reaches the surface. This made digging even more problematic.

The lowest electrified wire was very close to the ground, less than the width of the post, it wasn't something you could just crawl under. And there were two of them.
wire.jpg
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Last edited by wm on 17 Feb 2017, 14:45, edited 4 times in total.

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Re: Bravery in Auscwitz/Birkenau - saving young girls from the gas chambers of Birkenau

#15

Post by wm » 17 Feb 2017, 06:17

They write there:

She also describes a HeHalutz assembly in Camp B in Auschwitz in Passover 1943 and the digging of a tunnel under the fence in order to smuggle 14 girls who had arrived on a transport from the Terezin and Lodz ghettos. She also describes the actions of Menachem Grabowski in Auschwitz, who had contact with partisans and managed to bribe several groups of Jewish inmates from the camps to the forest. He himself returned to the camp and led a group of Zionist activists and guards.

So it was a tunnel.
As to the forest, the nearest was 40 kilometers away, it was a heavily industrialized region after all. At that time the region was in Germany, and Germans were the majority there. Even more for various reasons lots of military and security forces were stationed around the camp.
Because of that the normal partisan activity was impossible, and there was only a single (and quite small) partisan unit there (called "Sosienki"). It's official history doesn't say anything about actions of Menachem Grabowski, and basically denies they happened.
They rescued a few Jews on three different occasions, if I'm not mistaken (their names are known), additionally two groups of prisoners (about ten Poles and twelve Yugoslavians), and many more individually - about 40 in total, that's all.

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