The Counterfeit Countess

August 1, 2023

While working as a welfare official in Lublin, Poland, during World War II, Jewish mathematician Josephine Janina Mehlberg used a Polish aristocrat's identity papers to pass herself off as Countess Janina Suchodolska, thus rescuing more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by the Germans. Her story, partly drawn from her own unpublished memoir, is told by scholars White, recently retired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and historian Sliwa of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Prepub Alert.

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November 1, 2023
The biography of a Jewish woman who impersonated a Polish countess during World War II to help those suffering during the Holocaust. As White, a former historian for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Sliwa, a historian at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, delineate, this meticulous biography began when White received a long-buried World War II memoir, written in the 1960s by Dr. Janina Mehlberg (1905-1969), in 1989. Although Mehlberg's manuscript covered only her war years, White and Sliwa dig deeper. The authors examine her life as a math professor before and her career after the war in Canada and the U.S. with her husband, philosopher Henry Mehlberg, and they offer a thorough portrait of the larger structure of Polish resistance to German occupation. Working as academics in East Galicia (now Ukraine), the Mehlbergs relied on aristocratic friends to slip under the radar when roundups for Jews began. Spirited to Lublin by an old friend of the family, Count Andrzej Skrzyński, they changed their identities to Count and Countess Sucholdoska. As Skrzyński's adviser, Janina was able to provide food and medicine to prisoners of the Majdanek, which was "designated a concentration camp on February 16, 1943." As an insider, she conveyed messages for the Polish Resistance. The authors show the great risk involved, as "officials had to tread a thin line between service to Poland and collaboration with its enemy." In her memoir, Janina wrote, "If I thought only of the dangers to myself or to those I loved, I was worth nothing. But if surviving meant being useful to many, I had to find the strength to survive." Her bravery in the face of Nazi brutality allowed her to save countless lives, and the authors bring her story to life. A fine delineation of personal heroism amid an era of utter human depravity.

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November 6, 2023
Historians White and Sliwa (Jewish Childhood in Kraków) deliver a powerful biography of Jewish mathematician Janina Spinner Mehlberg (1905–1969), who posed as a Catholic aristocrat during WWII and joined the Polish resistance. Born to a “life of rare privilege for a Polish Jewish girl,” Mehlberg earned a doctorate in 1928, married a fellow student, and settled in Lwow (later Lvov). By 1941 the couple “experienced the full force of Nazi persecution.” After narrowly evading several deadly round-ups, they arrived in Lublin, where a family friend, Count Andrzej Skrzynski, provided them with new identities as Count and Countess Suchodolska. When the German SS took charge of the city, Skrzynski recruited “the Countess” to provide welfare services to prisoners at the Majdanek concentration camp, where she connected with the resistance, aided during a typhus epidemic, and engaged in fraught negotiations with the camp commandant that led in 1943 to the release of more than 3,000 Catholic Poles imprisoned there after their expulsion from territory annexed by Germany in 1939. Drawing from Mehlberg’s private memoir, the authors recreate vivid scenes of horror at Majdanek, describing on one occasion “the smell of burnt hair and roasting flesh.” The result is a heart-wrenching profile of resilience, ingenuity, and heroism.

Starred review from December 1, 2023

Holocaust historians White and Sliwa (Jewish Childhood in Krakow) masterfully piece together the previously untold story of a Jewish mathematician who, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, masqueraded as a countess while she helped free and feed thousands of Poles imprisoned at the Majdanek concentration camp. Josephine Janina Mehlberg (1905-69) was born to a wealthy Jewish family. Shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland, she and her husband obtained forged identity papers. White and Sliwa find her listed under a number of names in historical records (and her recorded age kept getting younger), but her most notable alias was as Countess Janina Suchodolska, an aristocratic identity she took on while trapped in Lublin, Poland. There she worked with the Polish Central Welfare Council to aid malnourished Polish prisoners at Majdanek with regular deliveries of bread, soup, and even, at one point, already-decorated Christmas trees. She also personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters and persuaded SS officials to release thousands of Poles from Majdanek. White and Sliwa draw on numerous archives, genealogical research, and the subject's own unpublished memoir. VERDICT A full portrait of a woman who saved thousands in Nazi-occupied Poland, with broad appeal for readers interested in Holocaust and eastern European history and survivor's stories.--Chad E. Statler

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December 1, 2023
In 1989, a typed memoir surfaced that was purported to be written by Janina Spinner Mehlberg, a Jewish woman who posed as a Polish noblewoman during WWII. Countess Suchodolska supposedly saved thousands of Polish prisoners incarcerated at Majdanek, a notorious work camp. For nearly three decades, researchers strove to verify the manuscript writer's identity, and recent findings led to this engaging biography from Holocaust academics White and Sliwa. Their overarching account offers an abundance of background information on the political and social landscapes in war-torn Europe. The authors' historical commentary alternates with Mehlberg's personal anecdotes and reconstructed conversations. Mehlberg's growing arsenal of survival tactics lends immediacy to her ever-changing circumstances and helps readers fully appreciate the risks she took as she navigated through surreal scenarios. Mehlberg, who survived the war and emigrated to Chicago, describes horrific acts of cruelty and unimaginable suffering. The authors end with a quote from her memoir: ""There is nothing left to do for them but to remember." This extensively documented account serves as powerful testimony.

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