United Jewish Federation of Tidewater & Simon Family JCC's Lee & Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival 2024

For over 40 years, this annual celebration of Jewish writers, books, and ideas has featured authors from various backgrounds who have written about diverse topics. Featured author events allow the community to engage with bestselling and up-and-coming writers.

Schedule of Events

12:00PM - 2:00pm: White & Silva: Jewish Book Festival: $10 for JCC Members | $14 for Non-JCC Members

Discover the incredible true story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg, a Jewish woman who masqueraded as a Polish countess to save thousands during the Holocaust.

The Counterfeit Countess tells the true story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat. Using the identity papers of Countess Janina Suchodolska to conceal her identity, Mehlberg rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Poland's Nazi occupiers.

Mehlberg operated in Lublin, Poland, as a welfare official while also serving in the Polish resistance. With guile, cajolery, and steely persistence, the "Countess" persuaded S.S. officials to release thousands of Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp and won permission to deliver food and medicine for thousands more prisoners. At the same time, she personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters imprisoned in Majdanek, where 63,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits. Incredibly, she eluded detection, ultimately surviving the war and emigrating to the U.S.

Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg's unpublished memoir supplemented with their own research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the whole story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg's sometimes harrowing personal testimony with a broader historical narrative, creating a riveting account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty.

Dr. Elizabeth "Barry" White recently retired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she served as historian and as Research Director for the USHMM's Center for the Prevention of Genocide. Before working for the USHMM, Barry spent a career at the U.S. Department of Justice working on investigations and prosecutions of Nazi criminals and other human rights violators. She served as deputy director and chief historian of the Office of Special Investigations and as deputy chief and chief historian of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. She lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

Dr. Joanna Sliwa is a historian at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) in New York, where she also administers academic programs. She previously worked at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. She has taught Holocaust and Jewish history at Kean University and Rutgers University. She has served as a historical consultant and researcher for the PBS film “In the Name of Their Mothers: The Story of Irena Sendler.” Her first book, “Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust,” won the 2020 Ernst Fraenkel Prize from the Wiener Holocaust Library. She lives in Linden, New Jersey.