v Primary Sources v

Roza Robota was born in Ciechanow in 1921. After the occupation of Poland by the German Army in September 1939, she joined the Zionist underground in the town.

Robota was arrested in 1942 and deported to the Birkenau women's camp. The camp also served as an ammunition factory and in 1944 Robota began to start smuggling out small amounts of explosives and passing them to the underground in Auschwitz.

Robota was arrested in October 1944. Despite being tortured she refused to name the people who were involved in this conspiracy.

Roza Robota was executed on 6th January 1945.

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(1) Leaflet published by the Jewish Self-Defence Organization (December 1942)

Do not go willingly to your death! Fight for life to the last breath. Greet our murders with teeth and claws, with axe and knife, hydrochloric acid and iron crowbars. Make the enemy pay for blood with blood, for death with death?

Let us fall upon the enemy in time, kill and disarm him. Let us stand up against the criminals and if necessary die like heroes. If we die in this way we are not lost.

Make the enemy pay dearly for your lives! Take revenge for the Jewish centres that have been destroyed and for the Jewish lives that have been extinguished.