Today we’re going to talk about Mala Zimetbaum, prisoner number 19880 of Auschwitz-Birkenau, who at age 26 attempted something no woman had ever managed before: to escape from the most heavily guarded extermination camp in Europe. On June 24, 1944, Mala simply disappeared.
And guess what, it took the SS guards hours to realize she wasn’t there anymore. When they finally found out, they panicked, because if a Jewish prisoner managed to escape from Auschwitz, the entire system could collapse. But days later, the Gestapo captured her, and when they brought her back to Auschwitz, the anger was so great that the SS commanders planned a meticulous public execution to serve as an example and terrify all the other prisoners.
And at the end of the video, which will be quick, I promise, I’ll tell you every detail of how this execution went. What Mala did seconds before shocked even the guards themselves. And that’s why she became a legend in Auschwitz. Life before the war. We start today’s video in Antwerp, Belgium. A city of ports and diamonds, of bustling markets and centuries-old synagogues. A place that smelled of the sea and spices, where French, Netherlandish, Yiddish, and Polish were spoken on the same corner, where accents mingled with the sound of trams and the constant noise of ships arriving and departing from the port.
In short, it was a profoundly multicultural city, and it was in this very place that a 10-year-old girl got off a train with her family, clutching what remained of a life left behind. Her name is Malka, but everyone calls her Mala. Mala Zimetbaum. She was born on January 26, 1918, in Brzesko. It was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a region that months later would become part of the newly restored Poland.
She was the youngest daughter of Pinhas and Chaya Zimetbaum, two Jews of humble origins, whose home was woven together by faith, Yiddish, and a language that few would expect from such a family. The fluent German, inherited from the years they spent in Germany before the birth of their daughter, was something they had five children with.
The father was blind. That alone was enough to put the family in difficult circumstances, almost always depending on collective effort to survive in a new country. But Mala was a brilliant girl. At the school in Antwerp, she learned languages impressively, quickly: Netherlandish, French, German, English, Polish, Yiddish.
Six languages, a restless mind that seemed to observe the world around it and that, who knows, might one day change the lives of the whole family. Over time, she began working as a seamstress to help support her family. The routine was simple: school, work, family. Small responsibilities that gradually shaped what could have been an ordinary life.
She could have grown up, gotten married, grown old in that rainy city, could have seen her nephews and nieces born, opened her own business, lived her years in silence, like so many other young women of her generation. But the world was about to change. Mala was 15 years old when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg in 1933.
At that time, approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe. More than 60% of the entire Jewish population of the world. Most people went on with their lives, working, studying, raising children, unaware that the clock had started ticking. The end of peace in the lives of those people was slowly approaching, almost imperceptible at first, but inevitable.
The war is progressing. Well, World War II began in September 1939. We’ve talked a lot about this here, haven’t we, with the invasion of Poland. But it was in May 1940 that Mala’s life changed completely. And do you know why? Because it was at that moment that the Third Reich launched its offensive against Western Europe, invading almost simultaneously France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and also Belgium.
The war, which until then seemed distant to many Belgians, arrived brutally and quickly. In less than six weeks, entire countries bent the knee before the German military machine. King Leopold III ordered the surrender of the Belgian army. The government fled to London and Hitler’s soldiers marched through the streets of Antwerp, occupying public buildings, stations, and squares, transforming the city’s routine into something unrecognizable.
For Belgian Jews, estimated to number between 70,000 and 75,000 in 1940, most of whom were recent immigrants from Eastern Europe and Nazi Germany itself, the occupation meant the beginning of systematic persecution. The laws that had been imposed in Germany began to arrive one by one, like calculated blows.
First, restrictions on civil rights, then the confiscation of businesses and property, the prohibition of practicing certain professions, exclusion from schools, public spaces, and common life. And in 1942 came the mark that made any anonymity impossible: the yellow Star of David, forcibly sewn onto the chest, a symbol transformed into a sentence, a label that said, without needing words, who should be isolated. Mala, fluent in six languages, had managed to get a job at an American company in Antwerp.
