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

This is the first 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. It includes new details and previously unpublished photographs. Maria Mandl was born in 1912 in the Austrian village of Münzkirchen. As Head Overseer of the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was personally responsible for the murders of thousands and the torture and suffering of countless others. At the camp, she founded a notable women's orchestra and "adopted" several children from the transports, only to lead them to the gas chambers when her interest waned. By the time of her execution at thirty-six in 1948, she had achieved the highest rank possible for a woman in the Third Reich. After the war, Mandl was arrested for crimes against humanity and tried publicly, attended by the international press, before being hanged. Author Susan J. Eischeid spent two decades researching this biography, drawing on archival testimonies, interviews with dozens of witnesses, and conversations with Mandl's community of friends and neighbors. The work explores how an ordinary citizen came to commit acts of extreme violence within a climate of hate and fear.