The Counterfeit Countess by Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa [Audiobook]

🎙🎙🎙 Narrated by Julie Teal 🎙🎙🎙

Description from Goodreads:

"The astonishing 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who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir.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 remarkable, unknown story of “Countess Janina Suchodolska,” a Jewish woman who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Poland’s Nazi occupiers.

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 at 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Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story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 an unforgettable account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty."

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This is another powerful and important story about how one 'normal' woman ended up doing extraordinary things in a time when death was just around the corner and a story that needs to be told and shared with as many people as possible.

Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg, a Jewish mathematician, used a carefully crafted fake identity and an enormous amount of bravery to help save thousands of prisoners in the Majdanek concentration camp all whilst the threat of her identity becoming known hung in the air meaning a likely death sentence.

Written using Dr Mehlberg's memoir, an amazing amount of research and an excellent narrator, The Counterfeit Countess is a story that reads like a film and, in my opinion, needs to made into one so that her story becomes as well known as others such as Schindler's List.

Thank you to the authors, Bonnier UK Audio, John Blake and NetGalley for enabling me to listen to and share my thoughts of this remarkable woman.

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