Mala And Edek, The Story Of An Agonizing Love

The story of Mala and Edek is a love story that was born, grew up and became eternal in hell: the Auschwitz concentration camp. Their lives had been practically forgotten, until the journalist Francesca Paci decided to rescue them for the memory of today and forever. Hence the book A love in Auschwitz was born .

Mala and Edek were just beginning to live when they fell, each in their own way, into the concentration camp. They had to mature on their own and by force.

They did not grow old together, as they dreamed it, but they became an example that love  is stronger than any atrocity and that this feeling gives value to everything.

Mala and Edek’s story was recovered thanks to everyone who knew them in the concentration camp. These men and women  were also inspired by that love, despite the deplorable circumstances in which they found themselves. It is also proven that great loves are capable of changing the lives of those around them.

Mala and Edek, two prisoners

The protagonists of this story are Mala Zimetbaum and Edward Galiński, who was called “Edek”. The first person to arrive at the Auschwitz concentration camp  was Edek, when he was only 16 years old. He was a young man of Polish descent, who was in high school; during a raid by the Nazis he was arrested and sent to Tarnów prison.

A few months later, in June 1940, he was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Edek arrived with the first group of prisoners at that place and soon learned to adapt: ​​”to whom and what you must avoid and what to hold on to in order to survive,” he said.

Two years after being in the concentration camp, he managed to convince the officers that it was necessary to open a locksmith shop.

His initiative and dynamism in this project earned him a certain sympathy among those in charge, which is why he ended up having a privileged position. He took advantage of it to take to the workshop the weakest prisoners, who did not tolerate great physical efforts.

A love in Auschwitz

Mala Zimetbaum was born in Poland, but from a very young age she lived in Belgium. She was a great student, excelling mainly in math and languages.

In 1942, she was arrested in Antwerp and deported to the concentration camp. Since she knew five languages, from the beginning the Nazis  made her a translator and messenger.

Mala also had a privileged position and like Edek, she took advantage of it to help those in need. Mala and Edek met when he was assigned to a squad of installers in the Birkenau field.

It was one of those loves that arise immediately. They began to meet secretly whenever they could; everyone in the field called them “Romeo and Juliet.”

Love also gave birth to a deep desire for freedom. They were aware that the world did not know what was happening in the concentration camps and that is why the two began to incubate the idea of ​​fleeing to denounce the situation.

A not so happy ending

The plan to escape was for Edek to wear an SS officer’s uniform. Disguised like that, he had to get Mala to the edge of the field.

She, for her part, would go disguised as a man and would wear a washbasin on her head, to hide her hair. The trap consisted of pretending that it was an officer who was taking an inmate to install the toilet.

Once at the front door, they would both show off some exit passes they got. As difficult to believe as it may seem, they managed to complete the plan on June 24, 1944. Thus they achieved freedom and almost reached the border of Poland. However, Mala went to a store and tried to exchange a ring for something to eat. This aroused suspicions among the employees and they notified the Gestapo.

Mala was stopped, while Edek looked at her in the distance. The two of them had promised to be together forever, so he voluntarily gave himself up to the Nazis, too.

Both were taken to a punishment zone at Auschwitz. They were separated and locked up, but they managed to send each other messages on tattered pieces of paper. Edek sang Italian arias to him from his cell.

Edek was hanged and before the execution he tried to hang himself from the rope but was unsuccessful. Before dying he shouted “Long live Poland!”

Mala, for her part, cut her veins before being executed, also by hanging. For that act she was sentenced to be burned alive. However, the guards sympathized and allowed him to bleed out before reaching the crematorium. Mala and Edek died the same day and barely an hour apart.