On March 12, 1912, Ala Gertner, heroine and martyr of the Auschwitz-Birkenau revolt,was born in BĘDZIN, Poland
On March 12, 1912, Ala Gertner, heroine and martyr of the Auschwitz-Birkenau revolt,was born in BĘDZIN, Poland. On October 29, 1940, Gertner was ordered to report to the train station in nearby SOSNOWIEC, where she was taken to a Nazi labor camp in Geppersdorf (now Rzedziwojowice), a construction site where hundreds of Jewish men were forced laborers on the Reichsautobahn (now the E22 highway) and women worked in the kitchen and laundry. Ala, who was fluent in German, was assigned to the camp office where she would meet her future husband Berhard Holtz. Geppersdorf was part of Organisation Schmelt, a network of 177 labor camps under the administration of Albrecht Schmelt, a WWI veteran who joined the Nazis in 1930 and rose quickly to the post of SS Oberführer. Schmelt built a highly lucrative slave trade. Over 50,000 Jews from western Poland were forced to work for German businesses, primarily in construction, munitions and textile manufacturing. The businesses paid Schmelt, who shar