Muriel White did not try to be a hero.
She was an American heir who – like many other American debutors in the late 20th century – married a European aristocrat.
Then the Nazis came.
Other Americans who were married to the Germans hugged Hitler, but not Muriel. It helped Jewish acquaintances escape extermination.
She hid American pilots whose planes crashed nearby. She smuggled her children from Reich, so they will not have to fight in Hitler’s army. She even insulted the führer on his face.
And as Richard Hutto writes in the new book “The Countess and the Nazis: The Private War of an American Family” (Lyons Press): “It would be killed for its opposition.”
Its dramatic end – immersing in its death when trying to avoid SS officers – is the item of historical films and novels. And yet, Hutto told The Post, the American Countess has remained a vague figure, mostly forgotten.
“I had encountered her name before, but I didn’t know much about her,” he said. When he finally tied up with one of her grandchildren and learned her shocked story, he was amazed. Muriel was not a member of official resistance. She did not hold wings or wipes no messages. Hers was a quieter rebellion – no less brave or noble. “I said, ‘That must be said. I need to revive her story.
Margaret “Muriel” White was born in 1880 in Paris. Her father, Henry White, was a world -famous diplomat. Her mother, Margaret “Daisy” Stuyvesant Rutherfurd, was a celebrated beauty of society, painted by John Singer Sargent.
Young Muriel had a fascinating, peripatetic childhood. She lived in London, Paris and Rome – moving through the royal courts of Europe with ease. She spoke six languages and was known as “the most charming listener in society”.
Muriel, writes Hutto, “did not follow the usual social path taken by her American heirs.” Since Daisy was often ill, Muriel often served as her father’s “second in command”, waiting for events for the diplomatic community. When the family moved to Italy, Muriel was 27 years old and still – Gasp! – unmarried.
At a celebration in Berlin, Muriel met with 29-year-old Hermann “Manni” Seherr-Doss, a number with a place in the Lord home and a job at the German embassy in Vienna. He was “with good and charming & entertaining & trim &.. Filling beautiful poetic thoughts that touch someone’s heart,” Muriel, then 28, wrote to her aunt.
The two were married in 1909 in Paris – Muriel revoked her American citizenship to make her happen.
They moved to one of the Count Castles in Silesia, a region that includes parts of modern-polyland, the Czecheke Republic and Germany. She was very quickly disintegrated. She and her husband fought, especially after World War I, when the US interrupted the bank accounts of American heirs married to men from the axis powers.
Muriel immediately saw her through Hitler when she got to power in 1933. When two SS officers asked her why she did not fly Swastika outside her home in the regime, she replied, “Why a family will hang a flag for a holiday?”
She personally left Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games, when they shared a viewing box. “I know who you are and what is your goal, and I will work against you,” she told her. He laughed, “Oh, lady, don’t be so serious.”
After Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, Muriel used her diplomatic ties to take her three children to the US, she provided and arranged funds for a Jewish family she knew how to escape from Vienna and emigrate to Australia.
In 1941, she hid British soldiers who had escaped a nearby war prisoners camp and US pilots who tried from wealth. When Manni-From her ex-husband-she called to the front, she smuggled her into a wagon.
It somehow had the time to help the Queen of Albania replace in the mountains as the Italians occupied its country.
In the last year of Muril, she barely left home, the second to the soldiers she said were surrounding the wealth. She masked herself as a peasant to go food and caress her goats. She followed that the Nazis would torture her to discover the whereabouts of her children and send her to a concentration camp.
On the morning of March 13, 1943, she saw a group of Gestapo officers walking up her way. She had saved her children, her husband, her friends. But she knew she couldn’t save her.
She climbed into the tower – and jumped to her death.
Her family in the SH.BA was shocked when they discovered. And yet, they did not see it as an act of judgment. “Many were able to leave because of her help,” her big said later.
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