I want to remember this lady, Franceska Mann. She was a brilliant young ballerina, who had been educated at a prestigious school and won awards for her dancing.
Then the Holocaust started, ending her career just as it started.
After suffering for years as a Jew in Nazi Germany, she became one of several hundred Jewish people who paid to be deported to Latin America in 1943. They were gathered into a hotel in Poland, told that the visas they had purchased would get them out of the country, and finally put on transports. But they didn't get to leave. Instead, they were taken to a concentration camp, separated by sex, and sent to the gas chambers.
Franceska and other women around her were told to take off all their clothes so that they could be sanitized before being taken over the border. Many realized what was going on and refused, but Franceska went a step further. She caught the eye of a guard and drew him closer to her by performing a striptease. She took off all her clothes slowly, seductively, until she was down to her stilettos. By this point the guard was right in front of her, so she stabbed him in the arm with her heel, grabbed his gun and started shooting. She managed to injure two guards and kill another, and inspired the women with her to riot.
Her brave actions did not save her, I'm sorry to say. Her body was discovered after the riot and incinerated. But what I want to remember is that she refused to give in and die as they demanded. She fought back, even when it was hopeless. Even to the very last. And that is amazing.
Photograph: Private Archive
© Holocaust Historical Society January 30, 2022
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