Joanna Sliwa

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 This is her story, based upon her own unpublished account.