Guest post written by author Ellie Midwood with an excerpt from The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz
Ellie Midwood is a USA Today bestselling and award-winning historical fiction author whose works have been translated into 14 languages. She owes her interest in the history of the Second World War to her grandfather, Junior Sergeant in the 2nd Guards Tank Army of the First Belorussian Front, who began telling her about his experiences on the frontline when she was a young girl. Growing up, her interest in history only deepened and transformed from reading about the war to writing about it. Other bestselling novels from Ellie include The Violinist of Auschwitz, The Girl in the Striped Dress, The Girl Who Survived, and most recently, The Girl Who Escaped From Auschwitz.
“Mala, you can’t keep doing this to yourself!”
The feeling was gradually returning to Mala’s frozen-stiff limbs thanks to Zippy’s vigorous rubbing.
“First, you jump into death ditches; now, you’re walking through camp half-naked in the middle of winter because you gave away all your clothes?”
“The Kanada girls will supply me new ones,” Mala countered, her blue lips barely moving. “Those sickbay women don’t have connections like I do.”
“Those women have no conscience!” Zippy snapped, reaching for the small tin of bear fat she kept under her bed. After scooping some nasty-smelling stuff from the half-empty container, she began leathering Mala’s chest and back with it. “Stripping you bare in such a manner, in the middle of winter! Do they wish for you to land in the sickbay as well, with pneumonia?”
Mala made no reply, only grinned faintly as her eyelids grew heavy with sleep. She closed her eyes as the warmth spread through her skin and tuned out the rest of Zippy’s chastising, which, she suspected, her friend knew fell on deaf ears at any rate.
The truth was, Mala never planned on these things. She had never planned on jumping into death ditches as Zippy had called it, just like she never planned on parting with her coat when she had set off for the sickbay to carry out her duties there, matching recovered women to different work details. It was a new coat, a much warmer one that she had already given as a bribe to the doctor who’d promised to look after the Frenchman—her new substitute Papa—she’d saved. But the Slovak girl broke into such gut-churning cries when Mala had announced to her that she would have to work on a farm, sobbing and pointing at her striped dress, the only thing she owned, and pleaded with Mala, claiming that she would certainly die out there in such a threadbare attire that Mala had no choice. The farm detail was considered to be a good unit, albeit being an outside one; food could be had there if one knew how to pinch it right from under the Kapos’ noses and the work wasn’t too backbreaking. But the girl refused to see reason. And so Mala tore the camel-wool coat off herself, gave it to her in helpless frustration and told the girl to get out.
Mala’s teeth were already chattering as she left the somewhat heated sickbay and headed toward the camp office, paperwork in hand, when a woman intercepted her, clung to her sleeve, and asked Mala in broken German if a vest of some sort could be found somewhere. Her mother, who was sick, wouldn’t survive another night in an unheated barrack. Silently, Mala handed her the papers to hold, took her own sweater off and gave it to the stunned woman.
With her warm woollen stockings she parted voluntarily, when an elderly inmate who resembled her grandmother shuffled across her path on stiff, blue bare legs stuffed into wooden clogs, slipping in the snow with a resigned look about her.
Through a fitful half-a-dream, Mala still caught snatches of Zippy’s grumbling, but all the resentment the Slovakian mandolinist and her fellow camp office colleague expressed for the inmate women was easily explained. Just like Mala, she felt powerless to help them all and so, she huffed and cursed—at the women themselves, at Mala, at the camp, and at the sodding SS and their blasted Führer—because she had to vent the frustration at someone, somehow so as not to lose it altogether. But despite all of Zippy’s grumbling remarks, Mala knew that Zippy would have done the same very thing if she were in Mala’s place, and Mala loved her friend all the more for that.
When The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz was just released, one of the most recurring complaints about the story was the idea that Mala had it “too easy” for an Auschwitz inmate and even though I explained the background of my research in my note to the reader at the end of the novel, I felt like the theme of “privileged inmates” has to be addressed once more to explain it better.
