Bluma Krzepicka papers

Bluma Krzepicka was born Blima Kawałek on March 15, 1927 in Zduńska Wola, Poland. Her father, Szaja Mojsze Kawałek, owned a butcher shop and her mother, Iska Markowicz, took care of the children. Krzepicka had a younger brother, Zalman Josef (b. 1930) and a younger sister, Chaja (b. 1934). The family was forced into the Zduńska Wola ghetto, and in July 1942 Krzepicka was deported to the Łódź ghetto. The rest of her family was murdered at the Chełmno killing center. Krzepicka worked in various workshops in the Łódź ghetto until her deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944. A few weeks later, she was transferred to Waldeslus labor camp, near Hanover, Germany, where she worked building roads and in a salt mine. In January 1945 Krzepicka was transferred to Bergen-Belsen. When the British Army liberated the camp in April 1945, she was 18 years-old and weighed 28 kilograms (approximately 60 lbs). She was taken to a hospital in Malmo, Sweden, to recuperate. In February 1949 she returned to Zduńska Wola and met Hersh Mendel Krzepicki. Krzepicki was a native of Zduńska Wola and survived Auschwitz, Jaworzno, and Buchenwald. The couple married on February 28, 1950. In 1970 they immigrated to Sweden with their two sons and settled in Malmo.

Krzepicka lost all her relatives in the Holocaust, including her maternal grandparents, Ita Małka and Mendel Iser Markowicz; her aunt, Rywka Markowicz Dębowska with her daughter, Ita; Symcha Markowicz, maternal uncle, with his wife and two children, Bronia Brandl Markowicz, a cousin; Chana Markowicz with her three children: Lieba, Mojsze Lajb and Ita. On her father’s side, Krzepicka lost Sara Rywka Krakowska Kawałek, grandmother; Rajzla Kawałek Białek with her husband, Wolf Białek and their two children: Szmulek and Lajb.