Mistress of Life and Death
The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau
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With new details and previously unpublished photographs, this gripping, unflinching examination charts her transformation from engaging country girl to "The Beast" of Auschwitz.
By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands, and for the torture and suffering of countless more.
In this riveting biography, Susan J. Eischeid explores how Maria Mandl, regarded locally as "a nice girl from a good family," came to embody the very worst of humanity. Born in 1912 in the scenic Austrian village of Münzkirchen, Maria enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents—who later watched in anguish as their grown daughter rose through the Nazi system.
Mandl's life mirrors the period in which she lived: turbulent, violent, and suffused with paradoxes. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, she founded the notable women's orchestra and "adopted" several children from the transports—only to lead them to the gas chambers when her interest waned. After the war, Maria was arrested for crimes against humanity. Following a public trial attended by the international press, she was hanged in 1948.
For two decades, Eischeid has excavated the details of Mandl's life story, drawing on archival testimonies, speaking to dozens of witnesses, and spending time with Mandl's community of friends and neighbors who shared their memories as well as those handed down in their families. The result is a chilling and complex exploration of how easily an ordinary citizen chose the path of evil in a climate of hate and fear.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 26, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780806542874
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780806542874
- File size: 1125 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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November 15, 2023
The life of a Holocaust criminal. Eischeid, a performer and teacher who specializes in the music of the Holocaust, has researched the life of Maria Mandl (1912-1948) for more than 20 years. Some of Mandl's surviving contemporaries have been willing to talk, and Mandl herself added to the massive documentation on the Nazi years. She was born to a close-knit, middle-class Austrian family who passed smoothly through the 1920s but suffered during the Depression the following decade--although her father, a shoemaker, kept working. When the Germans marched into Austria in 1938, they were greeted with enthusiasm, although Maria's father did not join in. That same year, Maria moved to Munich, joined the concentration camp bureaucracy, and rose to perhaps its leading post for a woman: director of the women's camp at Auschwitz, where she oversaw the murder of perhaps 500,000 deportees and both witnessed and personally participated in unspeakable brutality. Eischeid relies heavily on testimony from survivors, who mostly deliver horrifying descriptions of camp life and sadistic treatment from guards. Even as the top official, Mandl continued to enjoy personally abusing prisoners. Due to the steady stream of suffering, torture, and death, some readers may feel the urge to skim. Nearly half the book recounts Mandl's postwar capture, trial, and execution. The last two events took place in communist Poland, so there was no doubt about the outcome, but it was a sober, well-managed affair, although the media (American included) sensationalized her as "a beast in a gorgeous woman's body." Eischeid agonizes over but never explains how an apparently normal person could turn into a monster. One survivor offers a frighteningly reasonable explanation: "She was a nobody. Suddenly she was a somebody. That explains it." The author provides few novel insights on the Holocaust but does deliver a vivid, painful record.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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