Mistress of Life and Death: The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau

by Susan J. Eischeid

A masterful exploration of one of the Nazi regime’s darkest and most intriguing figures—and one of the few female perpetrators of the Holocaust—this vivid and thoughtful biography, with never-before-published details and photography, will appeal to readers of The Lilac Girls and history buffs alike.
 
By the time of her execution at thirty-six, Maria Mandl had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. As Head Overseer of the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 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 Mandl, regarded locally as “a nice girl from a good family,” came to embody the very worst of humanity. Born in 1912 in the scenic Austrian village of Münzkirchen, Maria enjoyed a happy childhood with loving parents—who later watched in anguish as their grown daughter rose through the Nazi system.
 
Mandl’s life mirrors the period in which she turbulent, violent, and suffused with paradoxes. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, she founded the 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 1948. 
 
For two decades, Eischeid has excavated the details of Mandl’s life story, drawing on archival testimonies, speaking to dozens of witnesses, and spending time with Mandl’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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Holocaust, World War II, Audiobook, True Crime

536 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 26, 2023

Reviews

[Marquise · Rating 4 out of 5]

She was a nice girl from a good family.

With these words, author Susan J. Eischeid concludes her excellent biography of SS-Lagerführerin Maria Mandl, perhaps the closest we'll ever have to a female concentration camp Kommandant.

We have had both memoirs and bios of the camp Commandants for decades, there's the memoirs of Rudolf Höss from Auschwitz and the magisterial Into That Darkness about Franz Stangl from Treblinka, as well as numerous other books about the men in charge of the concentration and extermination camps. But what about the women? There's maybe a couple of books like Brown's "The Camp Women" or Bower's "Hitler's Furies" that deal with the female staff in bulk and very broadly, and a couple more about the more infamous SS women like Irma Grese and Ilse Koch. But there's no book, as far as I'm aware, about a woman Commandant.

Yes, I know you'll tell me that's because there were no female Commandants. The sexist structure of the Reich's administration didn't allow women to play any other roles but auxiliary ones, with Hitler's famous Three Ks dictum ("kinder, kirche, küche," that is: children, church, kitchen) as the guideline. So when the number of female prisoners grew too large and the SS were pressed for resources and personnel, they had to create a corps of SS-Helferinnen (auxiliaries) to help them keep the concentration camps' murder machinery on track. As a woman, though, you couldn't rise above an Oberaufseherin (head supervisor) commanding all the female staff of a camp, or a Lagerführerin (camp leader) in charge of either an entire all-female camp or a women-only subcamp within a larger camp. Nice, isn't it? But . . . you couldn't order the SS men around, only the SS women. Any fool SS officer outranked you by virtue of having a nice pair of Aryan nuts. Oh, and the concentration camp's Kommandant was always a man. Always. Even at Ravensbrück, the all-female concentration camp, the head honcho was a man.

That was frustrating to someone as enterprising, bossy, and career-ambitious as Maria Mandl, but she nevertheless managed to become the SS-Oberaufseherin of not one but two concentration camps and the SS-Lagerführerin of an extermination camp. Three camps! And one of them the largest ever of them all! You're de facto like a woman Commandant because you're now the highest-ranked SS woman in the entire Reich by virtue of ruling over Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the three camps that collectively made Auschwitz. Not bad if you're a Nazi with a large ego and a tiny conscience, well worth the bother of living in daily misery competing with fellow Lagerführer Hössler for power and enduring the disdain toward female SS of Commandant Höss.

But how did this "nice girl from a good family" end there? What made this girl from a small town in Austria whose parents were well-liked, respected people, and fairly observant of their religion, and shock of shocks, not Nazi at all become a monster?

That is the big question Mistress of Life and Death aims to answer. If I wanted to be short and to the point, I'd just paraphrase Christopher Browning and just say: "Ordinary women." And leave it at that.

But there are things about Mandl that have me feeling somewhat dissatisfied with Browning's all-encompassing synthesis. True, for most of her life, Maria was an ordinary woman, everything about her life in Münzkirchen is so commonplace and normal you'll never find anything abnormal or psychopathological no matter how close you look. By all accounts, all this ordinary woman wanted in the world was an ordinary life: her own family, her own children, be a nurse, work in a nice job. She was engaged to another villager and worked in the post office, she'd soon marry and have babies, everything looked right and bright. And then . . . try not to laugh . . . Mandl was suddenly fired from her job for, can you guess? For not being a Nazi!

Yes, as you read: she wasn't a NSDAP member. Austria had been annexed by Germany and Nazi fervor ran high, jobs were asking people to join the party as a requisite to get or keep one, and Mandl wasn't one. Jobless meant no career or good financial prospects, and so Mandl's fiancé dumped her.

If it were me, I'd have said good riddance and looked for someone handsomer and whose love didn't depend on me having a job that, in turn, depended on me kissing Adolf's behind. But Maria was broken by this incident, which changed her and the course of her life forever. Eischeid speculates that this incident is what changed Maria's psyche to the point she became obsessed with rising high and proving everyone, especially that idiot who dumped her, that she was worthy and admirable. So she left her village for Münich in search of a career path. There, she wanted to be a nurse, in her own words, or join the criminal police force that were looking for female staff. But instead, through an uncle's advice she ended up in the SS and as a guard at the Lichtenburg concentration camp.

What followed is no longer anything "ordinary." It's the story of a descent into madness.

At Lichtenburg, Maria became so bestially cruel and pitiless in her abuse of the prisoners that I can't but wonder if she didn't have some hitherto undiagnosed psychopathological issues, considering the state of the psychiatric profession at the time and the fact that she was never interviewed by a professional psychologist/psychiatrist like other Nazi tops, we'll likely never know. To me, here is where Browning's thesis is insufficient as an explanation. Maria wasn't merely desensitised but actively enjoyed being brutal. The descriptions of the beatings and murders she participated in are graphic, and survivors emphasise that after each episode Mandl looked radiant, even prettier than before, as if she got high on inflicting pain on others. That isn't ordinary. That's not normal. Getting sexual satisfaction from beating women within inches of their lives, or outright murdering them through a beating, isn't normal. She was so brutal and needlessly added extra corporeal punishment on the inmates that even the camp doctor protested against her cruelty. How can you be "ordinary" if even other SS think you're overdoing it?

And Maria's descent into boundless brutality wasn't gradual, it was so quick and swift that, even though Eischeid believes it was her ambition and desire to stand out as hardworking and lead by example that caused this, I can't help but feel even more convinced that Mandl had to have psychological issues that were never diagnosed. You simply don't become what she became overnight without a serious inner break, a defective mental process somewhere deep. Ordinary people in these situations go slower, they react to peer pressure, they compartmentalise, and they become desensitised to violence and genocide gradually through constant practice; it's the broken pieces who take to violence and genocide in a blink like ducks to water and enjoy it. The right environment brings out what is rotten inside, and what is rotten inside comes out in the right environment.

Lichtenburg was the right environment for Mandl. Just as rapidly as she'd assumed her new bestial nature, she rose high from mere overseer to head overseer. She got so high on her new power, her new responsibilities, and her new uniform that survivor accounts describe her as peacocking around the camp self-importantly and self-satisfiedly, drunk on the knowledge of her power over human life and death. She had everything she had ever wanted, except children, her dream that she never fulfilled despite several affairs with a camp commandant and other SS officers. And she rose even higher when she was transferred to the concentration camp for women at Ravensbrück, where she continued her regime of terror and rose to the rank of Oberaufseherin again.

If the Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück chapters are hard to read because of the horrors they describe caused by Mandl, they're nothing compared to the chapters covering her time at Birkenau. At the time, the camp was a disaster: filthy, disorganised, plagued by typhus and other sicknesses; a lost cause. Accustomed to her cushy life and luxuries at Ravensbrück, Mandl kicked and screamed at the order to transfer her to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a transfer that was like going from a palace to a hovel to her. She disobeyed the order to the face of her superior in Berlin, but was either talked into or threatened with prison into going. Off she went, and actually did a good job there.

