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The Counterfeit Countess · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

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I'm Rabbi Ami Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and
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you're listening to In These Times.
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The Countess Janina Sukhodolska saved as many as 10, 000 prisoners
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from the Majdanek concentration camp in Nazi occupied Poland.
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Fluent in German, this self assured aristocratic woman negotiated with
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the Nazi and SS officials in Lublin.
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to secure the release of thousands of Poles at Majdanek and save thousands more
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through deliveries of food and medicine.
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Countess Sukhodolska was stubborn and persistent.
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She never accepted no for an answer, and when she got a yes, she considered
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it an invitation to ask for more.
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It might not be so surprising that this noble and elegant woman was secretly
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a member of the Polish resistance.
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But her comrades in the underground Polish Home Army had no idea that Countess
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Janina Sukadowska was, in actuality, a Jew and not a Countess at all, and
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that her real name was Janina Mehlberg.
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Janina died in Chicago in 1969, and her story was almost lost to history.
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Eventually, Dr.
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Barry White, a Holocaust historian and Department of Justice Nazi hunter,
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received Janina's incomplete memoir.
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A new mother with a busy job, Barry had neither the time nor the Polish
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language skills to verify the incredible account, but haunted by a
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sense of responsibility to history, Barry eventually connected with Dr.
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Joanna Sliva, an expert on the Holocaust in Poland, and the two set
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about researching Janina's story.
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Published in January of this year.
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Their book, The Counterfeit Countess brings Janina's story
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to light in stunning detail.
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Dr.
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White and Dr.
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Sliva, welcome to In These Times.
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Thank you so much for having us.
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This is a great opportunity for which we are very grateful.
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I was very taken by, uh, the Fantastic story that came to
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light by virtue of your research.
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Before we even get into the story itself, there's a background
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story to how you discovered all the details of Janina's life.
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So, can you tell us about that?
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It took quite a few years to uncover her story and verify it.
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Yes.
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Well, this goes all the way back to 1989 when I gave an academic conference paper
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on Majdanek Concentration Camp, which was located in German occupied Lublin, Poland.
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Uh, during World War II, after the panel, a historian I didn't know
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handed me a package containing a carbon copy manuscript.
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He said it was the memoir of Janina Mehlberg, a Polish Jewish
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mathematician who had aided prisoners at Majdanek while pretending to
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be a Polish Christian aristocrat.
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Mailburg had died in Chicago in 1969.
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She didn't have any children.
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And there had been efforts to publish the memoir, but they hadn't succeeded.
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So this historian was going to give it to a couple of archives, including at the
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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But he really wanted me to take this copy because I was writing about Majdanek.
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And so he hoped that I could make the story known.
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So I read this story with just.
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Increasing astonishment because Yanina mail bird claimed that she survived
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the Holocaust in German, occupy Poland, posing as the Countess Suka.
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Uh, and she used this aristocratic guise to become an official of a
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Polish relief organization that.
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The Germans allowed to operate in Poland, but only to help non Jewish Poles.
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Her job included negotiating with Nazi and SS officials in Lublin because
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she had to And so she was, according to her memoir, extraordinarily
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persistent in her negotiations.
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And a particular focus of her efforts was at Majdanek, uh, where she continually
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badgered the SS for permission for her organization to bring in ever increasing
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quantities of supplies for the prisoners.
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to the point that she was bringing in supplies.
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Food and other supplies for thousands of prisoners five days a week.
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And she brought these deliveries herself inside the camp, a place
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where 63,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits.
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And she not only brought these deliveries, but she also used them as cover.
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Just smuggled messages and supplies from members of the
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resistance imprisoned in the camp.
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So I found this story so incredible that I really had to
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question whether it was true.
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I could imagine writing something about the memoir and then having the real
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countess of her descendants come forward.
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and accused me of fraud.
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So I couldn't use the memoir without verifying it, and I didn't have
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any way to do so then, particularly because I don't know Polish.
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So I figured another historian would come across it in the archives and do
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what was necessary to bring it to light.
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But that didn't happen for years, decades.
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And I never forgot this incredible story.
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And um, so then in 2017, I really started digging into who Janina Nailberg was,
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and I found just enough to make me think that she probably was the Countess.
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And that's when I reached out to Joanna, whom I only knew by reputation.
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As an expert on the Holocaust in Poland.
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And when she read the memoir, she was all in for investigating Yanina's
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life and bringing her memoir to light.
