October 7, 1944: A Lens for Reflecting on October 7, 2023 & 2024 & Taking Action

October 7, 1944. Eighty years before October 7, 2024, the one year anniversary of October 7, 2023, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

At this difficult anniversary, another October 7 comes to mind. In 1944, in Auschwitz-Birkenau. On that day – courage, resistance, fighting back against man’s inhumanity to man. One of the bravest acts in the history of the Holocaust.

The Jews of the Sonderkommando, the “special command unit” organized the largest revolt and escape attempt in the history of the concentration camp on October 7, 1944. These Jews, were the ones forced to dispose of victims’ corpses and work in the crematoria. It was not possible for most prisoners to organize resistance. The devastating historical fact is that most Jews deported to Auschwitz were murdered immediately after arrival, sent to gas chambers. Industrialized murder in concentration and extermination camps took 6 million Jewish lives. And so many others persecuted by the Nazi regime.

I knew these things all too well growing up with a father with a tattooed number on his arm. In January, 1943, my father, age 22, burning with fever, was crammed into a cattle car for days from the town of Wolkowysk, Poland, finally arriving at hell on earth, aka Auschwitz. There, 1641 out of 2000 were sent directly to the gas chamber, my father one of 280 men, 79 women sent to hard, back breaking labor. It was nothing short of miraculous that he survived the torture of three concentration camps (barely) and was the sole survivor of his family – five sisters and parents – all of whom were murdered in Auschwitz and the Treblinka death camp. And I am here, always wondering how it is I could be here. My father was a prisoner, a slave laborer in Birkenau on October 7, 1944. He didn’t discuss it with us. There were other things he also did not discuss. The haunted look in his eyes told the story.

On that date, after many months of preparation at great risk, the Sonderkommando of crematorium IV blew up and set fire to that crematorium, also attacking SS men there. It was the product of a resistance movement in the camp in which young Jewish women meticulously smuggled small amounts of gunpowder from the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke, a Krupp munitions factory with very harsh working conditions, to members of the resistance movement.  Who were these brave souls?

I wanted to learn more. When I brought U.S. medical students to Auschwitz-Birkenau to learn about the role of medicine in the Holocaust, I was struck by the revolt date on a plaque near the destroyed crematorium. Resisters Ester Wajcblum, Ella (Ala) Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain were among at least thirty Jewish female prisoners who under constant guard smuggled small amounts of gunpowder to the resistance including Róza (Shoshanah) Robota, a young Jewish woman who worked near the Birkenau crematorium, organizing clothing of Jews murdered in the gas chamber as well as Giza Weissblum and Raizl Kibel who survived the war.

On October 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando of crematorium IV attacked the SS with stones and hammers, killing three and injuring others, and the crematorium was blown up with makeshift bombs and grenades, damaged beyond repair and never used again. Brave Sonderkommando at crematorium II threw their Oberkapo into a furnace, escaped through a fence using wirecutters, and hid in an Auschwitz satellite camp granary at Rajsko. Tragically, they were  killed by the SS setting the granary on fire.

Nearly 250 Jewish prisoners died fighting including mutiny leaders Załmen Gradowski and Józef Deresiński. From Gradowski’s secret diary in Yiddish, buried in Auschwitz near crematorium III and discovered after the war: Dear Finder of these notes… I live in an inferno of death…From all this you will have a picture of how our people perished.

After suppressing the revolt, guards shot another 200 prisoners. A total of 451 Sonderkommando were killed. Several days later, the SS identified the four Jewish female prisoners who supplied explosives and they were hung in public, after months of torture. Walking to their death, they sang Hatikvah, The Hope, the national anthem of Israel. Before she was executed in front of thousands of assembled prisoners, Roza reportedly shouted ” “Chazak V’amatz” – “Be strong and have courage,” the Biblical phrase that G-d uses to encourage Joshua after the death of Moses and the motto of Hashomer Hatzair, the youth organization to which she belonged. Those words echo for me and all of us at this time.

There were other examples of resistance on the selection ramp and gas chambers, in ghetto revolts such as in Bialystok and Warsaw and in concentration camps including Treblinka and Sobibor. Jewish history is replete with examples of resistance against persecution and standing against persecution of other communities. We, for example, include resistance/moral courage exemplars of Jewish ghetto physicians and Jewish concentration camp prisoner health professionals in concentration camps as well as “righteous of the nations” when teaching about the role of medicine during Nazism and the Holocaust to future doctors. The Holocaust is not the Middle Ages; it has striking contemporary relevance. Auschwitz is a mirror.

We don’t hear about these resistance examples all that often. So I bring them today at the one year anniversary of October 7, 2023. We know about the depravity of that day because barbarian terrorists showcased it. We know about the abuse of hostages violating all international conventions…they are still there. The horror, the trauma, the soul pain. And yet, the resilience, the perseverance, the endurance of the Jewish people. The vibrancy of Jewish life. Through so many years, the genocidal Holocaust, and so many wars for survival. And now, a fight against yet another all consuming “rupture of civilization,” Dan Diner’s term for the Holocaust. October 7 was not the Holocaust but echoes of the Holocaust exist within the genocidal intent and level of barbarity. It’s all too familiar. Here we are, in another time, another place, to borrow a poem title from Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. But is it really another time, another place?

For this “memorial day” of a day of massacre and hostage-taking and civilians used as human shields on October 7, 2023 and the moral inversion of October 8 with an explosion of antisemitism instead of empathy, we find our own resilience as we are inspired by the brave Jews before us and take action within the Jewish community. Not your typical “memorial” observance, perhaps. This time…

—Self-defense training – indeed it’s not only a war of words but includes physical assaults

—Information on how to sign and craft letters and petitions for counteracting demonization, delegitimization, and double standards (3D’s of antisemitism) and pushing back on false or manipulative narratives

–Demanding hostage release

—Helping to fight the “PR war” against disinformation and even blasphemy as Israel fights terrorism for its own survival and for pushing back on forces that wish to destroy democracy and Western values.

—In the here and now,  a day of memorial for solidifying commitment to Jewish education no matter what Jewish denomination one identifies with, providing appropriate resources for Jewish college students to fight organized and politicized antisemitism on campuses and protect their civil rights including resources for administrators, and how to connect with legal representation to counter antisemitism on campuses, workplaces, in medicine and medical education and even in K-12 education.

—Distributing information on how to financially support Israel on an ongoing basis – so many worthy causes

And yes, prayer along with these action steps.

October 7, 1944. October 7, 2023. October 7, 2024. At one year –“Chazak V’amatz” – “Be strong and have courage.”