![A black-and-white portrait of a woman beside a modern headshot of another woman.](https://reporter.mcgill.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Mehlberg-Sliwa.jpg)
Monday, Jan. 27 marked exactly 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where approximately 1.1 million people perished, of whom 1 million were Jews. Designated the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, it has become a time to remember the six million Jews who were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators, and reflect on one of history’s most horrific chapters.
McGill honoured the date with a commemorative lecture presented by McGill’s Department of Jewish Studies. The Thomson House ballroom was filled to capacity.
“On this sombre day, we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to ensuring the memory of the victims is preserved,” said Angela Campbell, Interim Deputy Provost, Student Life and Learning, “that their stories – and those of their allies – are told, and their legacies endure.”
“This commemoration provides an essential moment to reaffirm our values as a community,” she said. “[It’s] a solemn occasion to reflect on one of history’s darkest chapters, and to reaffirm our collective responsibility to ensure its lessons endure.”
An astonishing true story
![Woman standing at a podium](https://reporter.mcgill.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Joanna-Sliwa.png)
Joanna Sliwa, PhD, delivered the memorial lecture.
A historian and administrator for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Sliwa co-authored the 2024 book The Counterfeit Countess. It tells the story of Josephine Janina Mehlberg, a Polish Jew who assumed the identity of a Christian aristocrat and saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“As a professional Holocaust historian, I have read hundreds of accounts of survivors,” said Sliwa. Yet Mehlberg’s account was so astonishing that “it made me re-evaluate what I knew about Jewish survival and resistance during the Holocaust.”
Mehlberg and her husband, Henry, were both highly educated, speaking several languages and earning doctorates prior to the Second World War. When war broke out, they remained in Poland under false identities; Mehlberg joined the resistance and dedicated herself to helping those held in Majdanek concentration camp, located on the edge of the city of Lublin.
She negotiated with Nazi officials, including the SS, face-to-face, obtaining permission to deliver truckloads of supplies, including food, books, medical equipment, razor blades and wire cutters. One Christmas Eve, she arranged for the delivery of decorated Christmas trees and a Christmas feast.
“She made these deliveries herself, and persuaded the SS to let her take them inside,” said Sliwa. “Such a program did not exist in any other concentration camp.”
‘We will remember’
The Mehlbergs survived the war, immigrated to Canada in 1950, then settled in the United States.
Motivated by ongoing antisemitism in her native Poland, Mehlberg wrote a memoir before her death in 1969; the manuscript would serve as the basis for Sliwa’s book.
In the memoir’s preface, Henry stated his wife was guided “by a simple mathematical formula: one life was worth less then multiple lives. And her own life would have no value is she did not use it to save others.”
“Janina’s last words in the memoir are ‘We will remember,’” said Sliwa. “May this pledge be something we adopt this International Holocaust Remembrance Day and beyond, so that the names and histories of people who were just like us will not be forgotten.”
A reminder of what humanity is capable of
![Five individuals posing together.](https://reporter.mcgill.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Holocaust-remembrance-group-445x283.jpg)
Also speaking at the event was Elizabeth Pranov, a Science student who distinguished herself in McGill’s Holocaust course. The granddaughter of two Holocaust survivors, Pranov revealed her academic experience affected her in ways she hadn’t anticipated.
“[Courses like this] remind us of what humanity is capable of, both in its capacity for resilience and in its darkest moments,” said Pranov. “They challenge us to confront uncomfortable truths, to hear the stories of those who lived and those who didn’t, as well as amplifying the stories of those whom we may have never heard before.”
Added Pranov’s teacher, Ula Madej-Krupitski, Assistant Professor in Modern Jewish History in the Department of Jewish Studies:
“Despite the efforts of so many scholars and thousands of publications on the topic, there’s still so much we don’t know about the Holocaust,” said Madej-Krupitski. “One of the most meaningful ways to honour the victims is by continuing to learn, reflect and engage with its history.”