Ala Gertner worked at the Union munitions plant at Auschwitz, pressing fuses, and carried gunpowder out in small amounts hidden in her clothing. Estusia Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn did the same. It reached Roza Robota, who worked at the clothing store near the crematoria, and she passed it on to the men of the Sonderkommando. Grams at a time, over months, in 1944.
When the rising came, Crematorium IV was blown up and burned. Three SS guards were killed; 451 prisoners of the Sonderkommando were killed that same day, most of them within hours. The four women were hanged in January, after interrogation, having given up no one else. What stands now at the site is low brick and broken concrete in the grass, with poplars behind it, which is what you see in the photograph.
Some of the Sonderkommando men buried manuscripts in the ground near the crematoria, in jars and tins; several were dug up after the war, one as late as 1980, and published as the Scrolls of Auschwitz. Parts are illegible from the damp. What survives was written by people who knew they would not.
Their names are read aloud at the site each year — Ala, Estusia, Regina, Roza. Hanged in January 1945, with the camp's evacuation only weeks off.