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Johanna, did you, when you heard the story, you heard it first from Barry, then
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you read the documents, did you, did you immediately think this had to be true?
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Well, the way that Barry and I were connected, we did not know each other.
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We were connected through my former doctoral advisor.
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She was a fellow at the Holocaust Museum where Barry worked.
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And Professor Dwork reached out to me and said, I met with the
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historian, Elizabeth Barry White.
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She's working on this fascinating project.
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Would you be interested to meet with her and to discuss this?
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And I thought, wow, what a fascinating story.
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I'd never heard anything like that.
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And I was immediately drawn to the topic.
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Then Barry shared with me the manuscript and I read it.
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And, of course, similarly to Barry's first reactions, it was great astonishment.
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Could this be true?
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But Barry already had, as she mentioned, some details that made her
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think that this story could be true.
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And so we are professional historians.
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We read many memoirs, diaries, listen to oral histories of survivors, and we
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know that they had sometimes incredible stories of survival during the Holocaust.
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And as historians, of course, we have to approach it.
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with caution and, and try to corroborate the information, but we cannot dismiss it
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offhand as something that didn't happen because of our background, because of
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our expertise of what we know about, uh, about the history of the Holocaust and the
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Jewish experience during the Holocaust.
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And so we immediately started looking for, for, or information
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for historical records, genealogical records to corroborate what
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Yanina wrote in her memoir.
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And we were successful.
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And Yanina was her, the whole thrust of the story is that she was a con
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artist, uh, albeit for all the right reasons, but she managed to fool
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so many people, monsters really, uh, with unbelievable courage.
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You think about it, just walking into Majdanek, if she would, and you write
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this in the book, if she was discovered or if she faltered in some way to
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raise suspicions, um, she herself would have, um, been tortured and eventually
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killed, uh, but she was a con artist.
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So did, did you have any doubt, um, that maybe her memoirs were
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either not true at all, or, you know, they, they were exaggerated?
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Well, uh, I, I don't know that I doubted it exactly.
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She had details about Mydonic that were consistent with somebody who,
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who really, uh, had been there.
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Um, things that most people wouldn't know about it.
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She also got some things wrong.
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But those were the kinds of things that, you know, from, she wouldn't have
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understood that because she didn't see that part of the camp, for example.
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So, uh, so there were things about it that made me think that it was
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true, but I couldn't just accept it on face value as a historian.
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I had to.
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I had to verify it and, and, and not just that she was the Countess, but also
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verify a lot of her claims in the memoir.
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The end, we found out that her memoir doesn't even do justice to what
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she accomplished during the war.
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Hmm.
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Why do you think, I mean, it's an exceptional story and really sheds light
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on so many human attributes that you talk about in the book as well as, uh, it.
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It, it adds breadth to our historical understanding of the Holocaust, uh,
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and of course, from my perspective about human nature itself.
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But why do you think such an unusual, exceptional story never came to light?
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Until now, your, your book was published in 2024.
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Why didn't she speak about it or, or did she, or why didn't it catch
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some kind of wave that would have brought it to public attention?
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So part of the reason was that Janina, She continued to live under her wartime
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false identity even after the war.
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She worked for a Polish social welfare organization, which was run by the
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Polish communist government at the time.
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And she felt too dangerous to reveal her identity because
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that would elicit questions.
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How did you get that identity?
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Who helped you?
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Also, she was protecting the people, the Polish people, non Jews who helped her.
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survive during, during the Holocaust and who are part of the resistance,
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Polish resistance with her.
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So Janina escaped from Poland in 1950.
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She reached Canada at first, where her husband already was
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there holding a fellowship.
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And in 1956, Henry, her husband and Janina Melberg, emigrated to the United States.
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They settled in Chicago.
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And Yanina did not speak publicly about her experiences.
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And if we think about it, that makes sense because many survivors did
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not speak about their experiences.
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We did not have this kind of Holocaust education that we have today.
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Holocaust survivors did not go into the classrooms.
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They were not interviewed to the extent that they have been since
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the 80s, 90s, even going into today.
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Perhaps also, you know, Nina knew that her story seemed so incredible, who
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would believe her at the time, but at the same time, she thought it was important
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to put that on paper, which she did.
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And we believe it was in the 1960s, she passed away in 1969, that she wrote
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her memoir toward the end of her life.
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And also in a particular historical, political, social context.
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In the 1960s, there was.
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A lot of state sponsored anti Semitism.
