OSWIECIM, Poland, Oct. 7 -- Poles and Jews unveiled Friday a memorial plaque in memory of hundreds of Jews who revolted during World War II in the Nazi death camp at Oswiecim -- known in German as Auschwitz -- and blew up one crematorium. Jerzy Wroblewski, director of the museum in the Polish city of Oswiecim told a gathering of Poles and Jews that it was the only prisoner revolt at the camp where some 1.5 million people died, most of them Jews.
The revolt took place Oct. 7, 1944. 'During the day of the revolt, the Nazis killed 451 prisoners,' Wroblewski said. He said all of them were employed as the so-called Sonderkommando, a special team that on German orders filled the crematoriums with corpses, cremated them and collected valuables of the killed prisoners. Three days after the suppression of the revolt, the Nazis caught four Polish Jewish women who had delivered explosives for the insuregents from outside of the camp. Despite torture, they refused to reveal the names of inmates from an underground organization within the camp that had contacts with the Polish underground groups. The four were later hanged. One was identified as Rosa Robota; the names of the other three victims were never found. Wroblewski said as a result of the revolt, one of four crematoria was blown up with home-made grenades and some Nazi guards were killed or injured. The revolt is believed to have caused a severe impact to the morale of the Nazi guards in the camp, which was liberated by the Soviet Red Army in January 1945.
