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You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have written about him Geesy Bundy Dahmer The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
By the time of her execution, at thirty six, Maria Mandel had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the third right. As head overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz Berkanal, 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 Mandel, regarded locally as a nice girl from a good family, came to embody the very worst of humanity.
Born in nineteen twelve in the scenic Austrian village of Munskirken, Maria enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents who later watched in anguish as their grown daughter rose through the Nazi system. Mandel's light mirrors the period in which she lived turbulent, violent, and suffused with paradoxes. At Auschwitz Berkanal, she founded a 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 nineteen forty eight. For two decades, Eischeid has excavated the details of Mandel's life story, drawing on archival testimonies, speaking to dozens of witnesses, and spending time with Mandel'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. The book that we're featuring this evening is Mistress of Life and Death, The Dark Journey of Maria Mandel, the head overseer of Auschwitz Birkanal, with my special guest musician and author Susan jay Eischeide. Welcome to the program and thank you very much for this interview. Susan Eyeschide, thank.
You very much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on this very impressive and extraordinary book.
Thank you. I really appreciate that.
Now, by training and your credentials, you are a musician and a classic oboist, and you had a strong interest you write in music and musicians of the Holocaust. Tell us how you became involved with writing this book about Maria Mandl and the connection to your primary interest, WHI is music? Tell us about that.
Sure, I've been a performer performing musician for many years now, and early on in my career, in addition to playing in orchestras and teaching at a university, I began to perform music that was written in the Holocaust and doing a lot of research into the topic. And as part of my research and discovery of this amazing material about music, I also discovered the many musical activities that existed in
Hitler's camps and ghettos. Somewhat extraordinarily, most of the concentration in death camps had artistic activities, including musical activities, and I became very interested in an orchestra that was formed in the death camp of Auschwitz, Bert Canal. This orchestra was unique in that it was the only women's orchestra
in the entire Nazi camp system. And as I learned more about the orchestra and began to interview survivors of that orchestra, I became acquainted with the story of Maria Mandel, and she was the highest ranking SS female auxiliary in the camps. She was head overseer at Ashchwitz Beer can Now during a lot of the story that I tell, and so I became interested in her, like, how did this person responsible for so many deaths and atrocities also have this side where she found great comfort and solace
in music. And however, inadvertently she did create the orchestra, which in turn say helped save the lives of the women in that orchestra, although that certainly wasn't her primary intent. And so as I dug more and more into Mandel's story and learned more about her, I just covered that she wasn't sort of intrinsically evil, natural born killer. She'd been born into a very warm, supportive, loving family. She was always known as a very nice girl from a
good family and for me. The greatest question which then emerged was this idea of how this otherwise normal, compassionate, nice person turned into an extraordinarily evil perpetrator in the Holocaust, and sort of what factors led to that transformation and sort of the things we could learn from that in a broader sense. So that's sort of how I got into the topic.
Incredible, Let's talk about that upbringing and what you learn from it. Talk about she was born in nineteen twelve in a beautiful Austrian village of and I'll get you to pronounce this properly, Moon's clerk in tell us about her early life and her parents.
Sure village is Munskirchen. And if you're familiar with German and Austrian geography, probably the largest town is Passeu in Germany. It's on a conjunction of three rivers, and muns Kirshen is across one of the rivers in a more rural part of Austria. Her parents, her father's name was Franz Mano, and he was a master shoemaker. He had sort of a big business in town with like most of the people who lived in Munskirshen. Then there was also an
accompanying farm where they grew all their own food. And Maria's mother, who was named Anna and she was also from nearby village. Together they had four children, of which Maria was the baby, so she was the youngest child and she was raised in this very nurturing household. Again, that was in the nineteen twenties, you know, in Austria, so the norms were somewhat different than we're used to.
Women were very much second class citizens, so usually her goal growing up in most of the young women was they aimed to get married and have a family, and that was sort of the considered an expected thing. Maria's mother suffered from depression throughout her lifetime, so she had a lot of challenges. But ultimately Maria grew up in this family and until the Anschluze, which is when Australia was annexed by Germany, her life was really on a
good trajectory. She had gotten a job in the local post office, she was engaged to be married to a young man in the community, and so everything was going pretty well for her until that point.
Tell us about her father's political leanings and how that got her fired from the post office, and what was the climate at that time regarding people that didn't sign up for the National Socialist Party.
Sure, well, Munskirkin, especially in the years leading up to the Anschlus had a couple of different political parties. There were the sort of the Nazi Party coming up her Foul Pay my German Actions not Great, which was a Christian social Democrat kind of party. So Franz Mondel was sort of leader in that party and in the community, and so her family was definitely not Nazi. They did not support the Nazis. Franz was actually pretty outspoken against
the Nazis. And then of course when the Nazis came to power, that was the big reason. Her then fiance had been was a member of the Nazi Party, was coming up in the ranks, and he essentially dumped her. He said, I can't have a fiance or you know, my future wife cannot be someone who does not support
the Nazi Party. So I think the great irony of Maria's life, and the great tragedy for all of her victims down the road, is that had she not been fired for not being a Nazi from this job, she probably would not have followed this path into evil that she ended up.
Pursuing Interesting Now, what does she do in response to this heartbreak of the fiance? Where does she travel to and what does she try to get a job doing and what does she end up working?
