So, if one wanted to search for fighting in the history of the Zigeunerlager, or for the Roma actively resisting the SS men, the events which took place in Birkenau on August 2 1944 match such descriptions much more accurately. This is how former prisoner Alfred Fiderkiewicz described them:
“…uniforms began to swarm in the Gypsy camp. A few hundreds of them must have come. A line of lorries is coming. We hear the scream: “Raus! Raus!” The Gypsy barrack in front of our block is closed. The SS men are trying to open it, but the door must be locked from the inside. They are beating rotten boards with crowbars. They are coming inside as one body. We hear screams, shots, but nobody is leaving. One more group of the SS men is intruding the barrack. After a while we see them drag out two young Gypsy girls screaming piercingly. Others are attacking the torturers, scratching their faces. They are defending themselves with gunstocks. The SS men are dragging kids’ legs and an elderly man is trying to defend them but one kick is enough to disable him and take him to the lorry. No one leaves the barrack without resistance. Everyone is fighting. We hear the SS men screaming and the Gypsies shouting. Women are the fiercest in their fight – they are younger and stronger – protecting their children. The fight lasted until dusk and it seems that everyone dragged to the lorries expressed some resistance.
This is how the remaining Gypsies were murdered, in a number from three to four thousand. On that same night, our camp was covered with smoke, as dark as tar.”
Liquidation of the Roma camp in Birkenau on August 2, 1944
The accounts of both Roma as well as Polish witnesses reveal – albeit, unfortunately very incomplete and differing in their details – the following image of the events preceding the liquidation of the Roma camp.
According to Tadeusz Joachimowski, in the second half of May 1944, he prepared a list of 3,200 Roma who were supposed to be relocated from Auschwitz; he also added that on the eve of liquidation of the BIIe camp, there were 3,300 Roma incarcerated there. It could thus be concluded that in late spring 1944, c. 6,500 Roma were supposed to remain in this camp. However, Joachimowski mentioned that 3,229 prisoners were supposed to take part in the last roll call, including 1,575 women.
In another version of his account, revised and presented some time later, Joachimowski stated that in early June 1944 not 3,200, but 2,300 Roma were deported from Birkenau, the number which matches the reality much better, and that in the final period of the existence of the Ziegeunerlager there were about 3,500 prisoners incarcerated there.
Dr. Rudolf Weisskopf-Vitek, a doctor in the Roma camp, estimated that in the summer of 1944, 3,000 Roma were sent to other concentration camps, while 3,800 persons were later murdered in the gas chambers in Birkenau.
Tadeusz Śnieszko stated that on August 1, 1944, there were 5,000 people in the Roma camp.
Hermann Diamanski, the last Lagerälteste in the Roma camp, said that he took part in the selection of two to three thousand young Roma able to work, who were transferred from Birkenau to the mother camp. Soon after, the remaining Roma (two-thirds of their initial number) were murdered in the gas chambers. In his testimony before the tribunal in Frankfurt, he gave a more precise number of 2,000 people.
Felix Amann remembered that, right before the liquidation, there were 4,200 people in the Roma camp.
Marian Perski quoted the biggest number - about 7,000 - but it must have referred to the number of prisoners in the Roma camp before its partial evacuation in spring 1944.
Elisabeth Guttenberger stated that during the last stage of the existence of the Roma camp, there were 4,500 Roma incarcerated there, who were all murdered.
Prisoner Michalý Keéri-Szántó, a doctor who remained in the neighboring BIIe section of the camp on August 2, 1944 (where the Jews from Hungary had already been placed) said that on that day, there were 3,540 Roma incarcerated there, all of whom were later transported to the gas chambers.