Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa will be joined by Carol Jason for a conversation* Thursday, November 7, 12 pm Sandler Family Campus
The Counterfeit Countess is an unforgettable account of inspiring courage, resilience, and humanity in the face of unspeakable cruelty. This book is a biography of Jewish mathematician Dr. Josephine Janina Spinner Mehlberg, born May 1, 1905, to wealthy Jewish parents in Poland. Mehlberg posed as Catholic aristocrat Countess Janina Suchodolska during World War II and was able to provide welfare services, food, and supplies to prisoners at Majdanek concentration camp using her alias.
Mehlberg earned her doctorate in 1928 and then met and married a fellow student, Henry, a philosopher, and settled in Lwow (now Lviv), Poland. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the couple fled to Lublin, where a family friend provided them with new identities as Count and Countess Suchodolska. The “Countess” connected with the resistance, provided aid during a typhus epidemic, and negotiated with the camp Commandant, which led to the release of more than 3,000 Catholic Poles.
The Mehlbergs survived the war and emigrated to Chicago, Illinois. In her memoirs, Mehlberg describes horrific acts and suffering during the war, often asking herself, “What made me go on?… If I did not go on, I would have had no reason to live. I had to live and go on to answer the need.” Her story is a call for tolerance, mercy, and hope – a powerful testament to the acts of a Jewish woman who was one of the best frauds ever.
The story reveals that Josephine Janina Spinner Mehlberg was a truly remarkable, brilliant, and quickwitted woman. In her words, “There is nothing left to do for those who perished but to remember. And in the way of my ancestors, intone the Kaddish for the dead, and like the real Countess Suchodolska, WE WILL REMEMBER…”
Sherry Lieberman facilitates the JCC Book Club, which meets on the third Monday of the month at the Simon Family JCC. For more information, contact Mia Klein at MKlein@UJFT.org or 757-452-3184.
*The presentation is part of the Lee & Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival in partnership with the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater. Pre-registration required. Learn more and register at JewishVA.org/BookFest.