The Heroine of Auschwitz

The camp commander announces the death sentence. At that very moment, the prisoner Mala Zimetbaum cuts her wrists with a razor blade. An SS man grabs her by the arm. Mala tears herself free, punches him in the face and shouts, »Murderers, soon you will have to pay.« And to the thousands of Jewish women forced to witness Mala’s execution in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp: »Don’t be afraid, the end is near ... don’t give up, never forget.« The date is September 15, 1944.

Mala Zimetbaum was born to a Jewish-Polish family in Brzesko, east of Krakow, in 1918. After living in Mainz before 1918, the parents and their four children move to Antwerp, Belgium, in 1928. Antwerp is a prosperous city, where Mala works in a boutique. In July 1942, Mala is arrested in a raid; in September that same year, she deported to the women’s camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in September. As an errand girl and interpreter, she gets to know all the operations of large-scale murder. Clever and willing to take risks, she uses her information and successfully puts up resistance: she saves female prisoners from being selected for the gas chambers, ensured that the sick are assigned to easier tasks, establishes contacts between resistance groups. Then she falls in love with the Polish prisoner Edward Galinski. They manage to escape from the camp, but they are captured once again after thirteen days.