Testimony of Chaja (Cohn) Krojn, born in Warsaw, Poland, 1921, regarding her experiences in the Plonsk Ghetto, Auschwitz, Budy, underground activities in Birkenau and in Malchow

Testimony of Chaja (Cohn) Krojn, born in Warsaw, Poland, 1921, regarding her experiences in the Plonsk Ghetto, Auschwitz, Budy, underground activities in Birkenau and in Malchow Outbreak of the war; draft to labor in a Polish hospital in Plonsk; German occupation of Plonsk; help to a Polish officer, a POW, to escape from the hospital; Plonsk Ghetto life including establishment of an orphanage by the Judenrat; administration of the orphanage by a woman teacher named Ida Grinberg; outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union; concentration of Jewish refugees from the surrounding area who were in the ghetto and their transfer to Pomiechowek; liquidation of the orphanage during the transfer of the Plonsk Jews to Auschwitz, December 1942; deportation to Auschwitz with the last of the Jews, 17 December 1942; transfer to Budy; life in a women's camp including suicides of women inmates from the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia; transfer to Birkenau, April 1944; camp life including labor in a clothing detachment; labor in a Union factory; meets Roza Robota; witness joins an underground cell in the camp; collection of grains of dynamite at their place of labor, along with a woman friend named Batsheva; transfer of the grains to Roza; escape of a woman translator named Mala and her Polish boyfriend from the camp; execution of the two, after their capture; explosion of the crematorium; hanging of four young women, her friends from the underground, including Roza, and Elana Gartner; evacuation, 18 January 1945; transfer to Malchow with women inmates; camp life including her escape with a woman friend named Rushka, before the liberation by the Red Army, 01 May 1945. Return to Plonsk; move to Germany; reunion with her brother Yehoshua in a refugee camp near Frankfurt; aliya to Eretz Israel with Aliya Bet, February 1948.