[2] In 1940, Kirschner's older sister Raizel received a summons to work at a German labor camp; Sala volunteered to go in her sister's place, and on October 28, 1940, was taken to Geppersdorf, where Jewish male laborers built new stretches of the autobahn and women did domestic chores, peeling potatoes and sewing swastikas onto German uniforms.
Kirschner saved these letters, hiding them in barracks niches or buried them in soil, even though she risked punishment if they were discovered.
She met Sidney Kirschner, a Jewish American soldier, at Rosh Hashanah services shortly after the war ended.
[2] In 1991, before a triple bypass cardiac surgery in which she feared she might die, Sala gave her daughter Ann Kirschner a shoebox containing 350 letters, postcards and photographs from her correspondences during the war, written in Yiddish, Polish, and German.
[5] Later that year, Ann Kirschner published Sala's Gift, which documented her mother's experiences.