This part on her rule at Birkenau is both the most engrossing and the most horrific. Eischeid is careful to include both the good and the bad, because Mandl did indeed do good in improving the camp's organisation and living standards, improved the cleanliness and epidemic control protocols, which must've accounted for more people surviving the camp in the long run. She also created the famous Auschwitz Women's Orchestra that famed violinist Alma Rosé directed. The positive accounts of Mandl are all by Birkenau survivors, women who talk about her treating them fairly, even kindly, giving them presents, loving and protecting children, how she overruled other brutal SS women like Drexler, how she fed the orchestra better and allowed a funeral for Rosé, and so on; surprisingly, there's even one survivor who said that Mandl saved her from the gas chamber.

If you didn't know about her two previous commands, the Auschwitz chapters might cause you to think Mandl was one of the "better" camp bosses. But wait! Not so fast! She didn't get the nickname of The Beast of Lichtenburg or The Beast of Ravensbrück. Nein, meine lieben Damen und Herren, no. Her nickname was The Beast of Auschwitz, and she deserved it.

Because Maria Mandl, for all the kindness she showed to some, didn't abstain from beatings, murder, selecting people for the gas chambers, and such. Because Maria Mandl, for all the love she showered on child prisoners, she herself led one five-year-old child by the hand toward the gas chamber. And, as Eischeid notes, both were one and the same Maria: the motherly protector of babies and the music lover and the wounded girl's saviour, and the guard that kicked a pregnant inmate in the belly, the camp leader that ordered bleeding Mala Zimetbaum be thrown into the crematorium alive, the overseer that threw children like sacks of potatoes into the trucks taking them to the crematoria . . . The monster had a kind side that flashed on and off, but she was a monster all the same.

Near the end of the war, Maria was once more transferred to her third and last camp at Mühldorf. There, she was so dull and subdued that nothing much is left to tell about this episode of her life. The chapters covering it are also the dullest, and it's not Eischeid's fault. Suffice to say that Maria and her camp Commandant lover fled when the Americans drew near and went to live in her hometown with her sister. It isn't known why Maria didn't flee and change her name and visage like other top Nazis, perhaps hubris and believing herself invulnerable because she didn't see what she had done as wrong. But whatever the motive, she was denounced to the American authorities and arrested, spending two years first in Dachau and later in the Montelupich prison in Poland, where she waited for her trial. She was sentenced to death and hanged in 1948, together with other Auschwitz staff, such as former Commandant Liebehenschel.

Although this book is divided in eight parts, you could as well mentally divide it in three: the first about Maria's early life, her camp head overseer period, and her imprisonment and death. The first two portions of her life take up half the book, so the other half is about her escape, arrest, imprisonment, and execution. I think this part takes up too much of the book, there's too much about her life in prison, a mere two years compared to the longer period she spent terrorising three camps, and given the page space given to Mandl's dear friend Margit Burda and the episode where a former inmate "forgave" Maria in the name of the rest of inmates and the priest who heard Maria's supposed repentance by the end of her life, there's an uncomfortable veneer of humanisation for this woman that some might find unacceptable. It's true that Christians and Jews have different views on forgiveness, but one thing I agree with is that Rachwalowa did have a right to forgive Maria on her behalf and hers alone (the Christian way) but definitely didn't have a right to forgive Maria on behalf of the rest of Auschwitz victims (the Jewish way), and so she shouldn't have. She isn't God, and forgiveness in the name of others wasn't hers to hand out. To be fair, though, Eischeid is impartial in narrating this episode, she doesn't take sides or judge, and makes it clear that this episode might have been made up.

Did Mandel ever regret her actions? At her trial, she curtly said that no, she didn't. Whether it was sincere or hubristic defiance in the face of her accusers is up to the reader to judge. Her priest that tended to her for the last months of her life believes she did regret it and repented. Personally, for me any repentance on her part was too late and sounds about as genuine as Höss' repentance. Which is to say: not genuine. Maria Mandl used the same I-was-just-following-orders defence that Eichmann and practically everyone judged for the Nazi genocide has used. And she remained unmoved, bored, defiant, and a consistent liar that kept denying she ever whipped anyone, ever murdered anyone, ever sent anyone to the gas chambers, and kept calling the victims criminals and whores, all in spite of the numerous eyewitnesses. Had not a document ordering to send hundreds of Greek Jewesses to the gas chamber signed by her miraculously survived, she'd have stayed arrogantly sure of herself to the very end. That paper doomed her, and deflated her arrogance. That's likely when she understood she'd be executed. And what's one to do if you have very little to live and, if you're a believer in God, you know you'll be facing judgment in the afterlife? It's then easy for you to "repent" on the eleventh hour. That, personally, is my assessment based on the facts this book presents.

In the introduction, Eischeid writes:

How does one tell the tale of a murderer? Is it wrong to try to understand her actions from some previously assumed mantle of empathy? And how does one tell Maria’s story with compassion without negating the very real suffering of her victims?

I understand her worry about telling Mandl's story fairly and factually. There's people who mistake understanding for excusing, fairness for apologia, and who blanket refuse to even consider the possibility that Nazis had a good side or did some good things, as if that somehow is offensive by and in itself. I have known people like that in all these long years of reading WWII history, so I sympathise with the author's preoccupation with presenting the story non-judgmentally. But Eischeid shouldn't have worried overmuch, because she didn't write a book that makes Maria look good.

Does Maria Mandl come across as sympathetic in Mistress of Life and Death? To me, the answer is a firm NO! She may be interesting but is also deeply repulsive. But I'm one of those readers that read books about horrible people with a sense of detachment that perhaps other don't have. As a WWII history buff, you kind of have to, because this period is full of horrible people, depraved people, pitiless monsters, and trying to understand how it all came to be, what made them be like that, demands equanimity. When I was a teen, a bookseller from whom I used to buy all my books point-blankly and rather rudely asked me if I was a Nazi sympathiser and offered to get me Hitler's book for free. Surprised, I said no, why would I be? And the bookseller said it was because I always bought WWII books from the German side.

As you see, there's plenty of people out there that will never grasp that understanding isn't excusing, explaining isn't forgiveness as Christopher Browning put it. And there's even more people out there who can't grasp that writing a book about a monster isn't support for that monster, and reading such a book doesn't make you a supporter either.

Eischeid did an excellent job, in my opinion, presenting both sides of Maria without "both-siding" the argument, if you understand what I mean. She presents Mandl with all her facets, and the reader judges. Of course, the book does have its flaws, like that the chapters are too short and too many (110 chapters in total), and that she takes detours in parts into details that don't add much. The portion covering the concentration camps could've been longer, too. But, all in all, it was an engrossing, informative, and thorough biography.

4.5 stars!

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Justin Tate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not what I expected, but impressive anyway. The opening premise suggests this is a biography of a young Nazi woman believed to have directly or indirectly murdered 500,000 people while serving as a top-ranking official at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The idea, seemingly, being that it’s important to study the development of evil so we can better understand how to prevent it. I was especially intrigued by the idea of a biographer making these connections from her pre-Nazi life.

Instead, this is a biography of the young woman’s war crimes. There is approximately three pages on Maria’s upbringing before we are thrust into her role as unimaginable mass murderer. I felt a little bamboozled because that wasn’t what I had signed up for, but nevertheless it was important history that must be remembered. Yes, it’s a tough subject, but we can all benefit from a periodical reminder of the atrocities of human kind.

There is also something unique about viewing WWII history from Maria’s singular vantage. I’m sure other books have taken a similar approach, but it was new to me. The positive side is that we follow a narrow case study rather than be muddled by the vast complexity of world war. The downside of taking the villain's perspective is that she can, at times, come across as too sympathetic. This happens a lot when quoting her closing arguments on trial. The biographer could have offered some commentary during these moments, I think, to remind us how much BS her defenses were. Instead the book offers up her side plainly, almost as an alternative perspective even though it’s obviously not true and few on the planet probably know that as much as the author. Why she doesn’t insert her authority on the subject more often is mystifying.

