eBook - ePub

The Counterfeit Countess

Name: The Counterfeit Countess
Author: Elizabeth B. White,Joanna Sliwa

The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust

Elizabeth B. White,

Joanna Sliwa,

336 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

The Counterfeit Countess

The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust

Elizabeth B. White,

Joanna Sliwa,

About this book

The "remarkable…inspiring" ( The Wall Street Journal ) true story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir. World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the astonishing unknown story of "Countess Janina Suchodolska, " a Jewish woman who rescued more than 10, 000 Poles imprisoned by Poland's Nazi occupiers, becoming "a heroine for the ages" (Larry Loftis, author of The Watchmaker's Daughter ).Mehlberg operated in Lublin, Poland, headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, the SS operation that murdered 1.7 million Jews in occupied Poland. Using the identity papers of a Polish aristocrat, she worked as a welfare official while also serving in the Polish resistance. With guile, cajolery, and steely persistence, the "Countess" persuaded SS officials to release thousands of Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp. She won permission to deliver food and medicine—even decorated Christmas trees—for thousands more of the camp's prisoners. At the same time, she personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters imprisoned in Majdanek, where 63, 000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits. Incredibly, she eluded detection, and ultimately survived the war and emigrated to the US.Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg's sometimes harrowing personal testimony with broader historical narrative. Like The Light of Days, Schindler's List, and Irena's Children, The Counterfeit Countess is a "riveting…stunning" (Debbie Cenziper, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Citizen 865 ) account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

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Yes, you can access The Counterfeit Countess by Elizabeth B. White,Joanna Sliwa in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.