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That was cloaked as anti Zionism in Poland.
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And the culmination of that was 1968 when about 30, 000 Polish Jews were
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forced out of Poland and many of them emigrated to Israel, but also to
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Denmark, Sweden, the United States.
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And at that time in the 1960s, there was also this narrative that That
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the Polish communist government was promoting about, you know, how
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the Polish people were courageous.
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They were rescuers of Jews.
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You are not collaborators.
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And that the Jews were ungrateful to, to the Polish people who saved them.
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That the Jews were promoting this anti Polish narrative abroad.
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And Janina's memoir is a response to that, and the memoir was written in Polish.
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It was only translated by Janina's husband, Henry, later on, which also
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indicates to us that the intended readers were Polish speakers,
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Poles, who knew this history.
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Because if you read Janina's memoir, Uh, without any context, a reader today
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would have difficulty understanding what is it exactly that she's talking about.
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You know, the, what was it like with Majdanek and the
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German policies toward Poles?
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You need that historical context to understand fully Yamina's activities, her
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decisions, and how exceptional she was and how exceptional it was what she did.
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So, can we get to, how does a Jewish mathematician that you described as a
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brilliant mathematician end up to assume the identity of a Polish countess?
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Well, she had a life of very unusual privilege growing up.
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She was from what was then called Eastern Galicia, which was then a
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multi ethnic, multi lingual, multi religious area under the control of
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Austria Hungary before World War I.
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Then Poland between the wars and today is Ukraine.
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And her father was actually a wealthy estate owner.
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So she grew up mixing in the society at the local Polish nobility, learning
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their manners and customs, also absorbing their Polish nationalism.
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And so that really helped her to carry off her role as a countess
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to be very, very convincing as this Countess Janina Sykudolska.
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And it was also, uh, through her connections that.
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She was able to become the Countess because, uh, she and her husband,
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Henry Mehlberg were living in the city of Lvov then, today it's
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Lviv, Ukraine, uh, before the war.
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And in 1941, they were about to be forced by the Nazi occupiers to move into a tiny
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ghetto with 100, 000 other Jews in Lvov.
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And they knew that death awaited them there.
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But at the last moment.
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Janina's old family friend, Count Andrzej Skrzynski showed up.
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He was a member of the Resistance, and he said, if you can get to
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Lublin, I can get you false paper.
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And so that's how they became Count and Countess Sigadowski.
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And it's also through Skrzynski that Janina joined the Polish
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resistance and became an official of the Polish relief organization that
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was known by its initials, the RGO.
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So, and Majdanek is literally right outside of Lublin.
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So that, that's how she ended up doing work in Majdanek.
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Is that right?
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Yes, it was right on the edge of Lublin.
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Um, it was fascinating because I could talk for a long time about it.
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But it was the first, uh, concentration camp and the only major one that the
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SS, So, uh, the SS was established outside the borders of what during
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World War II was the Third Reich.
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So Auschwitz, for example, was in annexed Polish territory.
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So Majdanek was established in the midst of this hostile population and
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part of its function was to terrorize the local population into obedience.
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So the, the SS didn't do that.
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Go to much effort to try to keep what was happening there secret.
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There were no walls around it.
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It was right on a major road.
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People in Lulin could look down on it from the hill above it, neighboring
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village people could actually see into one of the prisoner compounds.
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So what was going on there was pretty much an open secret.
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So what is Yanina?
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So how does she get going?
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in, uh, Majdanek.
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What brings her the first time to Majdanek?
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Who sent her?
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Why was she there?
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And how did she win the trust of, uh, the Nazi officials there?
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So she was working for this organization, the RGO, in a part of Poland that
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was called the General Government, and her organization was allowed
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to provide for non Jewish Poles.
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The Germans had no interest in taking care of their Polish subjects, so they
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were fine with letting this volunteer organization help all of the, the
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hundreds of thousands of Poles who were being displaced from their homes or,
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um, the families of those were left behind when Poles were taken off for
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forced labor and the Reich and so forth.
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Um, and in, uh, 19, the early 1943, uh, thousands of non Jewish
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Poles were sent to Majdanek.
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And this is what gave the RGO standing to ask for permission to provide
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a food for those Poles because the RGO was able to do that for prisons
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within the general government.
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And so when the RGO got that permission, Yanina was put in
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charge of the whole operation.
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So that's how she got going at Majdanek.
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As a Countess.
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As the Countess.