Sure, well, after she lost her job, I think she was just looking for a new start, a new beginning, so she traveled to Munich where she had some family. I believe her uncle was living there and at the time begun to see the establishment of some of the early concentration camps. And at that point there was only one concentration camp specifically designated for women, and that was Liechtenberg, which was in Germany, and they needed to recruit personnel
to be guards in the camp. Most of the young men were either being recruited into the army or working at other camps for men. So they decided to embark on a kind of classified ad campaign where they were trying to attract women to apply for these positions. So
they actually put ads in the paper overseers saught. I think the phrase they used was a camp for asocial women, something like that, not really stating explicitly that it was a concentration camp and that all signified And I believe Ye's uncle saw the ad in the paper, said why don't you apply for this? And so she literally was just looking for a job and went ahead and applied for one of those guard positions at Lichtenberg. And ironically she said at that time, if I hadn't gotten this job,
I would have trained to become a nurse. And I always sort of thinking of how she transformed later shut her at the thought. But that might have been the saving of her as well. So you know, it's hard to say in hindsight. So she ended up being hired, and that's how she began her camp service.
Tell us, as you write in the book about some of the training and the indoctrination used to prepare these women board the overseers at these concentration camps, this one in particulate.
Sure.
Well.
At Lichtenburg they were just beginning to standardize the training for the young overseers, but Grant usually they would apprentice to someone who'd been there and follow them around for a couple of months until they were able to assume their own responsibilities. Later on, it became pretty sophistic good way of training. It was like you were desensitizing the guards to the humanity of the prisoners. You were creating what later came to be called a cultural of cruelty,
where you would be rewarded. The crueler you were, the more praise you would get, the more they normalized the behavior. And after a while, although some women, you know, just once they realized what was happening, left, most of them stayed and became sort of indoctrinated in that system and accepted that as their new reality and as a way to move forward with a good job and benefits on a place to live and all of those things. And
certainly Maria did that. She assimilated much very quickly. That's one of the interesting things about her story. It's almost like one day she was this sweet, beautiful, young, innocent woman, and some of the early prisoners they remember her that way, and then almost overnight she transformed into one of the most brutal guards there in term got a lot of praise for that, and then that allowed her to race through that ranks down the road when she had moved
to other camps. So I'm sure we'll talk about Robinsbrook in the minute. She became sort of the overseer for all of the training of young women in that camp, and by the end of the where they had trained I think between three and four thousand young women in these roles. So it wasn't just a few women. There were a lot women, a lot of women who decided to follow this path as well.
What were the living quarters like for the prisoners at e Lichtenberg and what were the living accommodations for the staff like Maria?
The living quarters for the prisoners were pretty brutal. That's Lichtenburg is like an old castle. I think it dates from the medieval period or the Renaissance period. So it's this big stone, dark, dank edifice with these huge, sort of lofty kinds of rooms, and for the prisoners, they literally crammed, you know, hundreds of prisoners in a room, very little means of sanitation. They might have like one
bucket that everybody would use as the bathroom. And most of the women were engaged in heart labor out during the day, their outdoor labor or inside labor, creating things that could be sold or textiles or things like that. For the where the guards lived at Liechtenberg, I don't know a lot about that. There's not a lot of documentation.
Most of them. I believe either had separate quarters in the castle that were considerably nicer, or lived out in the community very close to the campsite, and then came into work.
You say at that time Maria began to beat people.
Certainly, yes, that's correct.
What was the event that inspired her more than anything to succeed, I guess in this new environment.
I think it was a combination. I think she really, to my mind, had a kind of breakdown after being dumped by her fiance. There was really a great stigma in Germany and in Austria at that time for a woman. She was in her mid twenties. Now, she wasn't married.
She had always wanted children, So the fact that she had no man in sight and had lost her job, I think this was a way where she could get respect, she could get she had power, she could sort of fight back against this perception that she wasn't worthy because you know, he had dumped her. So I think she got all of those things through this job, and gradually she just did what she needed to do to be successful in the job and climbed the ranks very quickly.
Now there was talk of a new camp being built and by Robinsbrook, and so tell us about Maria being assigned to this new facility.
Sure, eventually, as the war kicked off and more and more women were being arrested, Himmler made the decision to build a new concentration camp just for women. Was located located north of Berlin, near a little town called Furstenburg. And this new camp was called the Robinsbrook And so most of the personnel from Liechtenburg they essentially closed down Lichtenberg is a women's camp and transported all of the guards and then a lot of the prisoners up to Robinsbrook.
By this point, Maria was one of the more experienced guards, and she had gotten a lot of responsibility because she was so willing to take those next steps into brutality. So she would be in charge of beatings and things like that at Rischenberg. So when she got to Robinsbrooke,
she was immediately one of the higher ranking overseers. She wasn't yet the highest ranking, but she certainly got a lot of responsibility right out of the gates, and like all those women, began to oversee work details and again climb her ladder again at that camp.
You talk about that even though they were. She wasn't officially in the SS. She had these responsibilities foisted on her which she ascribed to, which she volunteered for, but she was still a subordinate of the SS men, wasn't she.