In the end, Maria is summed up with the cliche that she was a nice girl from a good family who got swept up in one of the worst moments in world history. It happened to her, and it can happen to anybody. Perhaps all that is true, but there’s not a lot of thesis building along the way to make me feel I understand the human condition better. I do feel I know more about Maria's role in the atrocities of concentration camps, however, and that’s a win. I agree with the author's premise that we must study the vile as well as the celebrated. Limiting knowledge because it's uncomfortable is a sure way to repeat past mistakes.

While I didn't learn as much about the personal life of Maria Mandl as I would have liked, I probably learned as much about her as the historic record has preserved. It's clear Eischeid went to the ends of the earth to find every scrap of evidence available relating to Maria’s life and horrific deeds. It's not easy getting inside the mind of someone who was executed nearly 80 years ago. This book is probably as informative as we're ever going to get, unless major new discoveries are unearthed. I do think there's room for more to be written about her, however, in the form of historical commentary. For fans of just-the-facts non-fiction, this book is exactly what you want. But to me it seems like a missed opportunity to not offer more about what Eischeid thinks. She's the one who devoted her life to this research. Whatever speculative opinions she has, it's more informed than what I can come up with based on raw information. If presented with honesty and clarity, readers can decipher between fact and opinion. To me, that blend would have been a more effective way to learn from this most-heinous life rather than just know of it.

[Matal “The Mischling Princess” Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading, “Mistress of Life and Death: The Dark Journey of Maria Mandl, Head Overseer of the Women's Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau” by Susan J. Eischeid, there’s a lot to say. The excellent review of this book left by Marquise really says it all, and I encourage everyone to read that review.

I wanted to read this book for many reasons. It pains me incredibly to have to publicly state that Maria Mandl was Austrian. I remember going to Vienna to visit my Tante Anni and remember how loved I felt. I returned to Austria, this time to Salzburg, as an adult and enjoyed the vast differences I found in the country as compared to Germany. But it can’t be denied what Mandl did or that Austria and Austrians willfully committed atrocities.

Eischeid did a fantastic job writing this book. The author wrote this book factually. Eischeid didn’t write a revisionist history, but instead went out of her way to reveal what really happened. Mandl, Eischeid claimed, wasn’t a monster. But she **was** guilty of crimes; she made exceedingly bad choices. She abused people and murdered them, and then tried to justify her actions.

Deny and deflect, deny and deflect, deny and deflect. This is was what Mandl did at her trial; it’s what many did, even when presented with factual evidence. This book discusses the genocide of the Holocaust—a real genocide. And it horrifies me that today people are misusing this term for political gains and to justify antisemitism; genocide is a very specific term that does not apply to all wars and atrocities. I encourage everyone to educate themselves on this subject.

The only problem that I had with this book is the fact that some chapters are one page or less, while others are 4+ pages long. I wish that the author had arranged the chapters more cohesively. I recommend this book to all.

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate giving bad reviews. Authors put a tremendous amount of time and energy into creating a book and their efforts should be respected as much as possible. I have never written a book and I am just a blogger online yelling into the void. However, I need to be honest. I tried everything I could to find the good in Susan Eischeid's Mistress of Life and Death. I found almost nothing.

The book is about an exceedingly evil woman named Maria Mandl who oversaw the women in concentration camps in World War II. She is not interesting.

The problems with this book are substantial. From a technical perspective, this book is listed as being 400 pages long. There are 112 chapters. That is not a typo. 112 chapters. There is no way to create a cohesive narrative when there is a new chapter every 3-4 pages and in some cases only 1 or 2 pages. This choice might be because Eischeid's writing style is especially choppy. Very often an entire paragraph is a statement of facts without any flourish and then moves on to a different thought. There is no narrative drive. A book on the Holocaust should leave a reader with a sick feeling in their stomach. Before you can even to begin to process a terrible episode in this book, it's on to another chapter and another topic.

There are even more serious issues from a content perspective. Eischeid does not satisfyingly answer her own questions at the beginning of the book. In fact, it seems quite often that she defaults to explaining Mandl's villainy by referencing a broken engagement. We aren't even sure who the man was but somehow this incident is leaned on multiple times in explaining her evil side. Eischeid will sometimes reference experts to explain Mandl. However, it is unclear at times if these experts are just being quoted in general or specifically about Mandl. Also, trying to diagnose and explain someone years after their death and where significant evidence from their life is missing does not hold up to scrutiny. It's guessing.

Eischeid does use the voices of actual Holocaust survivors but they are haphazardly included. A more serious problem is how often Eischeid attributes things in the narrative to "some people said" or "people believed that." Not only does this seem suspect in a non-fiction book, but why do these voices not get the same treatment as people who are quoted by name? There may very well be notes explaining where the information comes from, but if it's from a Holocaust survivor then they deserve their name to be in this book while Mandl's should be erased from history.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Kensington Books.)

[Orsolya · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor descendent – my maternal grandfather survived Buchenwald concentration camp and his name is in the directory of survivors at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. – I admittedly hold an eternal grudge against Germany, the Nazi figures in power at the time of the Holocaust; etc. I simply can’t overcome my anger, rage and pain in an effort to view these figures who committed such horrendous acts with a softer, compassionate side. Maria Mandl, the young female SS Overseer of Auschwitz-Birkenau (she began her career at Ravensbruck), is forever known in history as one of the most evil, cruel and abusive murderers of the Holocaust (thankfully she was put to trial after the war for her crimes and paid her guilty sentence with death by hanging at the age of 36). Did she, however, have another side to her or was she intrinsically evil? Even though I have a arduous task at viewing Mandl with any rehabilitation; historian and professor Susan J. Eischeid attempts to offer a macro biography of in, “Mistress of Life and Death: The Dark Journey of the Women’s Head Overseer of the Women’s Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau”.

Eischeid’s approach to “Mistress of Life and Death” spanned a two-decade journey of academic research, interviews, scouring documents/source material and personal visits to key Holocaust locations in Europe. To say the least, “Mistress of Life and Death” was not a weak undertaking and is entrenched with credible resources. Eischeid’s main thesis of the text surrounds an all encompassing biography of Maria Mandl’s path to becoming an accomplice to the murders of thousands of Jews while exploring the potential psychological backdrop of Mandl’s mind and actions (psychologists and psychotherapists were consulted).

“Mistress of Life and Death” begins with a preliminary exploration of Maria Mandl’s childhood, hometown, family background/members and schooling in order to begin to view Mandl as a whole and ascertain a possible causation of what led her to career of murder (answer: Nothing - There was no childhood trauma or hardship. She had it easy). Eischeid reinforces an unbiased attitude highlighting all aspects of Mandl’s personality alongside interviews of both friends and foes in order to put the entirety of Mandl on display versus just her evil deeds. There is a slight sway towards rehabilitation that is noticeable as Eischeid unconvincingly and rather pathetically blames Mandl’s ‘switch’ to evil as a result of being stood up by a fiancé. Um no, Eischeid. All of us have terrible romantic partner break up stories… If something so minor triggered Mandl, then clearly she had mental issues prior.

Following the background biography, “Mistress of Life and Death” ventures to the crux of the text with Mandl’s entrance into working at the concentration camps and her time at Auschwitz. Even though Holocaust texts are always difficult to read due to the emotional elements involved; “Mistress of Life and Death” is quite readable and accessible with a fast tone being almost visual with its storytelling. Yet, Eischeid also augments “Mistress of Life and Death” with a journalistic and scholarly tone akin to a highly-credible documentary. Some readers may find themselves deterred by the striking variation in chapter length (some being as short as two pages); but this somehow ‘works’ in “Mistress of Life and Death” and isn’t a dock in strength.

“Mistress of Life and Death” certainly drives homes the essence and severity of Mandl’s time as overseer at Auschwitz which can be difficult to digest although critical for all humankind to read. The stories are all sourced from actual survivor-interviews conducted by Eischeid (side note: it became cumbersome when Eischeid would refer to herself as “The author did this and did that” during the research interviews). Adding substance to Mandl’s story is the inclusion of other famous survivors, camp prisoners and SS staff who interacted with Mandl truly looking at the entirety of Auschwitz rather than just Mandl. Comparatively, though, even with some of the tears that flow while reading “Mistress of Life and Death”; there is an emotive component that is ‘missing’ within the text that seems to be more pronounced in other Holocaust history books sitting on the same shelf as “Mistress of Life and Death”. It is complex to diagnose the reasoning behind this but perhaps it is because of Eischeid’s prerogative to remain as neutral/objective as possible within the text.

