Mano Hollenreiner, a Holocaust survivor, recounted the bravery of his family and fellow Sinti and Roma prisoners who resisted Nazi forces in Auschwitz in 1944. Despite facing unbearable conditions, they prepared to fight back against SS operations aimed at transportation to gas chambers. The prisoners managed to arm themselves with rudimentary weapons and demonstrated their will to resist, sending a clear message to their captors. While many were subsequently transferred to other camps and avoided immediate death, thousands of others were tragically executed during this brutal period in history.
They had been in the military, they weren't afraid. Together, they defended themselves against imminent transportation to the gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
Even as a child, you understood that they got the message, that this time the people would fight back.
The prisoners armed themselves with stones, sticks and shovels they had been able to smuggle into their barracks from their forced labor sites.
The approximately 4,300 remaining prisoners â children, mothers, the elderly and the sick â were herded onto trucks in the night from August 2 to 3, 1944.
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