Yes, the function of the women in the camps was a little different. They weren't considered full blown SS. They were considered the SS women's auxiliary, So they were like an auxiliary to the SS. So you know, they couldn't have like the military ranks like people of the SS had, but within their own purview within a women's camp, they certainly were responsible for the disciplining of the prisoners, the running of the camp. So in most aspects they were
doing what the men did. They just didn't get sort of that official designation. So the other's women function is like an SS a auxiliary. I guess it's the best way to put it. In these camps.
You say, by September one, nineteen thirty nine, when the Third Reich invaded Poland and the Second World War began, the work routines and procedures at Revensbrook were well established. And you say that in January fourth, nineteen forty Heinrich Himmler came to inspect the camp. Tell us about that a little as you write this inspection by this elite SS official.
Yeah, that was a really big day for the overseers in the camp. It was a bitterly cold winter day. It's we have some photographs that exist from that visit, like you can see them through the Robinsburg Archive and things like that. And essentially he came to inspect the women guards. So there's this one photo of them all lined up in this row, in a double row, and then he's sort of striding in front of them, you know,
sort of inspecting the ranks. And then he had a series of meetings during the day with different personnel to sort of strategize about different policies in the camp. Maria's immediate supervisor was a woman named Johanna Longenfeldt, and so she's also seen in this picture sort of walking subserviently
behind him because of course she was female. But that was sort of a very big event for all of the female overseers that he had come to this camp and was sort of establishing the camp as this really important entity, I guess in the camp system, so that those pictures are really pretty extraordinary. If you can find them online. They're very easy to find, so anyway, it's worth taking a look.
You talk about people that were comprised and the transport of new prisoners, and the early capacity of this or the early population of the camp, and then the soon rising population of that camp.
Yes, I mean the camp exponentially got bigger. At first, when Maria first got there, the population was still under control, the barracks were new, they planted flowers, they had a
little zoo. I mean, it was sort of crazy. And then, of course, as more and more women were arrested through the war through political dissension for whatever reason and sent to the camp, things got crowded and more and more crowded, conditions got worse and worse and worse, And during the couple of years that Maria worked in that camp, the population increased exponentially five or six times, and so then by the end it was just horrible conditions of extreme overcrowding,
difficult sanitation, insufficient food, and again all of those conditions that we're familiar with when we study the camps became very apparent over her tenure there.
You talk about some of the punishments that were enacted whipping table. Some of the weapons that they were given the guards were canes. They each had pistols, They had big high boots that they could use to kick and beat these prisoners. This was all encouraged, as by witness accounts.
Oh absolutely were considered necessary things to keep order. Most of the women guards also worked with dogs, so they would have a couple of dogs that were trained to attack. And again the more brutal, the better, so all the prisoners remember just vividly these horrible punishments. A lot of times they said one of the worst things was you could be punished for anything, and eventually everything was against the rules, so you would just accept that you would
have a risk of being attacked at any time. There was a large building called the Bunker, which became a kind of cell block where they sent prisoners for extra special, extra harsh punishments, and Mandel was eventually appointed as sort of co overseer of the whole bunker, so that was like a big promotion for her, and that's some of the most brutal stories of punishments come out of her time in the bunker, as well as just overseeing things
like roll calls, which were a complete nightmare for the women. They'd have to stand out there and out for hours and freezing cold or extreme heat. You know, I think Maria, I don't know if it had something to do with her father's being a shoemaker, but she seemed obsessed with creating problems for the women's feet, Like there was this really sharp kind of stone roadway, and so she would force the women to be in their bare feet and
sort of march over and over these stones. To their feet were bleeding and infected, and even in winter, they weren't allowed to have shoes or any kind of protection, and so you can imagine the horrible injuries, many of which resulted in death. So the brutalities and the conditions that the prisoners endoor were really almost beyond description.
You say that Maria became known as the Mistress of life and death and nicknamed the Tigris. You also talk about that it seemed to be a sexual element to the punishments that Maria inflicted on these prisoners, also that prisoners were also used for as prostitutes for German soldiers as well. Tell us about some of this seemingly sexual deviancy on Maria's.
Park well in her case, I think it was more about power than about sexuality, Like for example, sometimes she would order if a woman was being beaten in front of the whole camper whip, that she would be stripped so she would be naked when that happened, and there was another guard there, Dorotea Binns, who definitely had more of a sexual overtone. She would literally go into sexual
frenzies when she was beating prisoners. And sometimes when you read accounts, people get the two of them mixed up, and I think in Maria's case, it was more that she reveled in the power she had over the women rather than getting through at sexual gratification from that per se. At least that's the way I read it. For her, as regards the prostitutes and forcing women, she was sort
of interested that. For example, a few years later in Auschwitz, if a German prisoner came in and they wanted to assign her to the brothel for the SS men, and Mandel would try and talk them out of it, like it's a good German woman, this is not something you wanted to do. Whereas on the other hand, at places like Robinsbrook and also at Auschwitz and other plants. It
was part of her undesirable population. Maybe someone who's being targeted, someone who was Jewish, someone who was at Jehovah's witness then she certainly would have had no compunction about sending them to service at brothel. But it was always a sort of weird, I don't know, paradoxical view towards sexuality that she evidenced in different ways throughout her camp service.
You say that she was especially cruel to Jehovah witnesses, and also you write about this extraordinary people were selected. Maria selected people for something you call a lab rabbits. Tell us about this experimentation and the selection of it.
