[1] 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.

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.

Over 50,000 Jews from western Poland were forced to work for German businesses, primarily in construction, munitions, and textile manufacturing.

Gertner was then assigned to the office of the munitions factory, where she and Roza became part of a conspiracy to smuggle gunpowder to the Sonderkommando, who were building bombs and planning an escape.

A lengthy investigation led the Nazis back to Gertner and Roza, and then to Estusia Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn, who were also implicated in the conspiracy.

Gertner left no known survivors or family, but her 28 letters to a camp friend, Sala Kirschner (née Garncarz), also from the Sosnowiec Ghetto, are among the 350 wartime letters that are in the permanent Sala Garncarz Kirschner Collection of the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library.