Research Catalog

Title

Mala : Une femme juive héroïque dans le camp d'Auschwitz-Birkenau / Gérard Huber ; [préface de Simone Veil].

Author

Huber, Gérard, 1946-2011

Publication

Monaco : Rocher, 2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Veil, Simone

Description

307 p., [8] p. of plates : ill., facsims., ports.; 22 cm.

Summary

A biography of Mala Zimetbaum, a Jew born in Poland in 1918; in 1928 her family emigrated to Belgium. Zimetbaum was deported from Belgium to Auschwitz in September 1942 and is remembered as a heroine who resisted the Nazis. Thanks to her language skills and strong personality, she worked as a messenger and interpreter, and was allowed to move around the camp freely. She helped many Jewish women by taking their names off extermination lists, joined the resistance, and escaped with her Polish friend Edek Galińkski in 1944. After two weeks they were caught at the Slovakian border, and returned to the camp. They were due to be executed, but Galiński managed to commit suicide; Zimetbaum attempted to commit suicide, was taken to the infirmary, and subsequently died. In the conclusion (pp. 243-253), Huber, a psychoanalyst, discusses Zimetbaum's extraordinary courage from a psychoanalytic point of view. Includes accounts by people who knew Zimetbaum in Auschwitz.

Subject

• Zimetbaum, Mala, 1918-1944
• Auschwitz (Concentration camp) > Biography
• Nazi concentration camp inmates > Poland > Biography
• Jewish women in the Holocaust > Poland > Biography
• 2nd World War German Concentration Camp Shoah Jewish Woman Biography

Genre/Form

Biographies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-[304]) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

2268058638

OCLC

• 68706641
• SCSB-10996457

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library