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As the Countess Sikorska.
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Everybody thought she was a Countess, including, including
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the people from the resistance.
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Nobody knew her real identity, is that right?
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Nobody but Sikorska, yeah.
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And what do you think resides in the heart of somebody like that too?
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I don't know if she was fearless.
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I, I don't, you know, it's hard to say what courage really is.
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What, what was part of her makeup that drove her to do these kinds of acts
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of unbelievable courage and daring and sustained her for a long time.
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She was doing this for, for, it was close to two years, I think.
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Just kept on going back and forth and back and forth and saving
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all these, what eventually ended up to be thousands of people.
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What, what exists in the heart of that kind of person that
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doesn't exist in other people?
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Janina very quickly understood as A witness, but also as a victim, that
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her chances of survival as a Jew, when she was still in Lwów, were small.
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She also understood, even though she was trying to survive under the false identity
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of a, of a Catholic Paul and someone from the higher social class, a Countess, that
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still, she was slated for destruction.
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Um, as were other Poles through Nazi policy that was aimed against
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the Polish people as well in a different way than against the Jews.
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So she understood that her life and survival would not mean much if she
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didn't use it to help other people.
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And I think this realization drove her actions.
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But on other factors as well, uh, Janina grew up in this kind of Polish
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environment filled with patriotism and Janina felt very much as a Pole.
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She understood that she was not in a position to help Jews.
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And so Janina focused on the people whom she thought she could save.
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the Polish people, the non Jews.
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And Rabbi Hirsch, you asked earlier, you know, how did she just kind of walk in and
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talk with these, with these Germans and managed to, uh, to get what she wanted.
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She was, uh, as we understand, a charismatic woman who, as Barry mentioned
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earlier, did not take no for an answer, and she continued to press and press.
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And she framed her request as something that was so obvious to the Germans
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that of course they would agree to it because it was in their best interest
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to feed the Poles because how else would these Polish people work for
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the Germans if they didn't get fed.
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So she had these skills, these social skills, people skills, fluency in
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the, in the language, this cultural acumen all combined together Allowed
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her to do what she, what she did.
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And I think this also contributed to her motivation that she recognized
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that this works, that she can persuade this official and that official.
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And she continued doing it on and on, and she believed in her persona.
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She assumed her false persona as if the Jewish.
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Side of her had to be dissociated in order for her to become fully a Polish Catholic.
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Countess focused on negotiating with the German and Nazi officials and helping
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the Polish people because only then would Poland hopefully emerge and survive.
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Yeah,
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and I would just add that she was not fearless and she admits that she was
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very much afraid, uh, at many times.
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Uh, which I think is, is what makes, that's, that's real courage when you're
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afraid and yet you still go forward.
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Uh, and when she, there's a point in the book where, uh, Henry,
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there's a raid on their street.
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The Germans are taking men off probably for forced labor.
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She's convinced Henry's going to be seized.
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And once he undergoes a physical examination, the fact that they're
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Jews will be revealed because only Jewish men were circumcised in Poland.
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And at that point, it suddenly becomes clear to her, okay, so I
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got to stop worrying about how to survive and start worrying about
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how to spend what's left of my life.
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And how do I die a meaningful death?
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And the answer then was obvious to her.
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And the answer then was obvious to her.
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Resisting the Germans and saving as many of their victims as she possibly could.
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Can I ask you what your sense is of her Jewish identity?
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Uh, you said that there were people who, when she died,
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didn't even know she was Jewish.
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I've met a lot of, uh, children of survivors who tell me stories about how
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their parents consciously suppressed.
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Uh, their Jewishness for whatever reason, including, uh, some lingering
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fear that it's not a safe thing to reveal Jewishness and a feeling that
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was, uh, intensified after the war.
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Uh, what was her Jewish identity?
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Did, did she have a strong Jewish identity?
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We understand from the sources that we have.
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That Yanina came from an assimilated background.
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She was exposed to a variety of languages, a variety of people.
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She received secular education.
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She obtained her PhD in 1928 in mathematics.
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from the Yom Kippur University, a prestigious university in Lviv.
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And she had a religious wedding, a Jewish religious wedding.
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At the time, there were no civil marriages.
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So in order for her to get married, she had to have a religious wedding.
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But the question of her, you know, how Jewish was she in terms of her identity?
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Uh, I think it's very hard to say because she does not engage
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with that question in her memoir.
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She just does not discuss her Jewish identity.