Oh, yes, this is one of the I don't know, really devastating chapters of the Holocaust, if you can dare to consider one chapter more devastating than another. Yes, the lab Ravt program at robins Brook sprang out of the assassination of Earnhard Hydrich, and in retaliation they anyway, you can read the whole story of the retaliation against that, But there was this big influx of women into robins Brook as sort of a result of that, and Himmler was also at the same time Hydrich was blown up.
At this point, the German soldiers were fighting on all these fronts, so they were experiencing these really horrific injuries, blast injuries, that kind of stuff. So he charged the robins Brook doctors with this kind of faux medical program where they were going to do a series of experiments on the women to try to figure out the best ways of treating like last injuries or this kind of stuff that they could then transfer that expertise out into
the field for the German soldiers. So they put Mandal in charge of selecting a bunch of young women for this program. And so at this point there had been a couple of recent transports from Lublin, Poland of young teenagers, like sixteen to twenty year old young women, perfect health, and so she chose a lot of them to be part of this experimental program. And so what the doctors did is they took these women into like a separate wing in the infirmary and they inflicted all of these
horrible wounds on their legs. Sometimes they shot their legs. Sometimes they would operate and insert things like dirt or metal or something. Then they'd slap a cast over it, and then they just watched to see what would happen, and as you can imagine, the just the incredible suffering, the pain. Many women died from these experimentations. People who survived, they were just horrible injuries. They were crippled for life.
And there are we do have photographs of some of those victims who survived and ultimately became known in the camp as the lab rabbits or sort of these experimental subjects for these horrific set of the medical experiments that took place at Robinsbrook. So it was pretty overwhelming. I did get to interview one of those lab rabbits several years later, of course, and she still, you know, literally was only able to work a year or two and
then her body couldn't take it. Still had this huge one of her legs was permanently crippled, and just hearing her talk about the agony and they would be crying and sobbing for help, and you know, they would just be locked in these words with these separating wounds, and you know, many women went delirious, they had no water. It just really brought home the suffering in a very personal way to me being able to talk with her and for her having the courage to share that story with me.
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You're right about that. After only four months, as had overseer in Auschwitz, Johannah Langfeld was struggling and fell in a disagreement with the commandant Rudolf Haas, and so she was transferred back to Rabinsbrook and tell Us, where Maria was transferred to as a result.
Okay, yeah, that's a really interesting story. Johanna Longefel again had been Mondel's Mandel supervisor at Robinsbrook. When Auschwitz was formed and then got to be big and had a women's camp. Rudolf Hurst, who was the commandant was seeking an experienced head overseer there, so they sent longefeld to Poland, and that's why Maria Mendel was promoted to being head overseer at Robinsbrook. Longefeldt didn't prove to be successful at Auschwitz.
As you said. She always was known among the prisoners as being a little not quite as harsh, and she struggled to control the women overseers there. In the camp itself was just a sort of nightmarish cesspool of disease and filth, and she just couldn't handle handle the job. So that made the decision to transfer her back to Robinsbrook.
And at that point Mariamandel was transferred to Auschwitz against your will, to become the head overseer there, And so that's how she ended up at the next stage of her career in Poland, which wasn't Auschwitz. You're right.
There was three main camps, Auschwitz one, which was built in nineteen forty, Auschwitz two Berkenhaw, and Aschwitz three, which was the Monowitz Bruna, a subsidiary of the ig Farben company. You say that the very first thing that Maria noticed at Ashwitz was the horrible smell and reminiscent of her father's shoemaking business, where he would often have hides that were overripe and used in the making of shoes. So she was familiar somewhat with the smell of the dead.
We'll see, yes, most of the people or everyone I talked to her when you read survivor accounts ber Ca now Auschwitz ber canaw especially because that became one of the main killing centers, always had this kind of miasma in the air, could be smoky, you know, the undercurrent of the smell of death of you know, I'll let you use your you can imagine the sort of the
graphic things that went into that smell. But it was like for a lot of people it became almost another entity that this this stench that you could never escape from, and you could never escape the reality of what this place was and what was happening there, and certainly the smell was part of that.
You're right that things are accelerating, the population is growing. Talk about in nineteen forty three, after a general roll call and there was a witness to this. There was four thousand were released or were selected for the gas chamber, and Maria ordered the kitchen to prepare four thousand as a result, less dinners.
Yes, that's correct.
Now, these roll calls had become routine for Maria, and tell us about the treatment that even though the horrible conditions for the prisoners, what were the conditions like for the staff, Like Maria.
Well, the roll calls are just one of the truly horrific things that the prisoners endured. You know, on the surface, you say roll call and you say, oh, that doesn't sound so bad, but the reality was just appallingly horrible. Again, out there in all hours, all weathers, all hours, you had to stand still. If the count didn't match, and it never matched, then you know, they would start over, people would die. It was just really, really horrible. But
alsch Fitz Maria was more high ranking. She was the head overseer, so the lower ranking overseers were the ones who you know, were out there and sort of doing the counts and all that kind of things. And then she Mandel would stroll in after a couple hours and received those reports at the numbers at the head table or wherever they had set up to do the counts.
So at Auschwitz she didn't have to do as much of that kind of nitty gritty standing there supervising because the overseers were also out there in the weather trying to get these counts. She didn't she didn't care if people were suffering. She just sometimes she would order the role call extended just for her amusement, for things like that. But yeah, it was a huge, huge part in her
case because she was so high ranking. She usually came in near the end of the roll calls and then you know, sort of received the ports reports from the other overseers.
