The Spiritual Resources of Survival

Johann Hirschtritt, a Jewish Communist once active in the Rote Sprachrohr (Red Megaphone) theater troupe and imprisoned since 1936, described the organizational form of the KGA: it consisted of a “solidly organized core” and “a more nebulous periphery of men who could be asked to perform certain tasks or join in certain collective actions.” The first KGA leadership was restricted to four; two Social Democrats and two Communists, reflecting the participation of the two workers’ parties, although in fidelity to Popular Front tactics of incorporating “all progressive bourgeois forces,” several Christian Democrats were also involved. Resistance groups were organized in small cells totally detached from each other, with militants receiving orders and directives only through intermediary contacts.

International fraternity was crucial for the KGA, rejecting Nazi-imposed national divisions and transcending organizational sectarianism. “Only solidarity, international cooperation, and the fight for freedom give us the right to regard ourselves as fellow fighters against the misfortune that Hitler’s Fascism has brought all over the world,” declared one statement in summer 1944. Quickly, the camp committee absorbed the national groups of the Spanish, Yugoslavs, French, Czechs, Romanians and Germans, including many individual Jewish socialists and communists.

This stance was a principled opposition to the workings of the Polish resistance movement, which was “nationally conscious” and broadly suspicious of Jews, Spaniards, and Russians. Cyrankiewicz, the social democrat and KGA leader is credited consistently in testimony by resistance fighters for his active intervention against Polish chauvinism. He used his authority among resistance fighters at liberty in Krakow to politically isolate fellow inmates demanding amenities from outside sources for Polish use only. German KGA militants in positions of responsibility also made the point of going an extra mile for Russian prisoners, ruefully aware of anti-German suspicions Russians who had faced the Nazis would harbor.

While Auschwitz was partially a labor camp for German industry, those with employment were consistently reminded of their expendability by arbitrary murder and the regular arrival of replacements. It was clear to the KGA that a fundamental task was to tackle the atmosphere of defeatism — although due to high levels of repression it could only meaningfully achieve this within its own ranks.

Above any other strategic concern the raison d’être of the resistance was survival — the KGA provided a psychological and social anchor that bolstered individuals against accepting their fate. The clarity of a political line to navigate the horrors they were witnessing, a greater chance of good rations and increased work protection, the self-esteem and dignity received by resisting injustice and being coherently organized — none of these aspects can be underestimated when considering the spiritual resources of survival among political prisoners in Auschwitz.

Education was as important to leftist groups inside the camps as it was in civilian conditions, with resistance methods justified by socialist and humanist reasoning, and Marxist discussion circles reading treasured copies of smuggled literature.

The KGA took advantage of ideological-economic friction within the Nazi bureaucracy over how much camp labor should be maintained. As Auschwitz expanded, the camp authorities increasingly relied on prisoner authorities’ wisdom, broadly unaware of the influence of organized resistance.

In camp hospitals and labor assignments, where KGA militants attempted to place their comrades, prisoners employed in clerical duties saved lives by altering lists for particular labor details, prisoner transfers, and so on, while KGA hospital orderlies could persuade certain camp administrators and SS doctors to limit the killings or prevent excessive murder. This particular effort produced some success — by July 1943, the mortality rate at Auschwitz (not including those exterminated upon arrival) fell to 3.5 percent from over 20 percent in the winter of 1942-43.

The KGA also excelled at accumulating facts and figures of Nazi atrocities, the logic for this particularly risky activity being based on the hope of future political justice. Cyrankiewicz’s former resistance group in Krakow preserved 350 pieces of correspondence from the KGA, which make for compelling reading. Reports then reached London with surprising ease, containing statistics and information about camp developments, mass executions, and the nature of its industry.

This work deeply worried the Nazi administration; a KGA communiqué broadcast on the BBC directly threatening the Auschwitz SS was met with alarm, resulting in several name changes and widespread fear. The KGA even arranged cameras and film to be smuggled into Auschwitz. Through a hole in his pocket the International Brigader and Jewish Communist David Szmulewski took photographs showing the bodies being burned next to a crematorium, some of the only images of the camps created by prisoners themselves.

The KGA planned to escalate from survival to armed revolt only at the point that weapons had been acquired and extermination of all prisoners was the policy of camp authorities. Outside of these conditions being in place, the idea received scant enthusiasm for fear of immediate collective reprisal. Although they were unable to prevent the mass extermination of Jews in Auschwitz, maintaining an organized resistance, let alone a kind of counter-government, counted as a success.

The Jewish population did not have this option and several isolated acts of armed resistance occurred. A group of Sonderkommando — those tasked with disposing of dead bodies from the gas chambers — plotted revolt in summer 1944. Having been approached as a “Jewish political” of serious standing by an eager Sonderkommando, David Szmulewski put them in touch with the KGA leadership. They were deeply skeptical, believing that the Sonderkommando was a desperate force of broken men. But Szmulewski held that there was “another side to the coin,” that “there were also those who did not rest, but from the first day began to organize an insurrectionist movement.”

Hashomer Hatzair activists Israel Gutman and Joshua Lejfer, who worked at the Krupp factory in Auschwitz, were entrusted with supplying explosives and powder for a future action, alongside their comrade Roza Robota. While still wary, the KGA informed the Sonderkommando that their work group was to be murdered on October 7, 1944. On that day, SS members were attacked with machine guns, knives, and grenades created by Soviet Jewish prisoners from the aforementioned explosives. Three SS were killed and several seriously injured; one Nazi was even cremated. In response, 451 Sonderkommando were executed.