The Mala Zimetbaum Lodge in Antwerp was established on 27th November 1950 and was named the Mala Zimetbaum Lodge in 1996.

Mala Zimetbaum is commemorated every year with a series of lectures or a conference, always focusing on remembrance, the Holocaust and current antisemitism.

Mala Cymetbaum or Zimetbaum was born in January 1918 in Brzesko, Poland.
By 1939, she was living in Antwerp, with her Sister Jochka, at No. 7 Marinisstraat.

Mala Zimetbaum was contacted by the resistance in 1940, but on 11th or 12th September 1942, there was a massive round-up in Antwerp, and Mala was registered at the Dossin barracks at Mechelen (deportation camp) under No. 999, before being deported to the East in a lead cattle truck, RSHA transport No. 10.
Only 17 people out of 1,048 in transport No. 10 (383 men, 401 women and 264 children) came back alive.
Mala's Auschwitz number was 19.880.

She was a real resistance leader within the camp, demonstrating three vital qualities:
1. Resistance inside the concentration camp.
2. Support for others inside the concentration camp, keeping hope alive.
3. Informing the outside world.

Since she had an important post in Camp Administration, she could easily have survived. However, she risked her life to tell the outside world of the daily horror in Auschwitz Birkenau.
She managed to flee on 24th June 1944, thanks to a Polish friend, but was turned in at the Czech border.

On 22nd September 1944, , she was sentenced to death before a kangaroo court, but determined to defy her executioners, she remained standing to the last and spat in the face of one of the SS officers. She slashed open her veins with a razor blade and shouted "Never forget". Another SS officer broke her arm with the butt of his gun and 2 guards dragged her across the camp.
Her friends placed her body onto a cart to take it to the crematorium.