Can we talk about some of the luxuries that the staff enjoyed while these other people had no heat, water, or sanitation.
Sure, the ss were housed and lovely quarters. They had their own stores, They had concerts on the weekend. Mandel lived in a it was sort of a communal dwelling at first, where they had housed all the female overseers, but eventually she got her own villa where she could live and sort of escape to, if you will, when she was done with work. Of course, they had access to the best foods and don't forget I mean, the enormous amounts of plunder that were coming into Auschwitz every
transport that came in. Of course, everybody tried to bring something with them. In most cases if you were only limited, but you could carry if you had any wealth left, maybe you had a diamond or something, you would hide it on your person. As those people were filtered to the gas chambers and you know, they were forced to disrobe. So all of this plunder, money, instruments, jewelry, anything you
could imagine. There was just there was a huge compound called Canada and Beer Canal where there were just warehouses full of this plunder. And so it was fairly easy, although officially it wasn't allowed. Certainly most of the SS did help themselves to a lot of these perks, and certainly Maria Mandel benefited from them as well.
Maria met a SS officer, Joseph Janish, and had an affair with him. He was responsible mostly or more so for construction of the crematorium. Tell us about this brief affair and what happened, and as you write, it seemed to soften her behavior during that time period.
Yeah, Yanish was a young man from Salzburg, so he was a fellow Austrian, tall, handsome. Word among the prisoners is that he wasn't He just did his job with
the architectural Commando, wasn't gratuitously cruel or anything. Although she had certainly had other affairs over the years, I think she was really her great the big love interest she had since the fiancee who dumped her, and so I'm sure she was probably envisioning a life after the war, and maybe this would be her chance for a marriage, maybe for children, and they would be seen like a
dawn or after in the evenings. They had these horses, and she would always have on a white shirt with a red rose in it, and they would gallop across the camp and spend all this time together. Eventually he was transferred, and then their relationship seemed to weren't able to keep it going long distance, and so once he left, she reverted to being again once the sort of this very cool overseer that she had become.
You write about the executions, the selection for these executions, and then after what was termed good executions. I guess there were reported drunken orgies among the officers and the staff overseers.
Sure that was pretty that was pretty normal.
Tell us about the some of the minions that Maria had under her that were under her of charge.
Well, sure, she was in charge of all the other female overseers, and there were some very colorful personalities and brutal personalities. One of the ones that she had ended up having a lot of contact down the road was a woman named Teresa Brandle, sort of quieter, not quite as brutal, but ultimately was arrested and then executed with mandal the same day. Probably the most notorious was a young woman named Irma Graza, and she was sort of the stereotype of the young beautiful blonde. She was in
her early twenties, incredibly brutal, incredibly cruel. She drove Maria crazy because she was always doing things like stealing resources like turpentine, which all the women used to clean their boots, and so she would hog it and sort of hoard it, and then vandall would always have to reprimand her for that. So she was another one of the sort of minions under her. There was a large woman named allas Orlowski, who was enormously cruel. I could go on and on.
I mean, there were many many women who were worked under her, and again she was sort of over all of their actions, and that was one of her big responsibilities, which also drove her crazy quite a lot. I think you're right.
Also, we did mention that there's the notorious doctor Mengela working with her close closely with her at this camp as well.
Yes, I'm sure a lot of people know about Joseph Mangela. He was the notorious SS physician, also engaged in horrific experiments on children on twins. He was also a great lover of music, and I think that was primarily Mandal's contact with him, because when she formed the Women's Orchestra, Manglo became a regular attendee at their Sunday concerts, and
so I think for Mandel it was this way. She was sort of seeking credibility and maybe some more respect from the male ass which really the women rarely got, so for her it served the purpose most she loved music, but also it gave her like this in with officers like Mangola, who were here quite important in the camp.
Now let's get to what's a very important part of this story. And you titled the Orchestra. You say that Maria had an idea of forming a women's orchestra. Both men's camps had orchestras and music ensembles, and they entertained the SS on regular Sunday concerts and special functions. Tell us why it was important you feel that Maria had organized this orchestra, and tell us about the formation of this group.
And Alma rose, sure so again for a lot of the same reasons. She saw that the other out parts of the Ashwitz camp had men's orchestras, she saw that they got status in respect for those officers that supported that, and so because she was the head of the women's camp, she got the idea of founding a women's orchestra. So, because women couldn't do anything on their own, she enlisted the aid of Maless Officer and Pursler, and sort of together they sponsored the formation of this orchestra. It took
a while to get successful. At first, they recruited musicians from incoming transports, and population orchestra did not sound very good. They were mostly young female musicians without a lot of training, very inexperienced, and so it was really sort of up in the air where or the orchestra would survive. Because
they weren't performing at a high enough level. And then someone noticed that in one of the incoming transports there was a musician named Alma Rose, and she was a very well known virtuoso violinist, conductor, musician, and was well known in Europe. Her uncle was the famous composer who stuffed mahler If for the musicians out there. And so once Mandel heard that Alma Rose had been brought into the camp, she assigned her to be the conductor of
the women's orchestra. And because Alma was such a wonderful talented musician a great leader, she single handedly really turned this orchestra into something that was very viable. She I mean they did they rehearsed all day. Rose was able to arrange music. They had sort of a weird collective instrumentation depending on what was available, and so she knew how to arrange programs that would please the SS and she figured out a way to work with Maria Mandel.