In keeping with the research journalistic threads, Eischeid is an expert at unraveling truth from gossip and any logistical discrepancies making “Mistress of Life and Death” not only a biography but a substantial source for subsequent researchers. Although an unexpected way to describe a Holocaust-centric text: “Mistress of Life and Death” is a pleasure to read.

There are occasional slip-ups within “Mistress of Life and Death” such as repetition of facts/passages and the misspelling of ‘thirty’ as ‘thrity” in the last line on page 180.

The concluding chapters of “Mistress of Life and Death” streams Maria Mandl’s arrest for war crimes, imprisonment, court trial and death sentence by hanging followed by a look at the aftermath of her death toward family and friends. This portion of “Mistress of Life and Death” is just as gratifying, transparent and informative as the chapters detailing Mandl’s tenure at Auschwitz and finalizes the piece in a memorable and provocative manner.

“Mistress of Life and Death” is supplemented with a section of photo plates and images with further illustrations throughout plus notes and a bibliography.

“Mistress of Life and Death” is a recommended Holocaust piece but did not answer its thesis of of ‘why’ Mandl turned into a murderess of Jews. Granted, we can’t truly psychoanalyze her posthumously. “Mistress of Life and Death” is a scholarly but easily absorbed look at Maria Mandl and the Holocaust with it being a critical read not only for those interested in the Holocaust and Maria Mandl; but for humankind, itself – especially as the Israeli - Palestinian war/conflict rages in the Middle East at the time of this review.

[Pooja Peravali · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Head Overseer of the woman's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maria Mandl was the highest-ranked female perpetrator of the Holocaust. In this book, author Eischeid examines how she came to reach this position, and more broadly the role of women in the Nazi killing machine.

The architects and perpetrators of the Holocaust that most people are familiar with are male, but female Nazi party members played a major role in running the concentration camps too. Though the vast majority of them managed to slip back into obscurity by virtue of their sex, the most visible ones  like Mandl garnered a perhaps outsized amount of attention for the same reasons.

And Mandl is certainly an interesting case study. This book is the result of literal decades of research and interviews on the part of the author, who spoke to among others friends and neighbors of Mandl, as well as the concentration camp prisoners who suffered under her administration. In painstaking detail she recounts all the ways in which Mandl was complicit, but she presents a nuanced, often conflicting portrait of her without flinching too.

How can one reconcile the side of the personality that led a child she'd made a pet by hand to the gas chamber with the side that loved music and granted special privileges to the members of all-prisoner women's orchestra; who brutally beat prisoners for the slightest infractions but also spared the lives of at least a couple of them? Consider her staid background and her upbringing in a family which did not approve of her fervent Nazism, and things become even more convoluted.

I wish we got a better understanding of why Mandl flipped so suddenly and earnestly into brutal behavior as soon as she began working at Ravensbrück, but I suppose some things can't be explained by anyone but her. I did find the pacing of the book a little choppy with many short chapters though, and wished the writing had flowed a bit better.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.

[Rasaxx · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Labiausiai Marią pakeitė pirmoji žmogžudystė, pirmoji atimta gyvybė. Žmogus prie visko pripranta ir net žudymas gali tapti kasdienybe. Tačiau tas pirmas kartas... Kas priverčia peržengti ribą ir suduoti pirmąjį smūgį arba nuspausti gaiduką?"

Nesmerkiu, bet ir pritarti tam negaliu. Negaliu klausti "kaip ji galėjo?". Galiu tik paklausti "ar aš galėčiau?". Kitais laikais, kitomis aplinkybėmis. Nežinau.

Knyga neatskleidžia tikrosios Marios Mandl. Tai lyg žvilgsnis iš šalies. Svetimo žmogaus papasakota istorija, nieko nesugraudinanti, gal net nesukelianti jokių jausmų, na, nebent šiokį tokį abejingumą. Žiūrint iš šalies, labiausiai gaila jos tėvo. Gal istorija būtų kitokia, jei būtų papasakota Madl šeimos.

[Janilyn Kocher]

The atrocities mentioned in this book are enough to turn one’s stomach.
How could a “nice girl from a good family” (p.362) be the brutal bitch of Ravensbruck and Auschwitz?
I don’t have an answer nor do I care to dissect it. This book illustrates that people can nonchalantly and coldly kill people and brutally beat them with no remorse or regret.
There is no excuse for this beast and she deserved what she got.

[SnarkyMoggie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wish I had listened to another reviewer's assessment of this book. While I was reading it, it just felt wrong. The tone was too light; too airy. It felt un-professional, and it was made worse by the fact that it was a jumble of information. It felt like the author didn't have much on the actual subject, and so was weaving in other people's stories; the Work/Death Camps; etc. That was where I found myself paying more attention to what I was reading: the interviews of the author with people who had been there. I liked those little excerpts. But everything else...

It felt repetitive, and for many of the points the author tried to make about Mandl... It just fell flat. I didn't see how they got to that conclusion. I couldn't figure it out, and had to re-read several passages. And then would just shrug my shoulders and move on. I couldn't care enough to try and figure out what the author was trying to say.

Add in that some of the sentences felt disjointed, and some of the quotes appeared to be just thrown in without keeping the sentence flowing. It was very jarring, and made the entire reading experience worse.

I wouldn't recommend this at all. I had picked it up because I wanted to read the biography about one of the female Nazi's. Most of my previous readings on them had been the wives, so I wanted to broaden out with other women. But this one is obviously not it.

1 Star.

[Bobby Daugherty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rare as it spends some time covering the abuse of Jehovah's Witnesses in the camps. Aside from "Purple Triangles" this is never acknowledged. As is to be expected the fantastical and unproven tales of torture, medical experiments, etc. are inflating a book that was marketed as a biography and devolves into the same tired propaganda. The author has the literary technique of a tik tok "influencer" with ADD.

[Elyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I applaud the author for attempting to do the impossible: making us sympathetic to Nazis. However, no amount of justification will make their horrific acts okay. A tough listen. We need to remember these atrocities. However, no normal, nice girl goes from jilted lover to killer so easily.

[Sophia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t want to rate this so low, considering the time and effort the author put into this book. The concept itself was very interesting and I’m always intrigued by considering the psyche of a persons depraved actions. Although, I wasn’t deeply impacted by this nor do I have much emotion connected to it. I sort of expected to be moved by the story. Still interesting to learn about the real life aspect of the history.

[Mary Cummins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well researched book about Maria Mandl, the head overseer at the women’s section at Auschwitz.Maria was raised as a Catholic and came from a good family in Austria.She was educated and knew the difference between right and wrong which makes it so shocking that she could have done the hateful things that she did.Acting with total depravity, she beat, tortured, selected for death and killed many prisoners both at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz.I like how the book was split into small chapters which helped the reader more easily digest the material.The theme that resonates with me from this book is that in times of war people can change from normal loving people into monsters.
#NetGalley

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mistress of Life and Death by Susan J. Eischeid is an excruciatingly heart-crushing book about pure evil in the shape of Maria Mandl, the SS Head Overseer of the women at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eischeid did meticulous research including talking with family and acquaintances of Holocaust survivors over a span of nineteen years. The result is in-depth information about Maria's childhood in a middle-class household, her aspirations, job history, applying for a job at a new camp overseeing "prostitutes" while earning an excellent salary, her hunger for attention and power resulting in barbaric treatment of female and child prisoners, chimney selections, social life outside of camp, her trial at Nuremberg, imprisonment and hanging.

I have read countless books on the Holocaust and always, always find information nearly impossible to process in its hideous cruelty. This all-sensory book does not gloss over terrible and graphic details and is so descriptive I wept at the despair of the innocents. The most burning question is, of course, how a girl raised in a relatively normal home could possibly morph into The Beast years later. During the Nuremberg trials a few women extolled her caring attitude, yet she personally beat and killed thousands for sport and to wield power and control. She could humiliate, torture and kill during the day and host parties at her luxurious house on the weekend. She was privy to Himmler and Dr. Mengele's methods, too.

