Bronka Krygier was born in 1925 in Warsaw, Poland. Her parents ran a small shoe manufacturing business. Her father was a very active member of Poland’s Socialist party and she remembers Leon Trotsky visiting their home. When the Warsaw Ghetto was created her family escaped to nearby Wohyn, but later returned without Bronka. Bronka joined various groups of Jewish refugees, Russian POWs, and partisans in the forests. Bronka made her way to Russia and then back to Poland at the end of the war, where she discovered that her family perished in Treblinka. In 1948, Bronka moved to Paris, joined an ORT school and trained as a furrier. There she met and fell in love with Hersz Krygier, also a Polish Holocaust survivor. They were married in 1949 and in 1957 immigrated to Calgary, Canada to be with Hersz’s family. They have four children and five grandchildren.