It was a promising job, a small sign of stability amidst the growing chaos. But when the Nazis forced the company to close, she received an extraordinary offer: a visa, a safe exit. The United States was the chance thousands begged for, but she refused. Her parents were still in Antwerp. How can someone abandon their parents to save their own life? How do you make that choice when the danger doesn’t yet have a defined form, but can already be felt in the air? Mala, in her early twenties, answered that question without the slightest hesitation. For her, survival was meaningless if it meant being alone.
The year after the invasion began, in 1941, about 200 members of the Flemish National Union, a collaborationist movement aligned with the Nazis, set fire to two synagogues in Antwerp. They smashed the windows of Jewish shops and beat up residents in the streets.
The violence, which had previously been disguised as decrees and letterhead, was now manifesting itself openly. With each passing day on the calendar, the world Mala knew was being dismantled brick by brick. In 1942, a new blow. Her brother was drafted into forced labor. Distrusting the official promises, he fled, taking one of his sisters with him in a suitcase to hide.
The family began to break apart, not by choice, but out of necessity. Mala then convinced her parents that she would find a hiding place in Brussels. She said she would be back soon, that everything would be alright. It was the kind of phrase you say more to soothe other people’s hearts than out of genuine conviction, right? So, on July 22, 1942, Mala was returning from Brussels.
She had spent days searching for a safe place to hide her family, knocking on doors, testing possibilities, weighing risks, but she would never make it home. She was arrested during a police raid at the station. First she was taken to Fort Breendonk, a detention and transit camp used by the German occupiers, and five days later transferred to the SS collection camp in Mechelen, known as Dossin.
Mala was given an unexpected role: to register the Jews who arrived. There, in the heart of the deportation machine, she watched lists transform into destinations. And it was precisely there that the resistance began. She smuggled messages, jewelry, and information to families outside, used her position to warn people about impending transport, and did something even more extraordinary.
She removed children’s names from deportation lists, trying to save them from whatever awaited them in the east. At that point, she still didn’t know what Auschwitz was, but somehow she already knew that nothing good awaited those trains. The extermination camp. We now move forward to September 15, 1942, to the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the deadliest structure ever built by the Nazi regime.
That day, yet another train stopped at the platform. And what did that mean, huh? Well, according to accounts preserved by survivors and documented by the camp’s own museum, when a train arrived, the prisoners were immediately divided into two columns: men and older boys on one side, women, children, and the elderly on the other. Families were separated in a matter of seconds, often without even understanding what was happening.
SS doctors, some of whom were directly responsible for the selections, such as Josef Mengele in later periods, quickly assessed who seemed fit for the job and who did not. They were pointing to the left or to the right. There was no real criterion beyond immediate appearance. Life or death decided in seconds with a simple wave of the hand.
Of the 1,048 Jews who arrived on the same transport as Mala Zimetbaum, only 230 men and 101 women survived the initial selection. The others were led, with promises of hot showers, soup, and coffee, to what were called the gas chambers. The records document the process with a coldness that is still difficult to comprehend and even difficult to talk about today.
People were instructed to hang their clothes on numbered hooks so they could find them after showering. Many even received soap and towels, in a carefully planned staging to avoid panic. The doors were then closed and the Zyklon B pellets were poured through openings in the ceiling. Dr. Hans Kremer, an SS physician who oversaw several of these executions at Auschwitz, testified after the war that the screams and sounds of fighting could be heard clearly from outside the chambers.
Twenty minutes. That was the average time it took. Mala survived the selection process and, thanks to her language skills, received a rarely granted role. She became a messenger and translator within the camp. Unlike most prisoners, she didn’t have to wear the striped uniform at all times. She didn’t have her head shaved either.
She could move around with relative freedom between the blocks, transmitting orders and information. In Auschwitz, this meant the difference between dying tomorrow or surviving for another day. But don’t be fooled, okay? Mala did not use this privilege only for herself. Dozens of survivors testified after the war, in statements preserved in the Yad Vashem archives in Jerusalem, that Mala distributed food, clothing, and medicine to those who had nothing.