That some survived this hell is miraculous. Prisoners started at death every moment of every day and endured unspeakable dignities as a matter of course. What human beings are capable of (killing machines, innocent prisoners) is astonishing. This book is as dark and disturbing as it gets because these are real events. Real people. I could only read bits at a time every few days but am very glad I did. It gave me a better understanding about how such wicked transformations can happen, the desperation for recognition and power, though understanding the person and actions is inconceivable.

I highly, highly recommend reading this book if you feel the need to know more about this despicable time in history. It will definitely challenge and shake you. Do prepared for cold, raw reality. But the reward is great.

My sincere thank you to Kensington Books and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this powerful book. Though Holocaust stories are gut wrenching and difficult to read, they are extremely important. This one has left an indelible mark on my mind. I appreciate the work and agony which went into writing Mistress of Life and Death.

[Sandra "Jeanz" · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover shows one of the photographs taken of Maria Mandl when she was taken into police custody. In it she looks to the side but you can she has her hair pulled back in a neat hairstyle which according to the information further inside the book was a fairly on trend, up to date style. Maria's expression is somewhat stern, almost harsh, possibly stoic, you could even say from her face & posture there us some arrogance there too.

I asked myself the following question on more than one occasion both before starting to read this book and during reading it, 'Why would I want to read a book about someone involved in such atrocities?' Well, the simplistic answer is that it's a period of history that I am really interested in learning about as I believe it should never be forgotten or repeated. I was also curious as to what led Maria Mandl to a path of atrocity & evil. It is the question the author says she continually asked herself as she wrote this book. Susan Eischeid says that Maria Mandls life journey encompasses the eternal question of right vs wrong, good vs evil, and the paradox of how cruelty & compassion can exist in the same person.

I'll totally admit I approached the book hating people like Maria Mandl, the Nazis and what they did during the Holocaust. I honestly cannot say I feel any great difference in emotions after finishing the book.

However I tried my best to approach reading this book and learning about Maria's life as fairly and open minded as I could.

At times during the book, I was internally screaming at Maria, her colleagues and the Nazis. One such time was very early on in the book when the book was describing what happened in September 1946 on the prison extradition train containing the female overseers from the prison camps. Outside people shout & scream, banging on the train wanting to get at the women. Maria makes her way to a toilet cubicle and takes some pills a Nazis Officer & Doctor has given her before guards can stop her. She collapses, convulses, and is forced to vomit up the poison. The guards kick her as she lays on the floor and she mutters, "God protect me" I honestly couldn't believe the irony! I mean really? Calling on God to protect her after what she has done? And if she really believes in God, any God, how could she take part & commit the atrocities she has?
The author does a great job though of making you wonder if Maria felt any reluctance or remorse at what she was part of. She does this by first looking at Maria Mandl’s origins, her family. Maria was born in Austria and brought up religious, to be a good catholic girl. People who remember the young Maria who were interviewed by Susan Eischied say she was a pleasant girl/young woman. Maria's family were not part of, nor did they agree with the Nazis party. Maria’s father, Franz had his own business making shoes which kept the family comfortable financially. They had no connections to the Nazis party at all. In fact, at one point Maria is working for the Post Office and is sacked because she is not a member of the Nazis party. It is then her Uncle who was a Police Chief Constable suggested that Maria apply for a job as an overseer. Maria started out at Ravensbruck which ended up becoming a kind of training camp for overseers.

The conditions for the overseers was good, in fact for some it was better than they were used to at home. The women were then trained to become overseers, told what was expected of them and issued with a uniform as well as canes, pistols and whips to use to keep order. The women were given high heeled boots supposedly to enable them to stride through the awful muddy conditions at the various camps but these same high heeled boots were considered “useful” when kicking the prisoners!

Not everyone took to this tough regime, the Head SS Overseer Supervisor was Johanna Langefeld who also came from Lichtenburg like Maria. Johanna was not 100% on board with the ethical consequences of what they were doing, but she was in a minority. When Johanna could no longer meet the brutal expectations of the Nazis Regime Maria Mandl stepped right on into her job and became in charge of the women (as no female could give a male officer any sort of orders) at Auschwitz. It was whilst she was at this camp that Maria earnt the name Mistress Of Life and Death.

The Author has really done her research, from speaking to Nuns at a school, school friends, neighbours to survivors from the prison camps. You really get a sense of Maria’s fairly normal, though religious upbringing. On one hand you could perhaps say she sort of stumbled into her career in the concentration camps, but on the other hand there was always a home for her to go back to if she didn’t want to work in the camps. Maria seemed to enjoy the life she had, always having the latest hairstyle courtesy of the camp hair salon. Though the irony of her perfectly coiffed hair and the fact prisoners had all their hair shaved off upon arrival at the camp are a stark contract. It is said there were parties and though forbidden there were relationships and flings between the male and female officers, resulting in the male officers referring to the females as whores. At Christmas the overseer’s rooms would be decorated for the season, another irony, it was the prisoners that were put to work doing the decorations! Maria visited her home town all dressed up in her uniform, kind of showing off what she had become, proud of herself. Not all of her family were proud of what she became, her mother was said to be ashamed and prayed daily for her daughter when she realised the type of work she was doing and the fact she eventually became part of the Nazis party.

At her trial Maria Mandl tried many lines of defence from “she was only following orders” she was doing nothing wrong and even flat out denying some of the brutal acts she was known to have committed. Even when faced with survivors who recognised her and recounted the brutality they witnessed and was subjected to by her, she still denied it. Maybe she thought if she didn’t admit it, she somehow hadn’t done it or that she would get away with it.

I found this to be a very interesting, detailed book about a dark time in history. Though my opinion of Maria Mandl and her fellow overseers such as Irma Grese who is perhaps more well known has not really changed. You tend to think of women being more empathetic and caring to others but these women were as barbaric as their male counterparts. There are so many ironies within the book, such as the fact that Maria could be listening to music with her tears in her eyes one minute and then beating someone or sending them to the gas chambers the next minute. The fact Maria would have paperwork changed so prisoners appeared less Jewish as she wanted them orchestra and such a position was considered a high, privileged one. One that a Jew could never be allowed to obtain. A position in the Orchestra meant less hard work, better conditions, “treats” such as walks in the fresh air, being allowed to swim in a nearby lake one time, and extra food. All these “treats” could mean the difference between survival or death. The women of the orchestra were given a uniform, the women allowed to grow their hair as Maria wanted the women to look pretty. She wanted to and often did show off the orchestra to visitors at Auschwitz, taking credit for how good it was. When one of the major members of the orchestra died it is said that Maria Mandl herself was visibly upset. It is also said in the book that Maria Mandl liked children, as did some of the other female overseers and would take a child and almost keep it like a “pet” until they tired of the child and then it would be sent to the gas chambers.

I did “enjoy” learning more about how Maria came to become an overseer and the “training” she underwent. All the information is presented so well by the author. Susan never condemns, she reports the facts for you to form your own opinion and make your own decisions. The author makes you wonder what sort of life Maria and the other overseers would have had if not for Hitler and the Nazi regime. Would she have stayed in her village, married and maybe had a family. Did she have to become an overseer, there were other jobs, maybe she could have returned home to her family and found work locally. But all that is “if only” and there were so many other female overseers and SS Officers would just one less have made any difference, there would have been someone else in her position making the lives of the concentration camp prisoners lives a living hell. Maria Mandl even tried at her trial to say she “helped” the women, which on occasion I suppose in her warped mind she perhaps did. I keep coming back to my thoughts of the fact she had to know what she was doing was wrong surely? I know at one point, maybe more she did try to leave/change her overseer job but was told in no uncertain terms she was staying where she was and to get on with it.

