THE COUNTERFEIT COUNTESS

The previously untold story of the incredible Janina Mehlberg, a young Polish-Jewish mathematician who saved the lives of many inmates of the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp at Lublin in Poland - which she did by posing as a bogus Polish aristocrat.

We are all too familiar with the stories of Jews who were tortured and killed in concentration camps throughout the Third Reich. But less is known about the persecution of Polish prisoners housed in Majdanek, a concentration and extermination camp on the outskirts of the city of Lublin in south-eastern Poland. 

The Counterfeit Countess tells this story through the lens of the efforts of one remarkable woman, herself a Jew, who passed as Polish aristocracy, became a lead official in a Polish relief organisation and an officer in the underground resistance movement known as the Polish Home Army.

Using the false identity of Countess Janina Suchodolska, Josephine Janina Mehlberg persuaded the SS and other Nazi authorities to give her access to prisoners, bringing them soup, clothing, medicine and tending to their needs, and on many occasions having them freed from the camp. This is her story, based upon her own unpublished account.

ISBN: 9781789467475
Imprint: Bonnier
Publication Date: 23 April 2024
Dimensions: 155mm x 234mm
Weight: 440g 
No. Of Pages: 336