And there was actually a huge furor in the camp because one time Mandel summoned her to her office to talk about the orchestra and asked her to sit while they were talking. And someone saw that and that was never done. You know, a prisoner would never sit with an SS officer. And so that was just that was all over the camp in like the next ten seconds because people were so shocked. So I think Mandel had
a great deal of respect for Alma Rose. Alma Rose, I can't imagine how she stood up to the stress. She was trying to walk this horrible tightrope of keeping the musicians alive, keeping the orchestra playing at a high enough standard. And sadly Alma Rose did not survive the war. She died in the next year. We think probably of bachulism poisoning. In her heyday, she certainly the women in
the orchestra were very proud of what they achieved. And I think sometimes like if you watch some of the movies that have been made about the women's orchestra, that orchestra is presented is not playing very well or things. But I trust the opinion of the musicians I talked to, and they said I always knew they were playing well. When Alma said I would like for I wish my father could have heard that. He would have liked that.
And for them that was the highest praise, and that meant that they were performing at a very high standard.
Weirdly, the orchestra was used for nefarious purposes as well. For transports. You write that would come into a camp and they would be lulled into some kind of passivity or try to The orchestra would have that purpose. But also you write about something called the gate, and also that the orchestra would play particular marches and the prisoners on these roll calls would have to be in step or else.
Yeah, that was one of their big responsibilities. Apart from these weekly concerts, every morning and every evening they had to go set up by the gate to the camp Aschwitz and byr can. Now, in addition to being a death camp, was also a slave labor camp, and so every day these large commandos thousands of women would have
to march in and out of the camp. And so to keep them moving and keep some kind of order, the orchestra would play these marches on the sidelines and sort of the prisoners were forced to keep in step coming and going outside of the camp. Sometimes they would have them play outside on the ramp when the transports were coming again, just to low those transports into a
false sense of security. You know, if you heard music surely this can be a bad place, and so they were used for a lot of Again, I have to mention that these responsibilities were just took an enormous toll on the musicians. They years later, the women that survived
just had this horrible emotional trauma, great moral conflict. They were, of course playing because they wanted to live like everybody else wanted to live, but they witnessed firsthands much brutality towards the other prisoners just was a real moral created a lot of moral suffering for those musicians.
They were very conflicted as well because they knew that their position as musicians under almeh Rose was the way that they had somewhat of a privileged conditions to live in, and you include some of those little privileges that they really took to heart. But they were treated differently because they were in that orchestra.
That is correct, I mean, I think it's still important to caution that although their conditions were better, a lot better than a lot of the other prison population, the conditions were still enormously difficult for them, and there was also resentment, of course from the other prisoners who didn't have those sort of I don't want to call them perks because they weren't perks but slightly better conditions. So again that also contributed to the moral dilemma and suffering of the musicians.
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You write In summer of nineteen forty four, large Hungarian transports arrive and the entire camp of Auschwitz Birkenal was mobilized for mass slaughter, and then Maria's mother died as well.
To compound this anger, Yes, that's correct.
You also write about her returning to her hometown and how she did that. Just tell us about that appearance in her hometown.
Sure, I mean during her camp service, Maria went back to my sec periodically as she rose in rank and became more and more important in the Nazi hierarchy. I think she wanted to sort of rub her rub than noses of the people in the community who maybe had looked down on her because she was a woman, or
because she lost her fiance, or for whatever reason. So she would usually come dressed in full dress uniforms, sometimes in an SS car, usually with a MALSS officer accompanying her, And so she very much wanted to make an impact when she came back home and into the community, and so we know of several documented visits where she came home. She did come home the summer after her mother died
for the funeral. She came home later that year, and this was late nineteen forty four, so again, the war would end in nineteen forty five, so this was near the end offer her over camp service. But those visits were remembered very vividly by the townspeople, and so I was able to talk to a lot of people who remembered very specific accounts of those visits home.
Tell us when the Allies finally it looks like it certain defeat, you say, Maria leaves the camp within just a few days, being able to escape. Tell us about what happens after the Allies liberate the camps.
Sure well, Auschwitz was sort of winding out out of existence. At the end of nineteen forty four, the Nazis were beginning to flee ship the Russians were getting close to the camp. Maria had been transferred before the end of the year to a camp called Muldorf, which is outside of again vicinity of Munich in Germany, and so Alschwitz was liberated by the Russians in January of nineteen forty five. Maria by this point was stationed at Mueldorf for she
remained for the rest of the war. We don't have a lot of accounts of her there. She was sort of in She was still the head overseer, but I think she was keeping a lower profile. A lot of the Nazis were sensing that they were going to lose the world, though they weren't allowed to say that. And then, of course the Allied forces came into Europe after d day, and so that part of Germany was liberated by the Americans. We know that at Mueldorf that the American Army was
getting very very close. She literally bugged out with the camp commandant just a couple hours before the Americans got to the camp. Led first two months Kirhin and then onto her sister's house in this little hamlet called Luke,
and she remained there for the next couple of months. Ultimately, someone informed on her and she was arrested at her sister's house and then was taken into custody in August of nineteen forty five and sent to a pow enclosure for German prisoners of war that they set up at the former concentration camp of Dochouse.
