Anna walked down the acrid-smelling, dust-filled hall, past several supervisors, and headed to the Pulverraum, as if she were on trash collection duty. Esther’s spot was near the door; she passed Anna a small metal box, the kind used for refuse. Esther had hidden bits of gunpowder, wrapped in knotted cloth, in the garbage. （Cloth came from ripping a shirt or trading bread for a kerchief.） Anna brought the box to her table, took out the cloth packets, and slid them under her dress. She met Ala in the bathroom, where they divided the packets and hid them in their clothes. At the end of the day, Esther transferred some to her own body before marching back to camp, in wooden shoes, nearly a mile in rain, snow, or sweltering sun. If ever there was an inspection, the girls tugged open the cloth and dumped the powder on the ground, rubbing it in with their feet. Ala gave the collected powder to Roza.
It wasn’t just them. A network of about thirty Jewish women aged eighteen to twenty-two stole good powder and instead used waste powder in their products. They smuggled explosives in matchboxes, and in their bosoms, between their breasts. They wrapped miniature 250-gram caches in paper and slipped them into the pockets of their coarse blue dresses. In one day, three girls could collect two teaspoons. Marta Bindiger, one of Anna’s close friends and a collector, held on to stashes for several days until there was a “pickup.” Four-level chains of girls, unknown to one another were involved. All of it landed with Roza, who liaised between different resistance factions.
Roza gave the powder to the men. The sonderkommando, who were allowed in the women’s camp to remove corpses, transported the explosives in a soup bowl that had a double bottom, in apron seams, and in a wagon used for removing the bodies of Jews who had died during the night. The gunpowder parcels were hidden under their corpses, then concealed in the crematoria. A Russian prisoner made the dynamite into bombs, using empty sardine or shoe polish cans as casings. Nearby, a teenager named Kitty Felix was forced to sort murdered male prisoners’ jackets and search them for valuables. She stole diamonds and gold and concealed them behind a toilet hut; they were traded for explosives.
The girls lived in fear and excitement. Then, one day, commotion. No warning, no password. The uprising, arranged meticulously over months could not go ahead as scheduled because the sonderkommando found out that they would be gassed to death immediately. It was now or never.
On October 7, 1944, the Jewish underground attacked an SS man with hammers, axes, and stones, and blew up a crematorium, where they’d placed rags soaked in oil and alcohol. They dug out hidden weapons and killed a handful of SS guards, injuring others; they threw a particularly sadistic Nazi into the oven alive. They cut through the barbed wire and ran.
But not fast enough. The Nazis shot all three hundred of them, then held a formal roll call for the dead bodies, laying each corpse out in formation. Several hundred prisoners fled during the mayhem; they too were shot and killed.
Afterward, the Nazis found the handmade grenades: tin cans filled with gunpowder that was traced to the Pulverraum. An intensive investigation ensued. People were taken, tortured, and there are many conflicting accounts of squealing and betrayals. According to Anna’s memoirs, their barrack mate Klara was caught with bread and traded her punishment for snitching on Ala. In turn, Ala, tortured, divulged that Roza and Esther were involved. In one version, the Nazis had an undercover agent, a Czech who was half Jewish, seduce Ala with chocolates, cigarettes, and affection until she revealed names.
Esther was taken to a punishment cell. Anna was horrified and despondent. One day, she, too, was brought in for questioning and beaten as a warning. They wiped the blood off her face. The “good cop” asked, in a fatherly tone: “Who stole the gunpowder? Why? Where? What did your sister tell you?”
Anna looked at him, dumb, silent.
“Esther confessed everything,” he said, “so you may as well tell us.”
“How can Esther confess to anything?” Anna asked. “She is innocent, and she is not a liar.” They released her and, thankfully, sent Esther back to her barrack. She was black and blue. The skin on her back was ripped into stripes. She couldn’t move or talk. Marta and Anna cared for her, and she was improving.