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Mala worked in camp administration, a fellow prisoner said

“These girls had to stand next to the guardhouse waiting for orders. Whenever Camp supervisor Mandel or overseer Margot Drechsler needed them they yelled “Lauferin", and the girl had to do as ordered on the double.”

and was housed in a wooden barrack that was going to originally be a horse stable, and was later upgraded to a better barrack after changing jobs to help transfer other women prisoners.

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September 15th 1942, Mala was put on tenth deportation train headed to Birkenau.

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On July 22nd 1942, Mala was arrested At Antwerp Central station as she was coming from Brussels, looking for a place to hide her and her family.

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Once she was arrested Mala was taken to Fort Breendonk, then transferred five days later to Mechelen. German authorities transformed The Dossin Barracks into a collection and deportation point for jews, Mala was put to work in the registry.

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Mala, originally Malka, was born January 28th 1918 in Poland. Her family moved to Belgium, Antwerp in 1928, where she later joined a youth organization and preferred to be called Mala. She later started working early to support her blind father, taking on a job as a seamstress in a major Antwerp fashion house. Then later working as a linguist-secretary for a small company in diamond trade.

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Mala fell in love with another prisoner named Edek. Edek was a "veteran" prisoner, owning the number 581. He at first struggled to survive in Auschwitz I but years later got a job in the locksmith workshop.

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Mala was known throughout the camp for her kindness, generosity and unwavering spirit. She warned her family through cryptic messages in letters to help them avoid capture. Mala was popular in the camp from helping everyone in any way she could, using her better conditions to give starving prisoners extra rations.

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After a two day nightmare journey, Mala and 101 other women "fit" for labor while the other 717 others were immediately gassed.

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As Mala and Edek's relationship grew they eventually planned a escape with another prisoner that was a friend of Edek's. The escape was prepared over the span of a month or so. Edek was to dress up as a SS officer and Mala was to dress up as a male prisoner.

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Mala and Edek's relationship was on the down low, the two avoiding the question when asked by others. until their relationship grew too deep.

"I love and I am loved." confessed Mala to other prisoners.

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Re-capture (picture of telegraph announcing their escape)

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Re-capture (picture of telegraph announcing their escape)

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That night at roll call, the sirens wailed as the blockaltestes noticed two prisoners missing. The two were on the run for 12 days until they were caught again by border patrol on july 6th.

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Edek was brought to the gallows before Mala and as a final act of resistance, the couple decided to "Refuse to be taken alive by the hangman." As the noose was lowered around Edek's neck while the kapo was reading his sentence, Edek kicked the chair from under him to take his life before they could. His plan did not work too well and he was taken hold of by the nearby SS and hung properly.

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The next day of Edek's hanging, Mala was next. She was led up to the gallows and stood before the others. Mala then slipped a concealed blade and slit her vein in her wrist in order to bleed out before they could hang her. They nearby SS noticed her and tried to wrestle the blade from her hand, She then slapped him and yelled "Get away from me, you dirty dog!" (Testimony from surviving prisoner that was there)

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The plan was set in motion on June 24th 1944, Edek dressed as a SS and Mala Dressed as a male prisoner. With the two now disguised, Edek escorted Mala, who was carrying a heavy lavatory pan down the long road of the camp and walked her out the gates going totally unnoticed.

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There are many stories of how Mala died. Some say that she bled out on the way to the crematoria, some say that a SS took mercy on her and shot her before she was put in the oven and others say that she burned alive. But one thing for certain is her impact. Mala's story became legendary and a important part of history, impowering and strengthening others within the camp.

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Liner Notes

"Charles Davidson’s choral song cycle, I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1968), is one of many Holocaust-inspired musical works related to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) experience. It is also one of a number of settings, by various composers, of poems from the collection of the same title (in its 1964 English-language edition)—poems written by Jewish children imprisoned in that former walled city turned transit-concentration camp as they awaited removal to death camps." (credited to Milken archive of Jewish music)

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Charles Davidson’s choral song cycle, I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1968), is one of many Holocaust-inspired musical works related to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) experience. It is also one of a number of settings, by various composers, of poems from the collection of the same title (in its 1964 English-language edition)—poems written by Jewish children imprisoned in that former walled city turned transit-concentration camp as they awaited removal to death camps. Davidson saw in these poems the artistic potential of a serious choral work that would in no way trivialize the Holocaust or the barbarity symbolized by Terezin. For this is no simplistic, meek victims’ memorial, nor is it an aesthetically enhanced so-called commemoration of an event in history that has no place for aesthetic value on its own terms. Rather, it is a dramatic reminder to the world—by virtue of the childlike innocence and naïve hope expressed in the resolute courage of those young poets—of the depth of the unredeemable, savage brutality of the German and German-led death machine that sought nothing less than the annihilation of the Jewish people and its children. It is, of course, also the composer’s way of providing remembrance for these children, most of whose lives were extinguished soon after their poetry was written and who thus have no descendants—in emblematic Judaic terms, “no one to say kaddish for them.” But its deeper significance may be its function as a document of the essence of sheer, unalloyed evil, personified by the Germans and their collaborators in their destruction of European Jewry and Jewish life—facilitated by all those whose action might have made some difference but who remained disinterested or silent, vocally or militarily.

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When they couple returned to Birkenau, they where put in block 11 where they where held and tortured in the cellers. Neither gave information of who helped them or how they got the recourses, and were later sentenced to be hung.

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HolocoastResearchProject.org

Symbaloo.com

MilkenArchive.org

Artsandculture.google.com

rudolfvrba.com

World History (youTube.com)

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The first woman who escaped Auschwitz, caught & burned alive in its crematoria - Mala Zimetbaum