Now you talk about that this now is a prison for these Nazi criminals, and that the Red Cross was monitoring the condition and people were enlisted to make sure that these people were in good health for these upcoming trials, weren't they.
Yes, they were very concerned with keeping them in good shape. They wanted to have very public war crimes trials. Of course, the Nuremberg trials were going on about this time, so everybody was sort of looking ahead to the next wave of prosecution of these war criminals. So that was sort of Maria was Dachau at that point, sort of in waiting for extradition. They had decided that a lot of them would be tried in places where their greatest atrocities happened,
I guess. And so because Maria was so influential at Auschwitz ber Canal, the decision was made to put her on an extradition train back to Poland where she would stand trial with a bunch of leading members of the Auschwitz camp staff, so that they were sort of preparing them for that extradition.
She would be part of this second Ashwitz trial, as it was coined. But the first Ashwitz trial resulted in, as you say, a public hanging, and so the second trial had its problems, was succeeding shortly after that, and they didn't want to have a public hanging in the second trial, did they.
Well, the first Aschwitz trial was just for one man, that was Rudolph Hurst. He was the commandant of Auschwitz. And so the second trial, which is they referred to it as the second because as it happened first, then tried forty members of the Auschwitz staff sort of as part of that. In the interim, there were other trials
going on. There was one inta near Goadinsk and Stuttav was one of the camps in the northern part of Poland, and that was that happened before Maria's trial, and the public moved was still very much revenge, you know, that people wanted to see them hang publicly. So there was a huge public hanging up there for the stup Hof
stuot Off personnel. But it had sort of adverse effects in that, you know, a lot of people went with their kids, but then kids didn't really understand what was happening, so some of the children began playing hanging games and some children died from that, and so there was this really very sad fallout as a result of that public spectacle.
And by the time they gathered all the people together and got all the depositions and things in preparation for Mandel's trial, what sentiment had calmed down a little bit. They definitely wanted to see these people executed if they were guilty, but the trend was now away from holding a public execution.
You introduce an important character at this time, a Margaret Burda, so she becomes a prisoner when Russia came into power, and she was sent to Dacau as well and became Maria's sell me.
Yes, I think if I can claim any kind of research triumph in such a sad story, it was finding Margaret Burda. She was Maria's best friend during the war or not during the war, but after the war she was held in Dachau, was transported with Maria to Poland, and was with Maria the whole time she was in prison till shortly before her execution. Margaret was she was just a wonderful spirit. She really had done nothing wrong.
She was just working as a secretary at an office and crackoff and so was sort of rounded up with these others. Ultimately was totally acquitted of any kind of crimes and was sent back to Germany. But she only
knew Maria Mandel is this wonderful, kind, supportive brand. And so it was like this view, you know, I had all these testimonies and talk to survivors who just knew the brutal Mandle and then I talked to Margaret Burda, who just sort of showed this other side of Maria's personality and so it was really earthshaking to get to know her and to speak with her many times. We began a long correspondence and did several visits with her, and so she really shared this other side of Maria's personality,
which was revelatory in a lot of ways. And when you talk about this dichotomy that every person has good and evil in them, I think, as horrific as Mandel's actions were, and I would never dream of negating the huge suffering that she caused, she also had this other side, and perhaps in convenient to acknowledge that, but it was certainly there.
You talk about that they looked they found across Poland to look for testimonies for potential witnesses against these Nazis and Maria as well, and they took photos from their mugshots and enlarged them and put them up in important and major cities in the town squares. And you write that many many people came forward, many more people than the other perpetrators came forward to speak out against Maria.
Yes, by the time the trial got underway, she had more testimonies against her than any other defendant in their trial.
You take us to the trial that happens eventually, and the witnesses that testify and the things that they testify too. We've mentioned some of the horrors that she inflicted upon these prisoners, But what was some of the most damning evidence that was against her at this and tell us about her own testimony.
Well, I think certainly the most damning piece of evidence that came up is that, you know, a lot of the testimony concerned the selections, selections being when these transports came into the camp, people were selected for death in the gas chambers or to be a part of the slave labor. But of course, sadly most people were selected for death, and I'll always maintain that, you know, the maless officers made the decisions of who would be selected
for death and the gas chamber. She wasn't involved. But a list surfaced of a list of almost five hundred Greek women, which was a transport list to be sent directly to the gas chamber, and she signed that. And so the signed death list had been smuggled out to the resistance, and of course it was entered as evidence into her trial, and so there was no way she
could deny that reality. That was very concrete evidence and then, of course, there were just dozens of very graphic testimonies of women who suffered under her punishment, saw other people killed, observed her choosing people to go to the gas chambers. So again there was no doubt of her guilt or of her culpability in these really horrific actions.
Tell us a little bit more about the trial and the press response, the public response, and the greater public's response internationally.
