Mala Zimetbaum
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Malka Zimetbaum, also known as Mala Zimetbaum (January 26, 1918 - 1944), is considered by many Jews as a great Jewish heroine. She spent roughly two years in the concentration camp Auschwitz as female prisoner number 19880, and used her privileges as a messenger and as the chief interpreter to save countless lives. She would have people sent to easier work when she suspected they were not fit for harder work, she sneaked photographs that people's relatives sent them out of the files so that those people could see them, as they were not allowed to have them in the camp. Mala also got food and medicine for people in need, cheered people up, encouraged them, and scolded them when she felt she had to. She spoke French, Flemish, German, Polish, and Italian, and was trusted by everyone in the camp, staff and prisoners alike.
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[edit] Escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau
Edward "Edek" Galinski and his friend Wieslaw Kielar had been planning to escape even before Edek fell in love with Mala. Edek and his friend got into an argument when the friend lost a pair of SS guard's uniform pants they needed as a disguise for their escape. Edek told his friend that he was going with Mala instead of him, and that he would find a way to send the uniform back to the friend so that he could escape later.
Mala wanted to escape so that she could tell the world what was going on at Auschwitz and thus save lives. She is said in some sources to have been heading to a resistance group.
The plan was as follows: Edek would dress up as the SS guard and escort Mala through the perimeter gate, pretending that he ws escorting a prisoner to install a washbasin. Mala would be carrying a large porcelain washbasin in a way that hid her hair, so that the guards they passed would not know it was a woman he was escorting. Edek would show them a forged pass and they would be let out. Mala would be wearing a pair of overalls over a dress that could pass for a men's shirt when inside the overalls. When they got far enough away, Mala would dump the washbasin, remove the overalls and wear the dress, and they would pretend to be an SS guard and his girlfriend on a walk.
The plan worked. They made it to a town. Mala wanted to buy something. Edek told Mala to stay put somewhere while he went into a store to try and buy some bread with gold he had stolen in the camp. A person in the store became suspicious and called the authorities, who arrived and ordered Edek to take his hat off. When they saw that he was bald-- which most concentration camp prisoners were, and most civilians weren't-- he arrested Edek.
When Edek didn't return, Mala turned herself in. They had promised to stay together, no matter what happened.
[edit] Hurrah! They're back!
Mala and Edek were taken to Block 11 in the main camp at Auschwitz. The block was called the "bunker", as it has several levels of underground cells and the cells that are above ground have black screens over their windows. They were put in separate cells. Edek was eventually put in a group cell with another man. He and the other man initially didn't trust each other but soon they got to know each other and opened up, telling their stories. Even in the dark, Edek scratched his and Mala's names and camp numbers into the cell wall. A friendly guard passed notes to them through a hole in the wall between the cell they were in and an empty one. Sometimes Edek and Mala would whistle to each other down the hall. When outside for exercise, Edek would stand near the window he thought was Mala's cell window and sing an Italian aria.
[edit] Execution Day
Mala and Edek were taken out to be executed, Edek in the men's camp and Mala in the women's camp at the same time.
Edek jumped into the noose before the verdict was read, but the guards put him back on the platform. Edek then shouted something to the effect of "Long Live Poland," the "Poland" catching in his throat because just then, a guard tipped the stool so that he could hang. One person told all the other prisoners to take their hats off as a respect to Edek and they all did, to the fury of one guard in particular.
Meanwhile, Mala took a razor blade out of her hair and slit the veins on the inside of her elbows.
Some people say she said that they would soon be liberated. Some say she shouted at the guard she slapped that she was dying a heroine while he would die a dog. Some say that she shouted at the assembled prisoners to revolt, that is was worth risking their life for and that if they died trying it was better than the situation they were in now in the camp.
She slapped a guard's face with her bloody hand and he grabbed her arm and broke it like a twig. They jumped on her, knocking her to the ground, and taped her mouth shut. An SS officer named Maria Mandel said that an order from Berlin had come to burn Mala alive in the crematorium. They put her on a wheelbarrow and selected several prisoners from the front of the group of onlookers to take her to the nearby camp infirmary.
The nurses bandaged her arms as slowly as possible, trying to make her die as quickly as possible. Mala said weakly to the assembled prisoners, "The day of reckoning is near."
On the way to the crematorium, Mala told the women pulling the handcart she was on that she knew she could have survived, but she chose not to because she wanted to follow what she believed in.
Some said she bled to death on the cart. Some say a guard took pity on her and shot her in the crematorium. Some say a guard took pity on her and gave her poison at the crematorium. Some say she had poison on her and took it before she could be burned alive.
The prisoners forced to cremate the corpses had been informed that Mala was arriving, and they made special preparations. They prayed and cried as they burned her remains. The prisoners who had pulled the handcart then went back to the barracks and told other prisoners what they had witnessed.
[edit] Backstory
Malka Zimetbaum was born in Poland, the youngest of five children. In school as a child, she excelled in mathematics and languages and was dubbed "the intellectual one" in the family by her sister Chaya.
[edit] Biographies
- Gérard Huber: Mala. Une femme juive héroique dans le camp d'Auschwitz-Birkenau. Préface de Simone Veil. Éditions du Rocher, 2006 ISBN 2268058638 (in French) [1] Book Review (in French)
- Lorenz Sichelschmidt: Mala. Ein Leben und eine Liebe in Auschwitz. Bremen 1995 ISBN 3924444897 (in German)
[edit] Mala and Edek links
- Isurvived.org-- survivors tell her story from their point of view, as they remember her
- Mala - A Fragment of a Life by Lorenz Sichelschmidt
- Mala's Last Words by Stephen G. Esrati
- Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters
- Museum of Tolerance: Online Multimedia Learning Center
- [2] Photographs of Mala Zimetbaum