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And yes, even after the war, that may have something to do with the continued
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antisemitism that persisted in Poland after the war, the violence that
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Holocaust survivors faced when they were returning to their hometowns, when they
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were trying to reclaim their property, when they were coming out of hiding.
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When they were returning to their Jewish identities, Jewish names after the war.
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Uh, so I think that had something to do with that, but I think she was
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just, the background that she came from was highly secular and that's how
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she continued to live after the war.
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So there's no record of her when she gets to Canada or America engaging the
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Jewish community in any way or some kind of involvement in a synagogue or even
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observing some kind of ritual at home.
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We have some information that when Janina arrived in, in Canada, that
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she and Henry may have been to some extent involved in the Jewish
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community there, but probably more for social reasons rather than religious.
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However, I would say that what she did, her, her decisions, her actions,
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To a large extent, guided by Jewish values, if we think about it, right?
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So of course we have this idea of, uh, you know, Judaism of tzedek, right?
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This justice that would pursue justice, um, but what does justice mean?
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And I think for when we consider Yanina's story, it's this care for
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other people, pursuing justice for other people, for those who are oppressed.
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Those who are in more difficult circumstances than she was, um, as
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you know, we talk a lot about in, uh, in, in the Jewish world about
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tikkun olam and what does that mean?
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And I think we can also talk about tikkun olam in, in, about
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in the context of Yanina's story.
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About in what way was she trying to repair the world and was it through
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her connection and her commitment, her dedication to the survival of Poland
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and the Polish people through building bridges between the Jews and, uh, and
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the Poles through her actions, right?
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She was just one person doing this.
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And we talked about courage, we talked a lot about courage all night, right?
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And so she had a lot of courage to know a Jewish woman trying to survive
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the Holocaust as a Jew and confidently walking into a German office including
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To one Nazi official who was the manager of Operation Reinhardt, the
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mass killing of two million Polish Jews.
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She spoke with him in person.
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She negotiated with him and he was very accommodating to, to her requests.
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So I think, I think there is much in this story, uh, in the story of
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Janina, Janina Malberg to talk about how Jewish values shape her actions.
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I was fascinated by passages in your book that bring forth the
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dichotomy of the human character.
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You point out that she pointed out that, um, when she looked at, uh, this, just
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this terrible laboratory of how human beings behave, that you evilly and evil.
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people who had some positive attributes.
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Could you expand on that a little bit and explain more of the way she saw the world?
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Yes.
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She writes about people who were her enemies, that Ukrainian janitor
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she'd been friendly with, just, you know, she would chat him up.
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And at one point she helped one of his children when when the child was sick.
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But he was in a Ukrainian militia that was dragging Jews off to to mass shootings.
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And she saw him do that to the former landlord of the building where he
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had worked, that was right across the street from where they live.
29:56
And then the next day, the Ukrainians came to their building and Yanina told Henry
30:03
to hide and she answered the door to, planning to pretend that she was there.
30:08
So, um, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the story?
30:15
So, we have a story.
30:19
And the janitor says, Oh, that's right.
30:22
I saw the Mailbergs leave a little earlier.
30:25
And so then they moved on and he saved both their lives.
30:29
And she writes about other instances of people who were
30:32
involved in terrible crimes, uh, and yet who took risks to help her.
30:38
Occasionally, even like the janitor, save her.
30:41
And she was also very well aware that, that some of the Poles who risked their
30:46
lives alongside of her, who she rescued, who lit candles and said prayers for
30:52
the safety of Countess Sukhodolska would have despised her and maybe done worse
30:58
if they had known that she was a Jew.
31:01
Uh, and um, her specialty as a mathematician was probability.
31:06
So she was continually calculating the odds for success of her actions and
31:13
trying to figure out whether the risks outweighed the chances of success.
31:19
And she found that she could never predict whether a particular person
31:24
would help her or harm her in a given situation based just on that person's.
31:30
And she also came to see that none of this is completely defined by either
31:39
the worst or the best that we do.
31:42
And so she decided for herself, she believed in justice, she
31:46
believed in accountability.
31:48
But for herself, she would not pass judgment on others.
31:52
She recognized the terrible choices.
31:56
And she writes very movingly about the terrible choices that the
31:59
occupation forced people to make.
32:01
And so she approached each person simply as a fellow member of what she described
32:06
as the vast suffering human family.
32:09
And if they were suffering, she thought it was her human duty to help them.
