THE COUNTERFEIT COUNTESS

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.