She would warn sick prisoners in advance about the selections so they could try to present themselves as healthy. She put the names of the dead on the lists to save the living. She stole photographs from administrative files and secretly returned them to the prisoners. For some, an image of a lost child or home was often the only thing they had left.
She also sent postcards to her sister in Antwerp. She wrote that she was fine, that the whole family was with Etos, her sister-in-law who had died in 1940. It was a coded message, a way of shouting the truth without being executed for it. Did Mala’s sister understand? Okay, let’s move on. Love at the end of the world: in the regulated horror universe that was Auschwitz, something happened that no Nazi manual had predicted. Mala met Edward Galiński, known as Edek.
He was 20 years old, Polish, Catholic, and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on June 14, 1940, at only 17 years old. In the first transport of Polish political prisoners sent from Tarnów, he was one of the first to receive a serial number in the camp. His was 531. He had survived years of imprisonment working in a locksmith’s shop whose boss, SS Edward Lubusch, was—for reasons history has never fully explained—a man who treated prisoners with a modicum of humanity, something rare enough to be remembered by survivors decades later.
Mala and Edek fell in love. In a place where love was considered sabotage and punished by death, they loved each other nonetheless. They spent as much time together as possible, taking advantage of the mobility that their roles on the field allowed. Small, furtive encounters between groups, quick exchanges of words, glances that needed to say everything without drawing attention.
In Auschwitz, even affection had to be clandestine. And at some point in early 1944, Edek made a decision. He was going to run away. The original plan involved another prisoner, Wiesław Kielar. The two considered going out disguised as SS soldiers. An idea so audacious it bordered on suicide, requiring uniforms, forged documents, and a considerable dose of calculated madness.
Lubusch, the SS officer who treated Edek kindly, provided the uniforms and even a pistol. But Edek insisted, Mala also had to go, and she had a greater purpose than mere survival. She wanted to reach the Allies, she wanted to deliver documents, she wanted to tell them what was happening inside Auschwitz, while the rest of the world was still discussing rumors and incomplete reports.
She wanted someone to know what was happening. With the help of her cousin Giza Weisblum, and the three messengers with whom she shared a room, Mala managed to gather what she needed: a map, civilian clothes, and a blank SS exit pass, discreetly taken from the guard room. She also stole lists of deportees, proofs, evidence, names that would otherwise have disappeared without a trace.
The plan was simple, at least in theory. Edek, dressed as an SS officer, would escort Mala, who would be dressed as a male prisoner, wearing a uniform over civilian clothes as she left the camp, carrying a porcelain basin that would help to hide her face from the guards. The escape. On June 24, 1944, the plan began to be implemented.
They passed the guards, left the perimeter, changed their clothes, and began walking towards Slovakia, leaving behind, for the first time in years, the electrified fences and watchtowers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Mala hoped to find refuge with her uncle Chanania Hartman in Bardejov. She didn’t know that her entire family had already been deported in 1942.
She was walking towards a place that, in practice, no longer existed. And as expected, the escape was noticed during the night call. The following morning, the camp commander, Josef Kramer, sent telegrams to local authorities and border patrols to track down the couple. For two weeks, Mala and Edward walked through the Beskid mountains, free, together, alive, sleeping in the open air, avoiding main roads, feeding themselves on what little they could carry or find along the way.
And then, on July 6, 1944, something happened. They were near the Slovakian border when Mala went into a shop to try and buy bread with gold that they had both taken from the camp. One of the few guarantees they had in case they needed to negotiate for help. Unfortunately, someone recognized her, or at least suspected something was amiss due to her appearance, her accent, something out of place, and called the authorities.
Edek was watching from afar when he saw Mala being arrested. He could have run away. He was at a safe distance, had the documents, knew the way to the border, but he had made a promise: the two of them would not be separated. And so Edek surrendered to the German patrol. They were identified, returned to Auschwitz, and thrown into Block 11, the bunker, the punishment barracks reserved for interrogations, torture, and executions.
