Ms. Death: The Story of Maria Mandel, the Most Cruel Overseer of Auschwitz

10 hrs. 57 min.

Language Russian

Author Susan Eisheid

Narrator Elnara Salimova

Description

The biography of Maria Mandel, notorious for her cruelty as an overseer at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was created based on more than two decades of research and many unique testimonies from surviving prisoners. By 1948, when she was executed, she had reached the highest position for a woman in Nazi Germany. As the head of women’s camps, Mandel was directly responsible for the torture, suffering, and death of tens of thousands of people.

In the camp—known as the “Mistress of Life and Death”—she organized a women’s orchestra and temporarily took care of several children, whom she later sent to the gas chambers. She was known for her cruelty during roll calls, when many prisoners died from exhaustion, and she punished even the slightest misconduct severely. Even decades later, those who survived cannot forget her brutality, though some of the musicians from the orchestra believe they owe her their lives.

Susan Eicheid, studying archives and speaking with survivors and Mandel’s relatives, reconstructed her biography. The result was a unique and horrifying portrait of how, with absolute power, a person becomes a merciless tormentor.

Lucy Edlington, author of a book about women of Auschwitz, highlights the importance of Eicheid’s work in the context of studying women criminals of the Third Reich. Kirkus Reviews emphasizes that Eicheid’s book, based on the accounts of survivors, conveys the brutal reality of the camps and the ruthlessness of their guards, serving as vivid testimony to the horrors of the Holocaust.