The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust

Most of the Holocaust stories that reach English-language readers are about victims and survivors. The Counterfeit Countess is about someone who fought back with intelligence and nerve. Josephine Janina Lewandowska was a Jewish biologist who assumed the identity of a Polish countess and used that cover to run rescue operations across occupied Poland—hiding people, forging documents, moving families through networks of sympathizers. Elizabeth B. White spent years reconstructing her story from archives in Poland, Israel, Germany, and the United States. The book is meticulous about the historical record while still reading as a narrative. It sits alongside The Hiding Place and The Zookeeper’s Wife as a story of moral courage under conditions of absolute danger. For readers interested in the Holocaust, the Polish resistance, or simply an extraordinary individual life that most of the world has never heard of.