32:14
I'm reading from the very end of your book where you, you write Janina's
32:19
memoir is a call to tolerance and her belief in the fundamental value
32:24
and dignity of every human life.
32:27
Then you point out that from her memoir, she provides examples of Ukrainian Poles
32:31
and Germans who demonstrated both the capacity for what she termed goodness
32:36
for kindness, courage and self sacrifice.
32:39
And the capacity to be evil, to be dishonest, vicious, and even murderous.
32:43
She recognized that both capacities are inherent elements of human nature.
32:48
Did she include in that description Nazis that she met in occupied
32:53
Poland and especially in Majdanek?
32:56
Uh, yes, I would say, um, she did.
33:00
Certainly some of the SS at Majdanek helped her.
33:03
One at very considerable risk to his own life, uh, when the late spring of 1944, a
33:11
new commandant came in and prohibited the RGO from sending any supplies to the camp.
33:17
This particular SS and CEO.
33:21
would actually go to her office and pick up packages for the
33:24
prisoners and take them into a camp.
33:27
You, uh, write here that her beliefs included grounds for both cynicism and
33:33
hope, while heroes are naturally flawed.
33:36
By the way, Joanna, this is, this is another of that very Jewish
33:41
personality that, uh, Uh, you were talking about Judaism spends reams
33:48
of documents and centuries of thought about how heroes are naturally flawed.
33:54
In fact, there is no hero in Jewish tradition that is not flawed.
33:58
What the What makes them heroes is that they're flawed and
34:02
they overcome their flaws.
34:03
But you're right.
34:04
So while heroes are by nature flawed, villains may have the
34:07
capacity to prove heroic too.
34:10
It's a provocative way of describing it.
34:13
I understand what you meant and what you understood her to mean.
34:19
Uh, when we think of villains, you know, our natural assumption,
34:23
our initial assumption is.
34:25
Yeah.
34:25
Irredeemable villains, you know, and we think of Nazis, but it is part of
34:30
the Jewish hope and Jewish teaching and we see this Throughout the way the
34:35
Jewish calendar is set up as well that the road to redemption is open to Every
34:42
person that we need not be defined exclusively Or even primarily by the
34:49
worst of what we do, that we can rectify, make atonement, ask for forgiveness
34:56
and embark on a different path.
34:59
So I wonder if either of you or both of you, maybe you want to give us
35:03
a final word and summary of what you learned and what you think
35:08
the readers should be taking away.
35:12
I think there is much to take away from this book.
35:14
I think we covered so many topics today, you know, in
35:18
terms of values and motivations.
35:20
It's what makes people make certain decisions in particular contexts.
35:25
And another thing I think that is really important, it was really
35:30
important for us when researching and writing this book, was to present
35:35
a fuller picture of the history.
35:39
of World War II, uh, and the Holocaust in Poland, and to bring
35:46
to attention, especially to English language readers, the oppression
35:52
and the persecution that non Jewish Poles faced during World War II.
35:58
There is a lot of misunderstanding, um, about, you know, what the
36:02
Polish people went through.
36:03
There is a lot of, you know, this politically driven narratives
36:08
about who suffered more.
36:10
And there is no such thing, you know, competitive suffering, um,
36:14
is such a useless, useless concept.
36:18
Uh, we, we, if we can't talk about it in this way, it's, I think it's,
36:22
it's, it's better to understand what different groups went through based
36:27
on the racial hierarchy that was assigned to them by the Nazi rulers.
36:35
And so we hope that with this book, our readers will gain a better understanding.
36:40
of the complexities of World War II and Nazi rule in, in Poland, that they would
36:45
also gain a better understanding of Majdanek, which was a major camp of, of
36:53
persecution for both Jews and for Poles and for prisoners of other nationalities.
36:59
But I think I would just like to make this, highlight this point is that one
37:03
person can and does make a difference.
37:08
And Count Andrzej Skrzynski, the non Jewish Pole who hopped on the
37:13
first civilian train from Lublin to Lviv, he made the conscious decision
37:18
to risk, you know, his life too, and smuggle the Mellbergs, help the
37:24
Mellbergs by bringing them to Lublin.
37:27
One person makes a difference, Janina.
37:30
She could have, you know, assumed this kind of a low profile, understandably so,
37:37
to try to survive under a false identity.
37:40
But she did not.
37:42
She used her position, her newly acquired identity, to help others.
