Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner, born on 10 December 1894 in Berlin, worked as a nursery school teacher. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1917 under the pseudonym Gertrud Kolmar. Her third book of poetry, Die Frau und die Tiere (The Woman and the Animals), was sold after the Night of Broken Glass on 9 November 1938. In November 1938, the family was forced to sell the house they shared. From July 1941 onwards, she performed forced labour in the armaments industry. Her father was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in September 1942 and died there in February 1943. Gertrud Kolmar was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp on 2 March and murdered there.