Similarly, the prisoners of the neighboring men’s camp BIId did not mention the Roma uprising in their statements and evidence given after the war, and even those who were incarcerated there for many months and knew a lot of Roma.
Statements and periodical reports which reached the Home Army Headquarters in Warsaw in the following weeks do not include any mention of the attempts to liquidate the Roma camp in May 1944 either. They are also absent in the reports sent from KL Auschwitz by the camp resistance movement, preserved for the period May – August 1944 in a quite significant quantity.
It was possible to collect some accounts by Roma witnesses concerning these events as late as the turn of the 20th and 21st century. However, they are usually quite laconic, which should not surprise anybody as their authors were very young during their incarceration in Birkenau and were making these statements over half a century after these events. Sometimes, however, they contain a lot of surprisingly detailed information, for example the exact date of the uprising (May 16, 1944) as well as the data concerning the number of the Roma leaving Auschwitz in transports, almost exactly matching the findings by Danuta Czech. Nevertheless, this does not seem particular in any way; very often, witnesses making their statements after such a long time wish, following their best intentions, to support their memory by referring to historical literature, for fear of making a mistake.
Referring to essential elements of description included in the accounts above, it is necessary to emphasize that the Roma incarcerated in Birkenau were probably aware of the growing danger of total or partial liquidation of the camp for more than a year. It thus cannot be excluded that at least some of them did begin to collect and hide primitive weapons which they could use in that definitive moment in order, as Joachimowski wrote it, to at least try to give the end of their lives some value.
However, it is doubtful that the SS men, having received the order to liquidate the camp and drive the Roma who remained there to the gas chambers, would not perform the action for fear of potential confrontation with prisoners. After all, they had a huge advantage in weapons: one or two SS platoons, equipped with rifles and machine guns, would have been able to simply shoot all prisoners trying to resist them.
What is more, the SS men standing perhaps helplessly in front of the closed barracks would have had to become suspicious after a short time and thus, the Roma would have lost the only advantage they had – the surprise factor.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau; the Roma family camp visible in the background.