Author: USC Shoah Foundation via YouTube
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Anna Heilman and her family were arrested in May 1943 and transported by cattle car to the Majdanek death camp near Lublin. Her parents were murdered in the gas chamber on arrival. Anna and her sister, Esther, were sent to dig up horseradish in the fields, and a few months later transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

At the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke munitions factory where the young women were assigned to work, Esther wrapped small packets of gun powder in a rag which she then bound with twine. Then Anna would come around to collect the packets in a garbage bin. Back at her workstation, Anna would tuck the stash into the hem of her dress, or would go to the restroom to transfer the gunpowder to other girls for the three kilometer walk back to Birkenau. From there, the gunpowder was smuggled to the Sonderkommandos (Jewish prisoners tasked with moving bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoria).

On Oct. 7, 1944, the Sonderkommandos managed to blow up one of the four crematoria before the Germans crushed the revolt. Nearly 250 prisoners died during the fighting and guards executed another 200. The Sonderkommandos involved in the revolt were killed.

The Germans quicky traced the source of gunpowder and, after a cursory investigation, Esther and three others (Roza Robota, Ala Gertner, and Regina Safirsztain) were found guilty. But the group never gave up any other names.

The four girls were hanged on January 5, 1945. Esther was just shy of her 20th birthday.

To read more about Anna and Esther’s story, please visit https://sfi.usc.edu/news/2021/06/31346-was-her-sister%E2%80%99s-life-too-high-price.

To watch Anna’s full testimony, please visit https://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=11923&returnIndex=0 (free account registration required).

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