The Girl Who Escaped from Auschwitz
In July 1944, a young couple, Mala and Edek, stroll along a path through Poland’s picturesque Zywiec mountains. Mala, dressed in blue overalls, looks to be a factory worker, and Edek is wearing an SS guard’s uniform. Suddenly a German border patrol appears and, saluting, demands to see the Unterscharführer’s papers.
The couple are, in fact, escapees from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, some 50 km away. Earlier, Mala’s Polish parents had moved to Belgium, but she was arrested there and transported to Auschwitz. On account of her language skills, she is assigned an influential position as an interpreter, which she put to good use in helping the inmates. Edek is a Polish political prisoner, but as a handyman, he is given repair jobs. While working in the women’s camp, he meets Mala, and they fall in love. Horrified at the treatment of the camp’s prisoners and wishing to meet up with partisans, they plan their escape with the help of inmates and a kindhearted SS guard.
As with her other books, Ellie Midwood has based this novel on a true story. She notes that in narrating the extraordinary events, she relied particularly on a firsthand account by Wiesław Kielar, an Auschwitz inmate and a good friend of Mala and Edek. Through his and other references, the descriptions have an intimate feel. It’s as if we are walking alongside the characters and witnessing the atrocities. Mala’s and Edek’s resilient and unselfish dispositions are displayed throughout the novel. Although they knew the Red Army was nearing the camp, fearing an increase in exterminations by the Nazis, they decided to risk their lives to escape and join the partisans. Showing the escapees’ capture in the prologue may foretell the ending, but it serves its purpose in creating interest in the story. Highly recommended.
