Showing results by author "Magda Hellinger" in All Categories

In the camps during the Second World War, prisoner Magda Hellinger Blau was selected by the SS as a Jewish prison leader and she eventually rises to the senior position of Lagerälteste (Camp Elder). Madga used her proximity to her fellow prisoners and the SS to engage in numerous acts of kindness, bravery and compassion to keep the prisoners alive in frightening and uncertain circumstances. Now, her daughter, Maya Lee, tells the definitive story of her mother, a woman who showed great bravery and compassion when stuck between worlds of authority and imprisonment.

In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young Slovakian women were deported to Poland on the second transportation of Jewish people sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The women were told they'd be working at a shoe factory. At Auschwitz the SS soon discovered that by putting Jewish prisoners in charge of the day-to-day running of the accommodation blocks, camp administration and workforces, they could both reduce the number of guards required and deflect the distrust of the prisoner population away from themselves.

1942 wurde Magda Hellinger ins KZ Auschwitz deportiert; sie gehört zu den wenigen Juden, die es überlebten. Die Nazis setzten sie als Blockälteste und Lagerälteste ein und verpflichteten sie damit, den Alltag im Lager zu organisieren. Diese Positionen verschafften ihr zwar Privilegien, doch nie ließ sich Magda davon korrumpieren. Unerschrocken nutzte sie jede Möglichkeit, um ihren Mitgefangenen zu helfen - obwohl sie unter besonderer Beobachtung stand und damit in ständiger Gefahr schwebte, für jede gute Tat mit dem Leben zu bezahlen.