In the end, Maria is sentenced to death which some would say was a relatively easy, painless way out for her and her colleagues when compared to what those in the concentration camps went through on a daily basis. No punishment could make right or undo the horrors that happened, and feeding/clothing Maria Mandl in a prison would still be an easy life in comparison to those in the concentration camps. I did learn new facts about Auschwitz within this book as well as discovering details about different camps. I was surprised at how many of the female overseer’s names were familiar to me, yet had I been asked to name any, the only one I would have probably come up with would have been Irma Grese. The fact all these females went through the same training at Ravensbruck only compounds the disgust and horror that there were, so many other like Maria Mandl, perhaps some not as harsh as her but also there would be ones that were even more cruel than her. We tend to hear a lot about the different men and SS Officers involved in the Holocaust but not so much about the women. Certain things reminded me of when I read The Dressmakers Of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington, in fact the author Susan does reference this book. I still don’t understand how anyone, male or female could treat other human beings like this, but the fact remains they did and it should never be forgotten. Unfortunately, the sad, devastating reality is this type of eradication of races is still occurring in our supposedly more modern world. I don’t pretend to understand all the politics of it all but it has to somehow stop.

I feel like I could talk forever about the content of this book but summing up the book is about an historic person and is both interesting and enlightening about a time/era that should never be forgotten. The book is based on facts from interviews the Author herself conducted and covers highly emotional events in an unbiased way.
I still feel the mixed emotions of horror, sadness and disgust that even at trial Maria Mandl and others used the defence of following orders when survivors clearly remembered seeing her commit atrocities, in fact some of them were her personal victims. I don’t know how she could look at them and just deny any wrong doing. I honestly find it extremely difficult to feel any compassion or understanding or forgiveness for this woman, or any of the other brutes who beat, maimed, experimented on and murdered in the name of Hitler & Nazism.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read most of the book as the sun began to set.
I would advise not doing that.
I slept quite poorly with horrible dreams.

Very detailed from a historical perspective with many first account witnesses that the author spoke to in the early 2000's.

The overall accounts of the Holocaust were horrific, yet when I realized that there was so MANY more atrocities and tortures and gruesome experiences, there are no words.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

OUTSTANDING!

Dr. Susan Eischeid, my friend and former music professor, has written this book to fill a critical void in Holocaust research. How is it that the overseer of the Women’s Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp has not been studied before now?

Women can be perpetrators, too. And like all perpetrators, they begin life as “normal people.” In this book, the reader goes on a vivid journey of how Maria Mandl, one of the worst WWII concentration camp system perpetrators, transforms from girl next door to supreme evil doer.

The first third of the book is horror after horror, and it would be understandable if a reader wanted to surrender. Right when I felt my heart was going to explode in pain, I reached the much needed Chapter 36, appropriately titled, “A Pause, to Acknowledge Courage”. Eischeid says, “It is possible, when reading multiple testimonies of atrocity and suffering, to become numb, inured somehow to the real physical and emotional cost Maria’s actions had on these women” (p126). Then, through conversations with the survivors, Eischeid recenters and renews the reader’s spirit and motivation.

The real meat of the book, in my opinion, comes in the second two thirds during discussions of good vs evil and how both exist within all humans. The paradox is that the worst monsters of history are still human. They are almost always internally conflicted. Eischeid expertly leads the reflective reader through a discussion of truth and lie, sin and forgiveness, and faith and healing.

Another reviewer of this book (on this site) said, “Some people are best forgotten to time” (paraphrased) in reference to Mandl. I strongly disagree. It is through the study of the evil [that arises among the most normal of us] that we can strive to prevent evil again. We must be able to recognize evil not only in others’ actions, but also in our own.

The structure of the book makes this extraordinarily emotional and difficult subject manageable. Numerous, yet tinsy chapters, each with a singular focus, allows the reader to consume “little bite size bits” of knowledge (and horror) without becoming completely overwhelmed. With frequent opportunities to take a break, the reader is able to sustain their own mental health.

The book is extremely well written. Vivid and emotional, the reader is transported in time to the very inner circle of one of history’s greatest atrocities and the reckoning which followed - war trials. I can’t imagine how much research this took, but we know the book was a twenty-three-year labor of love by the author.

It is absolutely worth reading. By everyone. Because we are all capable of evil. It comes down to how we control it. And then, when we have transgressed upon others, we need to know how to navigate the offense for not only ourselves, but for the victim and our community.

Job well done, Professor.

[Karyl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I felt it was fitting to finish a book about one of the perpetrators of such horrible acts against those people incarcerated in the Nazi death camps. However, I had some serious qualms about this book.

Eischeid attempts to figure out how Maria Mandl, from a good and loving Austrian family, managed to become a monster who seemed to enjoy beating the women in her charge at both Ravensbrück and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Not only did she sign death warrants for entire groups of people, she was seen to beat people to death. However, Eischeid leans heavily on the interview she conducted with Mandl’s roommate in prison, Margit Burda, a woman who insisted over and over and over again that all the atrocities attributed to Mandl were nothing more than lies and deceit. Because of this, it feels more like Eischeid is trying to show that any of us can become the monsters like Mandl did, a sort of “but there for the grace of God go I” situation. I don’t believe that is true. I do believe that the high-ranking Nazis who meted out abuse and murder were truly evil. There’s getting swept up in an ideology and there is dehumanizing entire groups of people for evil purposes.

Eischeid also blames a broken engagement for Mandl’s descent into depravity, yet there is no real evidence of such an alliance, nor do we even know who this purported fiancé was. I find it difficult to believe that one failed relationship would cause a woman to turn into someone who sadistically beat the women under her charge until they died of their injuries.

I also was put off by the fact that a lot of the survivors who later described Mandl’s crimes were rarely named, but those who tried to show Mandl’s humane side were often named and described in great detail. I would prefer to hear more stories of those who were in the camps. We lost so many people in those years; each one should be named and their stories told.

Alas, I fear the author has truly missed the mark on this one.

[sir chester snickerdoodle · Rating 5 out of 5]

The confederacy of sewer clowns from Hitler’s Third Reich is bottomless. Just when you learn of one and are left in awe that such evil could even be conjured in the heart of humankind, you learn of another whose monstrous brutality causes the other to pale in comparison.

Auschwitz overseer Maria Mandl is a name that was unfamiliar to me. But having read of her life and the atrocities she committed upon untold thousands of men, women and children, there’s no doubt in my mind.

This was the most evil person who ever lived.

Just reading the details made the hair on my arms stand up. Her face even haunted me in my sleep last night. Her evil is so sinister, she seems otherworldly to me.

But more importantly, this is a story about humanity dojng its very worst and about justice prevailing for those who suffered (and still suffer to this day). As horrifying as it was, it was equally enlightening that as hellish as fascism is, it does not have the last word and when it dies, even its most ghoulish monsters scurry and run like rats in the spotlight.

[Christine Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s too easy to label people “good” or “bad”

Eischeid’s book is a personal deep dive into one person’s “how did I get here” during the Nazi rule in Germany. Maria Mandi was a normal girl from a pretty normal family. And yet, she turned into the monsters we see in movies from the Holocaust. This is something I had studied and read about in classes, where regular people do horrible things. For me the scariest thing isn’t Nazis or the horror they wrecked but that it was carried out by people I would be friends with. It’s a vacuum of darkness we need to fight against constantly because it could be us who turn into monsters

[Maria Almaguer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. What a difficult but important subject to read about. The downfall of an ordinary Austrian woman who turned against all she believed in to participate in Nazi atrocities. What's especially chilling about this story is the number of people who had good things to say about her. What's more, to the very end, she never seemed to take responsibility for her actions, taking the common stance of "just following orders." The author takes great care with her subject, not biased one way or another, but presenting all facets of a complex human being, which we all are. And, if we are honest, we all have the capability of choosing to turn to evil. Or not.

[Maeve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible piece of research that is artfully depicted. Absolutely worth the time and effort to get through what can be a difficult story to read.

[Aubree B · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mistress of Life and Death

The book was informative but written like a term paper that had a page requirement. Much of the information was redundant and just filled space. The story could have been effectively told in 200 fewer pages.

[Arielliasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Чем больше ты понимаешь, что военные преступники могут быть обычными людьми, тем больше ты начинаешь бояться. Конечно, это происходит потому, что последствия будут более серьезными, чем если бы они были просто чудовищами. Если обычные люди совершали военные преступления, это значит, что любой из нас способен на такое.

