Countess+Maria+von+Maltzan

Maria von Maltzan lived a glorious 88 years (March 25th, 1909 to November 12th, 1997) of rebeling, going crazy, falling in love, and inspiring. Maria has a true heart ,and you can tell by looking at her life. She started out being born into a very wealthy family, being a countess, being the youngest of many children, and living on 18,000 acres of land. Yet, she sacrificed her ensured safety by boldly puttinger life on the line to save Jews. She is a true hero of the Holocaust. She was nice

As a young girl, Maria was very smart in school, and her teachers took note of it. She studied medicine, which was very uncommon for women at the time, and her parents were very upset. Then, as the prejudiced, murderous Nazis took control in 1933, she lept up to help without hesitation. She joined a force called “German Resistance against Adolf Hitler”. She took in Jews to help them stay alive. One of the people she took in to hide was Hans Hierschel. He was hidden inside her couch from 1942 through the end of the war. Maria sealed him in there and drilled holes for necessities, so no one could get in. “An SS Officer asked Maria, '//How do we know nobody is hiding in there?//' Maria answered, '//If you're sure someone is in there, shoot. But before you do that, I want a written signed paper from you that you will pay for new material and the work to have the couch recovered after you put holes in it.//' “( [|__www.auschwitz.dk/maltzan.htm__] ). He didn’t lift up the couch, but turned and walked away. As she was saving his life and protecting him from the war, the two fell in love. She had Hans’s and her baby before the war ended. The baby was placed in an incubator. When the hospital was bombed, the electricity running the incubator stopped and her baby died. Through all these harsh times, her marriage with Hans failed, but two years later, in 1972, they got remarried.

In the post-war times Maria went a little crazy. All of her war-traumatic memories grew to be too many, and she turned to drugs. However, the gracious Jews remembered her great help in the war, and helped her through the bitter times. She says she remembers being brought to a place for psychotic people and having to scrub the floors just to scrape by. And to think, this was a countess born on thousands of acres, into a really wealthy family, and here she is, scrubbing the floors of an insylum. When her husband died in 1975, Maria decided to return to her old job. She went to Berlin to practice her medical job and became well known for it. She was in Berlin from 1981 on to the end of her life.

Maria von Maltzan was a sacrificial hero who defied her government and what she’d been told her whole life. She put everything on the line for complete strangers to do the right thing. She shows that no one should treat people as if they are below them, because of all the people that could’ve been haughty, it was the countess. By doing this research, you realize that she not only treated people as her equal, but as above her. She is a glowing example of what we should all be like, whether a war pops up or it is in your everyday town. Humility is the key to a true hero, which is amazing, because Maria von Maltzan didn’t just have humility, she has a roundabout good personality that we all hope to achieve.

__Citations/Sources__ "Maria von Maltzan." Wikipedia; The Free Encyclopedia. August 05, 2014. Web. December 08, 2014. "Maria von Maltzan." Auschwitz. Web. December 08, 2014. "Maria von Maltzan." Women Heroes of WWII. December 02, 2014. Web. December 08, 2014