Heilman, Anna, 1928-2011 : Anna Heilman was the last living survivor of the plot to blow up Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The plot was part of the plans for the October 1944 Sonderkommando Uprising.
Anna was born on December 1, 1928 into a middle class assimilated Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents, Jacob and Rebecca, were both deaf (all three of their children had normal hearing). Jacob was born in Warsaw in 1887. He owned a factory (Snycerpol) in Warsaw that employed deaf workers to make wooden handicrafts. Rebecca was born in 1898 in Pruzany, Poland.
Anna had two older sisters. Sabina, the eldest escaped the Holocaust with her former tutor and future husband, Mietek. They survived by fleeing to the Soviet Union and subsequently settled in Sweden.
Anna, her older sister Esther (nickname: Estusia) and her parents lived in an apartment building on 38 Mila Street, in an area that became part of the Warsaw Ghetto. Their apartment building was down the street from 18 Mila Street, headquarters of the ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bjojowa - Jewish Fighting Organization), led by Mordecai Anielewicz. They were one of the last deportees from the Warsaw Ghetto when they were taken to Maidanek in May 1943. Her parents were murdered upon arrival at Maidanek. Estusia and Anna were sent to Auschwitz in September 1943.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was both a vast death camp and a huge industrial complex. Anna and her older sister Estusia were slave laborers at the Union Munitions plant at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Beginning in September 1943, Mrs. Heilman and her sister Estusia were slave laborers in the Union Munitions factory at Auschwitz.
The Sonderkommando were slave workers at the crematoria. So as to leave no witnesses, the SS periodically executed the entire complement of the Sonderkommando, and replaced them with other prisoners. Though regularly searched, and subject to instant execution if caught, Estusia, Anna, and a small number of other women played key roles in obtaining and providing explosives to the men of the Sonderkommando. The Sonderkommando made 'grenades' out of shoe polish cans filled with gunpowder from the Union munitions plant. The conspirators figured that they would die anyway, but to participate in the uprising would give their deaths some meaning.
The Uprising occurred on October 7, 1944. It was quickly put down. All of the Sonderkommando were killed, but not before their crude bombs severely damaged Crematorium IV. It was never used again, saving many lives.
After the Uprising, the SS traced the gunpowder back to the Union factory. Mrs. Heilman' s sister, Estusia and three other young women, Ala Gertner, Roza Robota and Regina Safirztajn were betrayed. The SS tortured the girls for months. They never gave up Anna's name, only the names of members of the Sonderkommando, who were already dead. The four girls were hanged on January 5, 1945, just under two weeks before the advancing Soviet Red Army reached Auschwitz. The entire women's camp was forced to watch the executions. The women died as Jewish resistance fighters. The four young women were murdered as were millions of others, but their act of defiance and courage forced the Nazis to recognize them as individuals. They were executed as resistance fighters under direct orders from Berlin.
The execution occurred just before Auschwitz was brutally evacuated on January 18, 1945 as the Soviet Army continued its advance towards Germany.
Anna was sent on a forced march to Ravensbrück where she stayed until February, 1945, then was at Neustadt-Glewe until being liberated by the Russians on May 2, 1945. After a brief stay in Belgium, she emigrated in May 1946 to what was then Palestine under the British Mandate.
Anna married Joshua Heilman on March 7, 1947. Joshua Heilman had left Poland for British Mandate Palestine to pursue his university studies one week before the outbreak of World War II. His younger sister Rose was also interned at Auschwitz and survived the war. The rest of his family was murdered.
Anna obtained a degree in social work in Israel. Anna and Joshua had two daughters. Joshua went to the United States as a Hebrew teacher and brought the rest of the family to Boston in 1958. The family emigrated to Ottawa, Canada in 1960 where Joshua was a Hebrew school principal. Anna worked with The Children's Aid Society in Ottawa as a bilingual social worker until she retired as supervisor of the English/French unit in 1990. She was the author of "Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles of Anna Helman" published in 2001.
Anna Heilman died in Ottawa on May 1, 2011.