Я на день припозднилась, но уже как по канону читаю в конце месяца что-нибудь о преступниках. На этот раз выбор внезапно пал не на очередного маньяка, а на тему, которую привыкла обходить стороной. Не то, чтобы мне не было интересно узнать больше о людях, живущих во время второй мировой, скорее, читать такое всегда слишком страшно. Но эта книга была выбрана, скорее, потому, что читать про женщин, совершающих преступления, всегда было куда интереснее, чем о мужчинах. А тут ещё и такая неоднозначная женщина. Пришлось забросить все начатые романы и полностью сосредоточиться на этом. И что же, это решение было лучшим выбором, потому что я наконец-то ощутила, как выбираюсь из месячного нечитуна. Казалось бы, ну это совсем неподходящая книга, но оторваться от неё было практически невозможно.

Если честно, то я мало, что знаю о том времени, помимо сухих фактов и естественно, что о людях и того меньше. Интерес никуда не девается, но "знакомство" постоянно откладывается. Эта книга хороша тем, что авторка не пытается дать действиям Марии ни эмоциональной окраски, ни собственной оценки. Она просто описывает, как росла героиня и куда по итогам это привело. Это подкупает в жанре сильнее всего, ведь очень легко оценивать чьи-то поступки, если человек уже не может ответить. Особенно в случае с Марией, которая и при жизни не была красноречива и до самого конца не признавала своих поступков, выбрав путь наименьшего сопротивления, а именно бесконечную фразу: "я просто исполняла приказы".

Но при этом в тексте очень явно прослеживается одна мысль. "Желание стать хоть кем-то порой доводит до крайности, а вседозволенность полностью разрушает моральную сторону". И это, наверное, самое пугающее в книгах о второй мировой. Да, вовсе не весь тот ужас, который происходил, а люди, чьи поступки превозносились, ведь когда ты живёшь по принципу: "эти жизни важнее других", сложно понять, когда грань дозволенного пройдена. Понятно, что это знание автоматически не обеляет человека и не делает его заложниками системы, которому также нужно сочувствовать, но оно даёт понять, почему некоторые люди полностью изменились и перешли на сторону "зла".

Мария Мандель была обычной деревенской девушкой, росшей в семье, которая не поддерживала сторонников возникшего режима. Она потеряла работу из-за этого, впала в отчаяние и ощутила собственную неполноценность, но вместо того, чтобы вернуться домой к отцу, выбрала иной путь, который и привёл её к казне. Неизвестно чувствовала ли она вину за то, что сделала, как неизвестно и то призналась ли она, хотя бы, перед собой, что была злодейкой во многих судьбах людей, которых собственноручно отправила на смерть. К сожалению, она не вела дневников, а в последние свои годы редко с кем-то разговаривала на данные темы, поэтому остаётся только предполагать. Ближе к концу авторка вставляет рассказ одной из узниц концлагеря, которая говорила, что Мария просила у неё прощение, но если честно, то верится в это с большим трудом. Действительно ли такое происходило или этот рассказ вымысел, который помогал бывшей узнице хоть как-то существовать дальше?

Книга очень хорошо раскрывает, как ломаются личности людей под новым режимом. В одной из глав, авторка разговаривает ещё с одной бывшей узницей и та задает ей вопрос: "Кто ты такая?" На что авторка отвечает: "Надеюсь, что я тот человек, который бы скрывал евреев в своём доме". Этот ответ довольно красноречивый, ведь ты никогда не знаешь, как поведёшь себя, оказавшись в ситуации, которая кардинально отличает от привычной тебе. Будешь ли ты храбрым и честным, рискнёшь ли своей собственной жизнью ради жизни других или присоединишься к режиму? На этот вопрос каждый человек сможет ответить только столкнувшись с чем-то ужасным, поэтому я надеюсь, что таких людей со временем будет всё меньше и меньше. Надежда довольно жалкая, но это тот вид мира, в который хочется верить до последнего.

Очень большая часть книги посвящена рассказам женщины, сидящей в одной камере с Марией. Она не знала героиню до того, как закончилась война и познакомилась с ней уже после. Их дружба возникла в момент, когда режим был полностью сломлен и вовсе неудивительно, что та женщина не верила в большинство обвинений, ведь для неё Мария была другой. Она помогала ей, шила для неё одежду, разделяла её одиночество и всячески поддерживала. Показывает ли это то, что героиня поменялась после падения режима или всё куда проще и ответ в том, что они обе австрийки без грамма еврейской крови? В любом случае, это просто никому ненужное рассуждение и авторка делает упор на другое.

Закончить хочется цитатой из самой книги:

В конце концов, как заключил главный обвинитель лорд Хартли Шоукросс на Нюрнбергском процессе, «наступает момент, когда человек должен отказаться отвечать перед своим лидером, если он также должен отвечать перед своей совестью». Марии еще предстояло достичь этой точки. Почти в самом начале процесса прокурор Гацкий прямо спросил Марию:
– В целом обвиняемая чувствует себя виновной или нет?
Та просто ответила:
– Нет.
Секретарь Кристина Шиманская вспоминает, что во время предварительного допроса Мандель в ответ на одно замечание та ответила, что не хотела совершать эти поступки, но ей приказали, она была обязана.
Тогда судья Зен спросил ее:
– Тогда, возможно, вы могли бы отказаться от этой работы?
Мария прикрыла глаза рукой, задумалась на мгновение и ответила:
– Могла бы, будь у меня ребенок.
– Тогда почему вы так не поступили? – спросил Зен.
Мандель опустила глаза и тихим голосом ответила:
– Я пыталась, но впустую.

p.s. божечки, издатели, начните вы уже вставлять фотографии в подобные книги. не просто рассказывайте о том, что они существуют, а реально вставляйте, чтобы я не гуглила каждые две минуты. это единственная претензия к изданию.

[Steffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the subject matter of the book was an interesting read, the way the story was constructed made it difficult to follow. Because the chapters were so short, the flow of the book felt very disjointed. I found that from one chapter to the next, things were very scattered, and it was hard to sit down and read for long spans of time.

I understand it is an account of actual events, but I almost wish the chapters would have been longer so that we could get more involved in the story, rather than just learning about the events, almost like you would in a textbook.

[Mktvinuni]

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Du học Đài Loan ngày càng trở thành một lựa chọn phổ biến và hấp dẫn đối với sinh viên quốc tế trên khắp thế giới. Với sự kết hợp giữa môi trường học tập tiên tiến, nguồn lực văn hóa đa dạng và cơ hội nghề nghiệp đầy hứa hẹn, Đài Loan là điểm đến lý tưởng cho những ai muốn trải nghiệm sự hòa quyện giữa truyền th���ng và hiện đại. Trong bài viết này, chúng ta sẽ khám phá về cơ hội du học tại Đài Loan, những lợi ích và trải nghiệm mà nó mang lại cho sinh viên.

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Hệ Thống Giáo Dục Tiên Tiến và Đa Dạng

Đài Loan nổi tiếng với hệ thống giáo dục tiên tiến và đa dạng, bao gồm các trường đại học, cao đẳng và trung học nghề nghiệp. Các trường học ở Đài Loan được trang bị cơ sở vật chất hiện đại và giảng viên có trình độ cao, tạo điều kiện thuận lợi cho sinh viên phát triển kỹ năng và kiến thức. Các ngành học như Khoa học, Công nghệ, Kinh doanh, Y học và Nghệ thuật đều được phát triển mạnh mẽ, mang lại một môi trường học tập đa dạng và phong phú.

Môi Trường Học Tập Tiên Tiến và Thân Thiện

Các trường đại học và cao đẳng ở Đài Loan cung cấp một môi trường học tập tiên tiến và thân thiện. Sinh viên sẽ được tiếp cận với các phòng thí nghiệm, thư viện và cơ sở vật chất hiện đại, giúp họ phát triển kỹ năng và kiến thức trong một môi trường học tập đầy sáng tạo và trải nghiệm. Ngoài ra, môi trường học tập đa văn hóa và thân thiện, cùng với các hoạt động ngoại khóa và giao lưu văn hóa, giúp sinh viên dễ dàng hòa nhập và tận hưởng cuộc sống du học.

