AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU, Poland — As Jews around the world prepare to commemorate the Hamas-perpetrated massacre of October 7, that somber day will also mark 80 years since the so-called Sonderkommando Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

After months of preparation, prisoners working in the crematorium Sonderkommando (forced labor group) — who were forced to dispose of the bodies of their compatriots killed in the gas chambers — took up arms against the SS. The uprising, which broke out on October 7, 1944, achieved almost none of its goals and resulted in the execution of hundreds of Sonderkommando prisoners.

In an interview inside the former Union ammunition factory next to Auschwitz, historian Igor Bartosik said the heavily vandalized building was where female prisoners acquired explosives and other materials for the revolt.

“I think it could be the women who were here, the prisoners, that had the idea for the revolt,” said Bartosik.

As a leading expert on the Sonderkommando prisoners, Bartosik has published several books on the subject for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. In prior decades, when former Sonderkommando prisoners were still alive, Bartosik regularly visited camp ruins with them.

Inside the former Nazi factory, female prisoners had access to dynamite and other supplies needed by the Sonderkommando revolt planners. Over the course of several months, a group of women smuggled supplies into Birkenau. The contraband was delivered to Sonderkommando prisoners living onsite at the gas chambers.

“Here is where the women got what the Sonderkommando men needed to blow up the crematoria,” said Bartosik.

From his bag, the Polish researcher pulled out a photo of the Union factory taken during the war years. Now covered in graffiti and obscured from the street by trees, the building is a few hundred yards from the Auschwitz museum.

Bartosik is emphatic about breaking down the myths tied to Sonderkommando prisoners. One such myth is that the men conducted their gruesome tasks as if they were automated robots, said Bartosik.

“They did not work like robots. With strong emotions they wrote about the women with beautiful bodies and about the children. They were not robots. I will always protect the memory of these people until the last day of my life,” said Bartosik.

During the height of murder operations at Birkenau, some of the Sonderkommando prisoners buried their diaries and sketches next to the gas chambers. Unearthed after the war, one text is a list of deportation trains that notes how many people from each “transport” were murdered and in which of the four main killing facilities.

“These people are complete heroes. They came back to the barracks and wrote their diaries. They knew people would want to know after the war about why they were in the Sonderkommando,” said Bartosik.

One million Jews were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in addition to 100,000 non-Jews largely from Poland, Soviet lands, or of Roma descent.

‘500 prisoners were shot dead’

In Birkenau, Bartosik filed through ruins of the former barracks where Sonderkommando prisoners were initially housed. Early in the morning with visitors yet to make their way to the back of the camp, deer were seen among the forest of brick chimneys and eroding concrete foundations.

In the early phases of the Holocaust at Birkenau, two “provisional” gas chambers operated. The Sonderkommando prisoners did not yet live onsite, but in a barracks complex situated among other inmates.

When the Germans completed the construction of four permanent gas chambers with built-in crematoriums, Sonderkommando inmates were moved to those facilities. In general, the men lived in attic spaces with windows through which the prisoners in each of the killing facilities communicated with each other.

The revolt was intended to destroy one or more of the killing facilities and enable a mass escape of prisoners. Problematically, the plan was implemented too early when an inmate spontaneously attacked an SS guard.

“From this moment on, events took on a dynamic of their own,” wrote Bartosik.

Dozens of prisoners were able to flee the camp but they were quickly tracked down and shot by mobile SS patrols. The fate of four escapees remains unknown, although a report sent by the SS alerted local forces to their escape.

“I don’t remember the exact date, it was a Saturday when we attacked the SS guards,” said Shlomo Dragon, a former Sonderkommando prisoner.

“Twelve of the SS men were wounded. SS forces immediately approached the premises of our crematorium, a couple of companies surrounded the entire area, around 500 prisoners were shot dead, and the rest, those who hid themselves, managed to survive,” said Dragon.

The Germans executed nearly all of the remaining Sonderkommando prisoners to retaliate for the revolt, in which four SS men were killed. Three of the women who smuggled supplies into Birkenau for the revolt were identified by the SS and executed on January 6, 1945.

‘The proof of this tragedy’

Another erroneous assumption made about Sonderkommando prisoners is that the kommando — which numbered several hundred men — was regularly killed off, as a group, by the SS.

According to Bartisok, such a killing of Sonderkommando prisoners took place only once, in December 1942. Several prisoners who survived the war were among the men chosen to replace that executed workforce, said Bartosik. These men would have known if additional mass killings of the Sonderkommando took place in 1943 or 1944, prior to the revolt.

In his decades of research, Bartosik befriended several of the former Sonderkommando prisoners, including the late Henryk Mandelbaum. These relationships helped Bartosik understand aspects of the Sonderkommando experience that are not typically discussed.

For example, German SS men assigned to the Sonderkommando were vulnerable to bribes. In their gruesome work, the inmates sorted through clothes and personal items brought into the undressing rooms. Supplemented by valuables removed from the corpses, Sonderkommando inmates made it lucrative for the SS to delay eliminating them.

“They definitely played off their greed,” said Bartosik.

Another fateful but largely forgotten act of resistance took place a few weeks before the Sonderkommando Revolt. Similar to the buried diaries, the act was intended to document the Holocaust at Birkenau with indisputable evidence.

Smuggling a camera into one of the gas chambers, a Sonderkommando prisoner captured photos of murder operations in the birch grove at the back of the camp. His hastily framed snapshots included women being herded into a gas chamber and Sonderkommando inmates burning corpses in the open air. The film was smuggled out of the camp in a toothpaste tube and developed in Britain.

About the failed revolt, Bartosik said the episode demonstrates the heroism of Sonderkommando prisoners and their commitment to making sure the truth of Auschwitz-Birkenau was disseminated.

“People understood the situation. They wanted to protect for the future the proof of this tragedy,” said Bartosik.