Gertner was born in
Będzin,
Poland, one of three children in a prosperous
Jewish family. Before the
German and Slovakia invasion of Poland, she attended the
gymnasium in
Będzin. The city was located in the industrial region of
Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in south-western Poland on the border with Germany.
Geppersdorf labour camp The German military took over Będzin on the first day of the invasion, burned the Grand Synagogue down within a week, and began massive resettlement actions. On 28 October 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 used as forced laborers on the
Reichsautobahn section (now
Berlinka) and where women worked in the kitchen and laundry. Gertner, who was fluent in
German, was assigned to the camp office, where she met prisoner Bernhard Holtz whom she would marry in the
Będzin Ghetto in the following year. Other sources give 6 January as the date of the execution. This was the last public hanging at Auschwitz: two weeks later, the camp was evacuated; one week after the evacuation, the
Red Army arrived at the site. ==Legacy==