When Sala first reported to her first camp in Geppersdorf, Germany, at the age of 16, she thought that she would be away from home for six weeks. Five years later, only she and two of her sisters remained alive from their large, extended family. Sala would be the only one to become a mother.

Little is known about the vast network of Nazi labor camps. Sala’s seven camps were part of Organization Schmelt, a well-organized bureaucracy that captured thousands of Jews and forced them to build railroads and highways, churn out munitions and materiel, and unwillingly stoke the limitless needs of the Nazi war machine. Conditions were brutal. Death rates were high. But in some of these camps, the Nazis continued to deliver the mail to Jewish prisoners until late 1943. As the war dragged on and the Nazis retreated, inmates were force-marched across hundreds of miles, or packed into cattle cars for grim journeys from one camp to another.

Sala’s camp locations (1940-45)
Geppersdorf, Germany
Gross Sarne, Germany
Brande, Germany
Laurahutte, Poland
Gross Paniow, Poland
Blechammer, Poland
Schatzlar, Czechosolovakia

Currently known as Rzedziwojowice, Poland
Sarny Wielkie, Poland
Prady, Poland
Siemianowice Slaska, Poland
Paniowy, Poland
Blachownia Slaska, Poland
Zacler, Czech Republic

Sala saved more than 350 letters, documents and photographs during her five year ordeal. Most of the letters are written in German, as the Nazi censors would reject letters in Yiddish or Polish, the native languages of Sala and her correspondents. Until 1943, the mail between Sala’s home in Sosnowiec and the camps in Germany was relatively reliable. Many of the letters bear a"Z" stamp, showing that they were reviewed by a censor.
See the original letters.

Read about the Sala Garncarz Collection at the New York Public Library.

Watch Sala visiting her letters at the New York Public Library, which drew over 25,000 visitors in a special 2006 exhibition. [Play the video courtesy of news12.com]