37:49
And she was successful, although she did not believe that she was
37:53
fully successful in her efforts.
37:55
But she did manage to save close to 10, 000 Polish people.
38:01
Yeah, or more.
38:02
We don't really know how many more people survived because of the
38:06
relief that she was able to provide to them, particularly at Majdane.
38:11
Uh, and I, I just want to add also that, um, the book really shines, as does her
38:17
memoir, shines a light on the amazing efforts that Poles made to resist the
38:23
Germans and to help each other survive.
38:25
So the Poles were subjected to basically starvation rations, and yet much of
38:31
those supplies that Ingvina was bringing in to the prisoners at Majdanek was
38:36
donated by the local population.
38:39
Despite the terrible conditions that they were in,
38:42
we, we started our conversation with, you know, the question, how
38:47
did Barry, uh, learn about the story?
38:50
And, you know, we talked about these feelings of, you know,
38:52
astonishment and, uh, you know, the need to corroborate and so on.
38:57
And I think now we understand the importance of individual stories.
39:04
of not dismissing an account just because it's challenging for us intellectually,
39:11
because we can learn a lot from it.
39:14
I want to thank both of you, Barry and Joanna, for the diligence of your
39:19
research, for writing this fabulous book.
39:22
biography of a person, uh, basically none of us would have, uh, known
39:28
about had, uh, you not researched it and brought it to light.
39:33
Uh, and it's a fantastic read.
39:35
I urge everybody to go out, buy the book.
39:38
It's called The Counterfeit Countess and, uh, learn some important history.
39:44
And from my perspective, as important, Learn about the character
39:48
and the nature of the human condition and the human creature.
39:52
So thank you very, very much for what you've done.
39:55
I wish you much success and keep delivering the message to
39:59
as many audiences as you can.
40:02
Thank you very much for having us.
40:03
Thank you.
40:08
What an incredible story.
40:11
There are probably thousands of such acts of surpassing heroism from the
40:15
Holocaust period that have not yet come to light or perhaps never will.
40:20
Dr.
40:20
White and Dr.
40:21
Sliva have done a tremendous service, first to Janina Mehlberg herself.
40:26
They have forever sealed her place in the annals of our people's heroes, and
40:30
they have shed more light on and deepened our understanding of the Holocaust.
40:35
I especially appreciated that through this detailed account of
40:39
one person's exceptional courage, we learn more about human nature itself.
40:45
As Drs.
40:46
White and Sliva wrote.
40:48
Yanina's memoir is a meditation on human nature.
40:52
She witnessed both the worst and the best of human capabilities.
40:56
She saw that people who engaged in murderous cruelty could still commit
41:00
acts of surprising kindness and even self sacrifice, and that people who
41:05
routinely risked their lives to save others could be self serving or hateful.
41:11
This reflects ancient Jewish wisdom.
41:14
The prophet Jeremiah wrote, most devious is the heart.
41:17
It is perverse who can fathom it?
41:21
Human beings are such a piece of work.
41:24
We are merciful.
41:25
We practice friendship.
41:27
We give and receive love.
41:29
Yet often darkness eclipses our splendor.
41:34
We are capable of admiration and envy.
41:35
At the same time, we can express compassion and ego in the same act.
41:41
We may be charitable and un charitable in one fell swoop.
41:45
For every noble impulse in us, it seems that an equal and
41:48
opposite impulse pulls us down.
41:51
Plato equated the human condition to that of a charioteer, whose
41:55
horses pull in different directions.
41:58
We try to ride the right road of life, but these wild stallions of our personality
42:02
keep pulling us in opposite directions.
42:05
A fierce struggle rages inside each of us.
42:08
An unrelenting civil war between our competing inclinations.
42:14
Such a twisted thing cannot be made straight, Ecclesiastes wrote.
42:19
The rabbis termed our propensity for virtue, yetzir ha tov, the good impulse,
42:24
and our inclination for corruption, yetzir ha rah, the bad impulse.
42:29
Jewish tradition never sought to deny our problematic side.
42:33
The sages taught that this, too, is part of the human condition,
42:37
hardwired into our system.
42:40
But they insisted that we can master our impulses and overcome.
42:44
They asserted that even our negative drives can be good.
42:48
Ambition, competitiveness, ego, profit.
42:51
These are what push us to achieve, excel, and propel human progress.
42:57
The sages were skeptical that altruism alone would be a powerful enough motive
43:02
for hard work, success, and invention.
