Counterfeit Countess, The

Counterfeit Countess, The

by Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 25/01/2024

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'Powerful. . . . A heart-wrenching profile of resilience, ingenuity, and heroism.' Publisher's Weekly


'A story of courage, compassion, and cunning so profound that it must be included with the greatest Holocaust literature. Janina Mehlberg is a heroine for the ages.' - Larry Loftis, New York Times bestselling author of The Watchmaker's Daughter


The Holocaust has given rise to many accounts of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, untold story of 'Countess Janina Suchodolska', a Jewish woman named Janina Mehlberg who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by their country's Nazi occupiers.


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. Incredibly, she eluded detection, survived the war and eventually emigrated to the USA. Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, , historians and Holocaust experts Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa have uncovered the full story of this extraordinary woman.


Unsparing yet inspiring, The Counterfeit Countess is an unforgettable account of selfless courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty, and a major addition to the history of the Holocaust.

ISBN:
9781789467482
9781789467482
Category:
Military history
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
25-01-2024
Language:
English
Publisher:
Bonnier Books UK
Elizabeth White

Elizabeth White, PhD, is a senior historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she regularly speaks to invited audiences and contributes to the museum's online Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. She has also written official statements for the museum, speeches for its top leaders, provided content for its exhibits and social media, and given press, radio, and television interviews.

Prior to working for the USHMM, Dr White spent a career at the US Department of Justice working on investigations and prosecutions of Nazi criminals and other human-rights violators who immigrated to the United States, and has written numerous scholarly articles.

Joanna Sliwa

Joanna Sliwa, PhD, works as Historian at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) in New York, the only organisation that negotiates with the German government for compensation for Jewish Holocaust survivors.

She previously worked in the Global Archives Department at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, where she managed academic initiatives to promote the history of the organization. She has taught Holocaust and Jewish history at Kean University and at Rutgers University and has served as a historical consultant and researcher for PBS television programs, including Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr and In the Name of Their Mothers: The Story of Irena Sendler.

Dr Sliwa's scholarship has been featured in American, British, German, and Polish publications, both edited volumes and journals. Her most recent book, Jewish Childhood in Krakow: A Microhistory of the Holocaust, received the 2020 Ernst Fraenkel Award from the Wiener Holocaust Library in London.

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