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  • 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
  • Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelee
  • Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (17 ratings)

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Mistress of Life and Death

By: Susan J. Eischeid
Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelee
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Publisher's summary

The first-ever biography of SS Overseer Maria Mandl, the highest-ranked woman in the Nazi killing machine and one of the few female perpetrators of the Holocaust.

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.

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.

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.

©2024 Susan J. Eischeid (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
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Wow!

It was an interesting discussion on evil and what makes us all capable of it!

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Well, if you don’t care about proof…….

If you don’t care about proof this is the book for you. It is so full of conjecture and basically “he probably” “she might have”. Actually very little about her actual time in the camps. Almost a fourth of it is talking to some woman who shared a cell with her after her arrest who thought she was a wonderful person. Very sympathetic to this monster.

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