Mala Zimetbaum

In January 2002, a musical based on the life of Zimetbaum, titled Mala, The Music of the Wind, opened at the Pallas Theatre in Athens, Greece, starring Greek pop singer Anna Vissi. It was written by Nikos Karvelas. A single and the complete 27-song soundtrack were later released on CD.

Zimetbaum spent nearly two years in Auschwitz-Birkenau as camp inmate number 19880. Due to her proficiency in languages – Dutch, French, German, Italian, English, and Polish – she was assigned work as an interpreter and courier. Other sources state that she was also fluent in Yiddish. In his book The Drowned and the Saved, Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi said, "In Birkenau she acted as an interpreter and messenger and as such enjoyed a certain freedom of movement."

Information regarding Zimetbaum was made available to the public in Kagan's official testimony, delivered on 8 June 1961 during Session 70 in the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

The Last Stage is a 1947 Polish feature film set in the Auschwitz concentration camp, directed and co-written by Wanda Jakubowska. The main character, Marta Weiss, is based on the true story of Mala Zimetbaum. Seventy two years after it was first shown in Poland, it was screened as part of the Israeli Polish Zoom events, a project of the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Poland. A 2019 review of the film was published in the Haaretz newspaper.

Levi said, "In the summer of 1944 [Zimetbaum] decided to escape with Edek, a Polish political prisoner. She not only wanted to reconquer her own freedom; she was also planning to document the daily massacre at Birkenau." Zimetbaum wanted to escape so that she could inform the Allies of what was going on at Auschwitz and thus save lives. She is said by some sources to have been the head of a resistance group. The escape was planned for Saturday June 24, 1944, when guard would be lighter due to the weekend. On the planned date, the couple succeeded in escaping to a nearby town. Galiński donned an SS uniform obtained from Edward Lubusch; Zimetbaum obtained a blank SS pass and dressed as a prisoner being led to work. They were caught after two weeks, on July 6, 1944, in the Żywiec Beskids mountains at the Slovakia border. Galiński had hid nearby as Zimetbaum went into a store to try to buy some bread with gold that she and Galiński had stolen from the camp. A passing German border patrol became suspicious and arrested Zimetbaum. Galiński, watching from a distance as Zimetbaum was arrested, turned himself in to the German patrol since they had promised not to separate.

Galiński and Zimetbaum were transferred to Birkenau on September 15, 1944. They were taken out to be hanged in a public execution at the same time, in the men's and women's camps respectively.

At age 24, she was either captured by Germans on July 22, 1942 or arrested during the third Antwerp raid of 11–12 September 1942. She was first sent to the Dossin Barracks sammellager in the Mechelen transit camp. Then on 15 September 1942 she was put aboard (Belgian) Transport 10 bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she arrived two days later. After the initial Selektion she was sent on to the women's camp at Birkenau.

Zimetbaum had a non-Jewish Polish lover at Auschwitz, Edward "Edek" Galiński. He was born on October 5, 1923. He was one of the first inmates at Auschwitz, having been sent there in June 1940 from Tarnów prison as a political prisoner. At Auschwitz he received the very low camp inmate number 531.

Malka Zimetbaum, also known as "Mala" Zimetbaum or "Mala the Belgian" (26 January 1918 – 15 September 1944), was a Belgian woman of Polish Jewish descent, known for her escape from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and the resistance she displayed at her execution following her being recaptured. She was the first woman to escape from Auschwitz.

Mala Zimetbaum was born in Brzesko, Poland in 1918, the youngest of five children to Pinhas and Chaya Zimetbaum. At age ten in 1928, she relocated with her family to Antwerp, Belgium. In school as a child, she excelled in mathematics and was fluent in several languages. She left school to work in a diamond factory after her father became blind.