The Counterfeit Countess

The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust

Elizabeth B. White, Joanna Sliwa

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982189143
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

The “remarkable…inspiring” (The Wall Street Journal) true story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir.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Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of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 Holocaust resistance, rescue, and inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Usage Notes
• Maps
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Before
• Chapter Two: The Beginning of the End
• Chapter Three: Terror Comes to Lwów
• Chapter Four: Transformation
• Chapter Five: The Dystopian Utopia
• Chapter Six: Annihilation
• Chapter Seven: “Better to Die a Soldier”
• Chapter Eight: Frozen Cargo
• Chapter Nine: The Polish Question
• Chapter Ten: Majdanek
• Chapter Eleven: Janina’s Lists
• Chapter Twelve: Rescue
• Chapter Thirteen: Soup with a Side of Hope
• Chapter Fourteen: Harvest of Death
• Chapter Fifteen: Christmas at Majdanek
• Chapter Sixteen: Cat and Mouse
• Chapter Seventeen: The Plot
• Chapter Eighteen: The End Approaches
• Chapter Nineteen: Blood on the Stairs
• Chapter Twenty: The End
• Chapter Twenty-One: Flight
• Chapter Twenty-Two: A New Beginning
• Epilogue: “Janina’s Story”
• Photographs
• Coda
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Photo Credits
• Copyright