Not many people are familiar with the fact that there was a whole complex inmate hierarchy in Auschwitz and while some inmates were at the very bottom of that twisted totem pole (their life expectancy varied from several hours to several weeks at best), there were inmates like Mala who occupied so-called “privileged” positions. As Auschwitz grew and along with it the number of inmates, local SS leaders had to rely on inmate functionaries to aid them in running the camp. The very first inmate functionaries were the infamous Kapos—German criminals mostly, who, in contrast with most Auschwitz inmates, actually had a chance of leaving the camp after serving their term. Their uniforms were marked with Green triangles. They were allowed to carry batons on their belts and administer punishments as they saw fit and pretty much made the inmates’ already unbearable lives a living hell. “Green triangles” occupied the highest position in the inmate hierarchy and were entitled to their own quarters attached to the prisoners’ barracks, almost unlimited food rations (most of the foodstuffs were plundered from the new arrivals’ belongings), and even their own servants who run errands for them in exchange for certain privileges as well.
However, as the war progressed and more and more non-German prisoners arrived in Auschwitz, the SS had no choice but appoint them to certain administrative positions, sometimes disregarding their racial status or political affiliations as long as the inmate was well-qualified for the job. It was this lack of qualified German personnel that saved many Jewish lives which otherwise would have been lost to the gas chamber within mere hours after their arrivals. Jewish physicians found themselves assigned to the camp sickbay and even Dr. Mengele’s infamous quarters in which he conducted his atrocious experiments. Jewish musicians formed an orchestra to entertain the SS. And certain inmates filled administrative positions giving them access to not only different parts of the camp itself but the SS administrative quarters as well.
One of such inmate functionaries was Mala Zimetbaum—a Polish Jew who, thanks to her knowledge of several languages, was assigned a position of an interpreter for the SS. Unlike German Kapos, Mala used her privileged position not to enrich herself at the gassed inmates’ expense, but instead save as many lives as possible. As an interpreter and camp messenger, Mala could move freely around the camp—a privilege in itself which was strictly forbidden to most regular inmates. Making use of her camp pass and knowledge of different languages, Mala quickly formed connections between camp physicians, camp resistance, the Sonderkommando (inmates assigned to the gas chambers), and Kanada commando (inmates, mostly women, assigned to the warehouses in which new arrivals’ belongings were being sorted). She soon became an irreplaceable part of a complicated chain that allowed different details to exchange foodstuffs, medicines, clothes, and even money to bribe SS officials, provide medical aid to those who couldn’t otherwise had access to it, and feed those ready to collapse from starvation.
The excerpt I provided above is a fictionalized account of Mala’s wonderfully good deeds that were only possible due to her selflessness and position in the camp hierarchy. The Kanada was perhaps the most useful detail in this respect as this was the part of the camp that was all but overflowing with clothes, food, alcohol, jewelry, and foreign currency. Since there was only a limited number of SS men assigned to the Kanada warehouses, inmates assigned to it could easily smuggle whatever was needed for different camp details—medicaments and medical instruments for the sick bay, food for regular inmates, gold to bribe German Kapos so that they could assign a certain inmate to a better detail or go easy on someone during work hours. But Kanada inmates couldn’t leave the compound itself to move all of these lifesaving goods. Here’s where Mala came in—an inconspicuous camp messenger, never stopped or searched by SS guards due to her protected status—the angel of Auschwitz who dedicated her days to helping those who would certainly perish without her help.
Naturally it was impossible to save every single life, but what Mala did during her stay in the camp clearly stayed in many inmates’ memories. Years later, multiple survivors mentioned Mala in their memoirs or interviews, recounting with infinite gratitude how she always delivered life-saving medicine, food, and clothes, boots, and blankets “organized” from the Kanada to as many inmates as she could, in many instances saving their lives with her selfless action. It was my utmost honor to write her story while relying on those survivors’ accounts and I couldn’t be happier that the American print edition of The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz was just published in addition to different editions published in multiple languages. It is my hope that as many people as possible read Mala’s incredible true story and it inspires them to keep her memory alive by following her example and perhaps doing something small to help those in need and thus making the world a better place.