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Cơ Hội Nghiên Cứu và Phát Triển Nghề Nghiệp

Du học sinh tại Đài Loan có cơ hội tiếp cận với các trung tâm nghiên cứu và phát triển nghề nghiệp hàng đầu thế giới. Các dự án nghiên cứu và hợp tác với các công ty và tổ chức trong và ngoài nước mang lại cho sinh viên những trải nghiệm thực tế và cơ hội phát triển kỹ năng và kiến thức. Điều này giúp sinh viên chuẩn bị cho sự nghiệp sau này và tạo ra những cơ hội việc làm tốt hơn.

Trải Nghiệm Văn Hóa Đa Dạng

Đài Loan là một quốc gia với văn hóa đa dạng và phong phú, với sự kết hợp giữa văn hóa truyền thống và ảnh hưởng từ các nền văn hóa khác. Sinh viên du học tại Đài Loan sẽ có cơ hội khám phá và trải nghiệm văn hóa địa phương thông qua các hoạt động văn hóa, lễ hội truyền thống và tham quan các điểm du lịch nổi tiếng. Đồng thời, họ cũng có thể tận hưởng các món ăn đặc sản và tham gia vào các hoạt động văn hóa địa phương.

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Đài Loan cung cấp nhiều cơ hội hỗ trợ tài chính và học bổng cho sinh viên quốc tế. Các trường đại học và tổ chức phi lợi nhuận thường có các chương trình học bổng dành cho sinh viên.

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[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled for a long time on how to rate this book, and had to sit with it for a while before I felt I could put my thoughts into words.

This book's purpose is to trace the evolution of a woman from an ordinary and generally well-thought of person to a mass murderer- the banality, or ordinariness, of evil . Maria Mandl was one of the most notorious female guards in the Nazi concentration camp system, and oversaw the women's camp at Birkenau during it's most active period. She was later executed for her crimes- one of the few women executed for war crimes after the Holocaust. And while the author was quite clear about the purpose of this book, I don't feel that it was fully met. In terms of literature relating to Holocaust perpetrators Eischeid has clearly done her reading, citing such landmark works as Browning's Ordinary Men. But while those books truly showed the progression of "ordinary" to evil, I didn't think this one captured that as well. After thinking on it for a while, I ended up settling on this for two reasons.

The first was the pacing. The book is a chronological telling of Mandl's life, tracing her from birth to death. But the pacing was off. There was comparatively little of Mandl's first experience as a prison guard, which would have better demonstrated the mental and ethical scrambling that was so well done in Browning's book. Perhaps there were few records for the author to draw from (the Nazis were notorious for their love of records, and their attempts to destroy them when they knew they were losing the war). But the jump from "ordinary" civilian to guard at Ravensbruck was too abrupt to truly demonstrate the downward slide. Likewise, the large amount of book given to Mandl's time in prison after the Holocaust and leading up to her trial and execution, full of other prisoners talking about how much of a model prisoner she was, left the book ending on a strange note.

The second were the sources used. I want to say that I am sure that this was not the author's intention- but the book came off a bit too sympathetic at times. I think that is down to the sources quoted. Mandl's own testimony is, of course, an important source, but was perhaps quoted too frequently. Likewise testimony from her fellow prisoners from her imprisonment after the war- too sympathetic to her. Again, I want to stress that I absolutely do not believe that this was the author's intention. I think it was simply a combination of the time spent talking about Mandl after the war and the number of sources used to point out how kind, good, or ordinary she was- especially from sources that may confuse readers who may not be as knowledgeable about the post-war trials of Nazis (and the miscarriage of justice that allowed many Nazis to go free or with light sentences).

Overall, I think this book is a good exploration of a female perpetrator of the Holocaust, as there aren't nearly as many books examining female perpetrators of the Holocaust as compared to their male perpetrators, but should be read with a critical mind and after having done some previous reading on the topic. I would highly recommend Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men as necessary reading before this book.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a free digital advance review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Maria Mandl was supposed to be a nice girl from a respectable family whose members weren’t Nazis. As author Eischeid tells it, Maria even lost her good job at the post office after the Anschluss because she wasn’t a member of the Nazi party. That firing led to her ambitious Nazi fiancé breaking their engagement and Maria’s move to Munich, where her uncle suggested she become a guard at a women’s prison. From a small prison, she went on to the purpose-built new women’s prison Ravensbrück, and then to Auschwitz. Almost from the start, Maria was a feared by prisoners, and what’s more, she enjoyed torturing and brutalizing them.

As always, when reading about Nazis, the reader wonders how ordinary people can become so cruel and inhuman. Eischeid thinks that in Maria’s case, being rejected by her fiancé made her determined to succeed, and in the Nazi era that meant getting with the program of racial/ethnic hatred and extermination. It’s easy to see that personal ambition was the fuel for most Nazis, but it’s one thing to mouth the Nazi creed, and another to beat, torture and murder prisoners on a daily basis. Since Maria started out immediately by regularly beating prisoners and was rewarded for it with advancement within the Nazi prison system, it’s clear that Nazism gave her permission to release the demons already alive within herself.

The first half of the book covers Mandl’s childhood and career, while the second half describes her postwar capture, trial and execution. Even for someone who has been reading Nazi-era history for over half a century, the descriptions of Mandl’s treatment of prisoners are sickening and provoked some sleepless nights. It was a relief to get to that second half of the book, though it was still frustrating. Like nearly every other captured Nazi I’ve ever read about, she denied having done the horrible things presented in evidence, and when cornered always had that “I was only following orders” excuse ready, along with the false claim that she had to do what she did or she’d be severely punished or even executed. She never saw the prisoners as people who had every bit as much right to life as she had. She apologized to one former prisoner, but it didn’t seem sincere to me; it was just a long-shot bid to get a former prisoner to speak up for her. Her only real regrets seemed to be that she’d been captured and would have to face the death penalty, and that her father was, right from the start, sickened at her choice to serve the Nazis.

Eischeid’s psychological theories about Mandl are interesting, but in the end all of Hitler’s henchmen had their reasons, and they all boiled down to a selfish desire for personal benefit of some kind. The only difference in Mandl’s case is that she was female and, unlike most of the big names in Nazi history, a hands-on implementer of the deadly Nazi ideology.

A thoroughly researched book and of value to those interested in what ordinary people may do when given the power of life and death over others.

[Reader]

This biography is very detailed, gives us an in-depth insight into the upbringing and working life of Maria Mandl. I've read books/excerpts of books regarding Mandl before but this has been by far the most detailed attempt at understanding her motivations for her actions and what she was really like as a person. However, I still thought that at some parts this was lacking. For example, at times it jumped a bit too quickly between accounts of people who knew her saying that she was a classy, professional, caring woman who never abused or mistreated anybody in the camp, people who believed she was completely evil and claim she hit/tortured women at every opportunity, and gained satisfaction from this because she was a sadist, and those who give a mixed account, indicating that she would abuse/mistreat prisoners but that she wasn't really evil/a sadist but that she did it solely to impress the higher-ups and didn't enjoy it at all. They surely can't all be true, and although the author never claims to KNOW for certain Mandl's motivations and instead is attempting to paint a picture of the contrast between how Mandl was perceived amongst different groups of people, I still found it a bit jarring to jump from reading about how kind she could be and how unremarkable/pleasant her childhood was right to how abusive/malicious she could apparently act in her roles in the concentration camps. It left me feeling like I didn't really know or understand Mandl much better than I did before reading it, and made me wish there were interviews/ways of hearing Mandl's thoughts directly other than her trial transcripts and letters. However, this book was the best attempt I've come across at trying to understand Mandl.

The only real issue I had with the book is that there weren't many new photographs as claimed by the book's description, and imagery in general was sparse throughout the book. There were a few pictures I had seen before from other sources. I am hoping this is to do with this only being a provisional version of the biography, perhaps because of copyright laws etc, but if not, I believe the book's description would be misleading in this regard. I would have liked to see more images depicting Mandl's family life and personal life to help us better understand and immerse ourselves into the account.

Overall, very interesting and in-depth book. Would recommend reading if you have an interest in history, particularly the Holocaust and female concentration camp guards.