Sure, I mean, this was a huge, high profile trial. International press came, you know, so there were delegates from all over the world. There was standing room only, Like people so many survivors had suffered in Poland, they wanted to come to the trial. They wanted to see these
people on trial for their lives. They eventually there were so many people who wanted to attend that they put loud speakers up outside of the trial venue, and huge crowds would gather every day under these loud speakers to listen to the testimony of these trials. And again the press, as you might imagine, coverage ranged from level headed coverage to very salacious coverage. Sometimes, you know, the more solation
just the coverage, or the more horrific the story. Of course, those are the things that I got a lot of attention. At the same time, you know, if a survivor wasn't asked to testify, or they didn't agree with the testify, they would undergo all this other trauma. So it was very emotional atmosphere when the prisoners were brought to the trial. Every day they were unloaded at the back and there would be these huge, cheering crowds that would spit at them and you n scream at them as they were
being escorted inside. So it was a very dramatic and emotional and really riveting, if I can use that word trial. And I think people finally felt that these at least there wasn't justice.
Now.
There was one quote I read the paper said we don't want revenge, we want justice. But I think certainly a lot of people wanted revenge as well.
She was to be hanged January twenty fourth, nineteen forty eight. In the end of this book, do you write about an interesting event, a very very interesting event regarding Maria as a prisoner in a shower. Can you tell us about this?
Yes, one of the prisoners at Ashwitzperkanal that had a lot of interaction with Mandal was named Statislava rock Falova, and rock Falova was slightly older than a lot of the young women in the camp, and she became the source of great comfort to them. She was more mature. When they got the most depressed and upset, she would tell these wonderful stories to try and take them out
of where they were. Very courageous women. She survived Aschwitz, and after the war she became involved in a lot of anti communist activities and eventually became the center of this huge resistance network. Was arrested for that and was sent to the same prison where the German prisoners of war had been taken, Montaloupiche, and so both Rockfalova and
Mandel ended up being prisoners in this place. Every time rock Filova saw her in the hall, she would spit at her, curse at her, you know, she just hated her.
And then the trial happened. Maria received the deaths sentence, and a couple of days before the sentences were carried out, rock Falova was taken to the prison showers and she realized when she got there the showers were on and at the far end of the shower room was Maria Mandel and Teresa Brandle, the other overseer, and so she writes very vividly about this moment during the shower, the water you know, that steamed their naked and she noticed
Mandal walking towards her. You know, she begins almost to hyperventilate because, my god, this was her tormentor. She just remembered the cruelties, and Maria came up and knelt before her and asked for forgiveness for everything that she had done. And so rock Falova, after the fact, somewhat controversially said I forgive you in the name of all the prisoners, and then they were taken back to their cells, and
then Mandal was executed a few days later. Rock Falova told some of the other prisoners right after this happened, and there was a huge it ultimately became this huge debate in the survivor world. They felt she really had no right to forgive Mammal on everybody's behalf. Other prisoners felt that rock Falosa was Catholic, and they said, well, of course you have to forgive. That's a doctrine that
we believe in. And whether people agreed with her forgiveness or not, I'm very convinced that this incident did happen. Some people questioned that Rockvilova made it up, but I talked to enough people who had talked to her right after this happened, people who didn't embellish. Later years later, I Rockflova had died, but I interviewed her daughter, and her daughter said her mother never ever wanted to talk about any of this during her lifetime, that it wasn't
something she wanted to dramatize or anything. It was just this sort of extraordinary moment where I think maybe at least Maria began to take some responsibility for what she had done. And I think for rock Falova, it was a way of her sort of processing her trauma and trying to figure out a way to move forward. So it was really an overcoming moment and sort of very provoking end to Mendel's life.
You also include that her friend Margaret also corresponded with Franz Maria's father, and it was a very very interesting correspondence again to try to answer how on earth she became this person, and the father asked probably the same question.
Yeah for me, you know, the whole journey of the book and my journey with Maria Mandel sort of comes to that point. I think for me, that's the heart of the book. Is like after the war, Margaret returned home, she was, you know, acquitted, she wrote to Franz because Maria had asked her to be in touch, and neither of them knew at this point that Marie had been executed, so they were asking each other for if they knew
if she was okay. And then Margaret was saying, you know, she was such a good friend and I loved her, and I don't believe these things that were said about her, and Bronz Mandel wrote back this letter which Margaret shared with me, and it's just such an anguished letter from
loving father. He doesn't understand what happened to her, why she followed this path, and of course this was from a man who men were raised to be very reserved in those days, and really his anguish is palpable on this letter of sort of what happened to Maria and to her life and how he just doesn't understand it and till his dying day is going to suffer this anguish of what happened with her and what she ended up doing in her life.
Yes, incredible. I want to thank you so much, Susan Eyescheid for coming on and talking about your incredible book, Mistress of Life and Death The Dark Journey of Maria Mandel, the Head Overseer of Auschwitz Brukenal. Or those that might want to find out more about this book. Do you do any social media and tell us when this book will be released.
Please sure the book has been released. It was released in the end of December, so it's out and about there. You can find it on all major booksellings if you just do. Mistress of Life and Death have a website where you can learn more about the sort of my
journey in Maria's journey. That is just s E I s C h e I D dot com so sishid dot com my first initial in my last name, and I would welcome any if anyone needs to process further, you know that you can contact me through the website and that would be happy to answer any questions.
I can thank you so much as Susan Eishied for Mistress of Life and Death the Dark Journey of Maria Mandel, the Head Overseer of Auschwitz Brookenal. Thank you so much for this interview and you have a great evening. And good night.
Thank you. I appreciate your time. You have a good evening too
Thank you, good night, good night,