43:05
Our tradition believes that for practically all of us, There's no such
43:09
thing as pure and utter selflessness.
43:13
Human beings were not designed that way.
43:15
Therefore, the rabbis taught that our goal is not to eliminate
43:18
our problematic inclination.
43:20
To deny our negative side is to deny ourselves.
43:24
On its face, this side of our personality is not even negative,
43:28
it is neutral, simply who we are.
43:31
It becomes undesirable, through excess, by our inability to control ourselves.
43:38
The sage Ben Zoma asked, Who is strong?
43:41
He responded, One who masters himself.
43:44
Judaism teaches that we can increasingly master our problematic
43:47
impulses through fortitude, self control, and self discipline.
43:52
If one desires to turn himself to the path of good and be righteous,
43:56
the choice is his, Maimonides wrote.
43:59
Should he desire to turn to the path of evil and be wicked, the choice is his.
44:05
The devil made me do it is no excuse in Jewish tradition.
44:08
If we are unable to restrain ambition, ego, envy, lust, attraction,
44:13
hunger for power, they will grow stronger and eventually destroy us.
44:18
It is a constant daily struggle.
44:20
Rabbi Isaac said, A person's evil desire renews itself daily against him.
44:26
It grows stronger within him from day to day.
44:29
At first, the sages taught, it's like a thread of a spider.
44:34
But ultimately, it becomes like cart ropes.
44:38
According to Jewish sages, only when we have mastered ourselves
44:42
can we say that we are truly free.
44:45
The rabbis insisted that we can prevail against ourselves.
44:49
They explain, One day, the Holy One will bring the evil inclination
44:54
before the righteous and the wicked.
44:56
To the righteous, it will have the appearance of a towering hill, and
45:01
to the wicked, it will have the appearance of a strand of hair.
45:06
Both the righteous and the wicked will weep.
45:08
The righteous will weep, saying, How were we able to overcome such a towering hill?
45:15
The wicked will weep, saying, How is it that we were unable
45:19
to overcome this strand of hair?
45:22
The rabbis do not simply describe the problem.
45:24
They offer a solution.
45:27
The Talmud states, the Holy One spoke unto Israel, My children, I
45:32
created the evil impulse, but I also created the Torah as its antidote.
45:37
If you occupy yourselves with Torah, you will not be delivered
45:41
into the hands of the evil impulse.
45:43
The school of Rabbi Ishmael taught, if this repulsive wretch meets you,
45:48
drag him to the house of study.
45:52
It's a classic Jewish approach.
45:53
What is the method to deal with our daily struggle to control ourselves?
45:57
Study and reflection.
46:00
We converse with and gain access to the greatest minds of history.
46:05
You We come to understand that we are not alone.
46:09
All human beings struggle with the same impulses.
46:12
We can overcome.
46:14
We can master our straying hearts and our self absorbed minds.
46:18
We can learn to do it by learning how others have done it.
46:23
We do not seek to eliminate the joy of food but to control our appetite.
46:27
We do not seek to eliminate the joy of wine but to control our sobriety.
46:32
We do not seek to eliminate our acquisition of material resources.
46:36
Poverty is not a virtue in Judaism, but to find balance
46:40
between consuming and sharing.
46:42
Enjoy food, but don't be a glutton.
46:45
Enjoy wine, but don't be a drunk.
46:48
Be ambitious, but don't be an egomaniac.
46:53
Influence others, but don't be authoritarian.
46:57
Lead, but don't be a tyrant.
47:00
The sages advise avoiding even the first step on the wrong path, because it may
47:05
be impossible to resist the next step.
47:08
It is the first wrong steps that count, wrote Mark Twain.
47:13
Odysseus orders his men to tie him to the mast as their ship
47:16
passed the island of the sirens.
47:19
Even he, the commander of men, could not command himself to resist
47:23
the temptation of the siren song.
47:25
He knew that even one alluring note could Could lead to his downfall.
47:30
The more one yields to one's passions, the more mastery they gain over him.
47:36
Rabbi Yisrael Kagan, better known as the Chafetz Chaim,
47:39
lived to the ripe age of 95.
47:42
When he was already very old, he was asked how he managed, still,
47:47
to get up so early every day.
47:49
He responded, When I wake up, I tell myself that my Yetzir,
47:54
my negative impulses, are also very old, as old as I am.
47:58
And he has already arisen.
48:01
And so must I.
48:06
Until next time.
48:08
This is In These Times.