The Gestapo members present at the camp tortured Edek for days, demanding that he reveal who had supplied the uniforms and the weapon. He didn’t say a word. Bolesław Staroń, who was imprisoned in the same cell, reported after the war that every night, after roll call, Edek would sing an Italian song, a signal to Mala in the women’s cells that he was still alive.
The end of the couple. In September 1944, exactly two years after Mala’s arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the sentence was carried out. She was 26 years old and Edek was 20. They were transferred to Birkenau for a public execution. The Nazis’ message was clear. The camp needed to provide a clear and exemplary demonstration of what happened to those who dared to escape.
Their deaths would not be silent; they would be a spectacle, a collective lesson. The prisoners were forced to watch. In the men’s camp, Edward Galiński was led to the gallows. Before the verdict was officially read, he jumped into the noose, attempting to take his own life and, in a way, deny the regime the pleasure of this charade.
The guards pulled him back onto the platform. They wanted to follow the ritual; they wanted an example. Then Edek shouted something that, according to survivor accounts, sounded like:
“Long live Poland!”
It was a short cry, but enough. A prisoner, without being ordered to, commanded everyone to remove their hats as a sign of respect, and everyone obeyed.
In the women’s field, something even more extraordinary was happening. According to later accounts mentioned by Primo Levi and also by survivors such as Raya Kagan, testimonies preserved in the Yad Vashem archives, Mala Zimetbaum had managed to hide a razor blade at the foot of the gallows in front of hundreds of female prisoners forced to watch.
Mala cut the artery in her own wrist. An SS guard tried to wrest the blade from her hand. Mala slapped him with her bloodied hand and then, in the firm voice of someone who refused to die in silence, shouted at the guards:
“You will pay dearly for everything you have done!”
Then she turned to the assembled prisoners:
“I’ve been out there. The end of the war is near. Be strong. Resist!”
It was more than a challenge. It was an attempt to restore hope to a place where hope was forbidden. The guards threw her to the ground and forcibly covered her mouth. Maria Mandl, head of the women’s section at Birkenau and feared by the prisoners, ordered that Mala be taken to the crematorium.
The intention was clear: to transform even that final gesture into a warning. She was placed in a wheelbarrow and taken first to the infirmary to stop the bleeding, not out of compassion, but so that she could be executed in the official manner. What happened in the following minutes remains shrouded in conflicting accounts to this day.
Some testimonies claim that she died in the cart itself before even reaching the crematorium. Others report that a guard, perhaps unable to bear witnessing the scene, shot her at the entrance. There are also reports that she was carrying poison and ingested it, and some even say she was thrown alive into the furnace.
The exact truth may have been lost. What the records reliably document is the following: the members of the Sonderkommando, prisoners forced to operate the crematoria, were informed that Mala was arriving. They made special preparations, prayed and wept while they burned her remains. Even in Auschwitz, her death was not treated as a common occurrence.
The postwar period. The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, less than 6 months after Mala’s death. Of the nearly 25,000 Jews deported from Belgium to Auschwitz, fewer than 2,000 survived the Holocaust. The family members she had tried to save, most of them were murdered, but Mala was not forgotten.
Thirty-nine Belgian survivors from the women’s camp formally declared after the war that Mala had saved their lives. Among them was Sara Goldberg, who in 1946 named her newborn daughter Mala. This daughter, Mala, lives today in Tel Aviv, the name that crossed the fire and reached the future. In 2017, Mala Zimetbaum posthumously received the JRJ title.
A Jew who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Granted by the B’nai B’rith World Center, a plaque with her relief marks the building in Antwerp where she lived, an ordinary address transformed into a permanent memory. And in September 2023, 80 years after her death, a monument was erected in her name at the Jewish cemetery in Brzesko, her hometown in Poland.
She has no tomb. His body was consumed by the flames of Auschwitz. The monument is the most humane gesture possible in the face of the inhuman. To affirm that she existed, that she mattered, and that she still matters. Well, and that brings us to the end of another story.
