The Other October 7th

Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of another October 7th — the date of the Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz. The Sonderkommando were among the most wretched people in the Holocaust. They were the ones responsible for the operation of the mechanisms of death at Auschwitz and other death camps.

Indeed, they came into being as a result of German soldiers’ inability to perpetrate the Holocaust with the efficiency and clinical detachment that the Nazis hoped for. On 22 June 1941, the Nazis invaded Russia along a 4000 km front. No longer were the plans of emigration or financial expropriation and ghettoization so feasible. Instead, the Einsatzgruppen were unleashed, sent to murder Jews in their towns. Jews were rounded up, taken outside to nearby forests or swamps, and were forced to dig their own mass graves. German soldiers were then often “assigned” a Jew, took them into the forest, and shot them at point blank range. Despite doing something that is unequivocally evil, many of these men were not sadists, sociopaths or psychopaths. They drank, popped Pervitin like it was candy, didn’t sleep, and started to have nervous breakdowns. Not all, of course. But many.

Goering asked Heydrich to come up with a new solution, the “Final Solution” to the Jewish question. Death became centralized, and Jews and Poles became those responsible for its process. Picked out of lines every 6 weeks or so, the Sonderkommando were young strong men who were made responsible for getting those selected for death into the Gas chamber, for removing and disposing the bodies, and for cleaning up the room. They were then killed every 6 weeks or so, the bearers of secrets, silenced forever.

In Auschwitz though, there was one Sonderkommando group that had unusually long longevity. Set against the backdrop of the Nazis’ determination to kill the Hungarian Jewish population in the waning days of the war, the Nazis were sending tens of thousands of people to Auschwitz weekly. Those who were running the gas chambers were sent into overdrive. And their efficiency meant that they lasted longer than 6 weeks.

They were able to get in touch with women who worked in Kanada, in the gunpowder factories etc. these women, such as Roza Robota, carried gunpowder back to the camp underneath their fingernails. They were able to amass some ersatz weaponry, but largely banked on being able to attack guards and steal their guns. And of course, they wanted people to be able to escape and tell the world what was happening at Auschwitz.

On October 7th, rumours started flying that they were about to be liquidated, that their luck was about to run out. The revolt broke out. They blew up Crematoria IV and even managed to throw an SS officer alive into the crematorium. They managed to fight for a couple of hours. Some escaped, but all were rounded up and shot at point-blank range. The women who helped them were all hung afterwards. They died singing HaTikvah.

In some ways, the October 7th revolt didn’t do much. It may have slowed, but did not stop, the murder of the Hungarian Jews. None of the escapees survived. The world would remain decidedly purposefully “ignorant” of the horrors of Auschwitz. And yet.

Much like the fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, perhaps their true objective was not survival. Yes, survival would be wonderful. But more importantly, perhaps they sought to preserve the simplest choice: how they died. Better to die fighting than to die in a gas chamber. Better to die with an ersatz weapon in your hand than on your knees.

It is not for nothing that Israel initially only commemorated the memory of these people; those who fought back, even when it was hopeless. Is that not the function of Israel? To fight, and prevent another calamity? While I think that those who sought to suppress or ignore Holocaust memory in Israel were those who had the luxury of never having to make the choices that people in wartime Europe did, I can understand the early desire to do so.

In an era where we are once again faced with what feels like existential choices — thankfully, not nearly as existential as the ones faced by Sonderkommando in Poland — maybe that October 7th has come to influence our contemporary one as well. That Israel still is, at its heart, still a fledgling embattled nation fighting for survival.

May the memories of those men and women be for a blessing. I hope that they know that their death went on to inspire a new generation of Jews. I hope that they died knowing that others had not given up that hope.