Inside of Auschwitz concentration camp, there were thousands of women who were imprisoned
and were guarded by a number of evil female guards such as Irma Grese, who would later
be executed at the end of the Second World War.
But there were some inspiring stories that emerged from the women who were housed inside
the evil and deadliest camp of the Third Reich.
One woman Francesca Mann was a Polish ballerina who was a well known performer in Poland,
however she would be transported to Auschwitz and whilst here there was a deadly incident
in which occurred involving the Ballerina, and because of this she was executed by the
SS.
But what is the story of the execution of the Ballerina of Auschwitz?
Join us today as we find out and to support our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Francesca Mann was born in February 1917 as Francesca Manheimer, and she as a young girl
excelled as a dancer.
She trained in Warsaw before the Second World War, and she became friends with other polish
entertainers.
In 1939 whilst at the age of 22, she was placed 4th in an international dance competition
in Brussels, and she was known also for being one of the most beautiful and promising polish
dancers around.
She was clearly a very talented young woman, however as the Second World War broke out,
she was working inside of the Melody Palace nightclub in Warsaw.
But soon after the Germans captured the city, they instigated a horrific ghetto system inside
of Warsaw.
The Warsaw Ghetto was where hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced inside a small area around
3.4km’s square.
It’s estimated that 460,000 Jews were held there meaning that over 9 people were living
in a room on average, and the conditions were brutal.
There was hardly any food, with the average calories for Jews a day being 184 when compared
to 2600 for the German guards.
The ghetto system would starve, and humiliate the Jews, and often there were diseases that
would spread quickly around the overcrowded area, and bodies would be left on the side
of the road.
There was wide spread famine and no access to health care, with the inhabitants often
forced to work incredibly hard in different industries also.
But the ghetto system would be used for a period of time until hundreds of thousands
were deported to extermination camps such as Sobribor, Belzec and Treblinka where they
were killed within minutes of entering the camp.
Inside of the ghetto there was culture that did emerge, and Francesca would have continued
to dance when she could, but in some publications she was actually named as a German collaborator.
What the extent of this collaboration was is not known.
She was also associated with the Hotel Polski affair, this was where a hotel following the
liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto was used by the Germans as bait for Jews hiding in
the city.
German Agents and Jewish collaborators pretended that Jews could buy foreign passports and
documents to escape there, but around 2500 Jews fell for the trap.
After this they were arrested and were moved to the concentration camps and many died inside
camps such as Auschwitz.
It’s believed that Francesca Mann may have been a victim of this plot.
But on the 23rd October 1943, a transport of 1700 Polish Jews arrived at Auschwitz on
passenger trains, and they had been told initially that they were to be taken to a transfer camp
before they would be sent on to Switzerland to be exchanged for German POWs.
But Francesca was one of those sent to Auschwitz, and at the time the camp had expanded to a
huge site.
Auschwitz was where at least 1.3 million people were imprisoned, with 1.1 million dying within
the barbed wire fences, having succumbed to the evil conditions or being sent to the gas
chambers.
It was the largest camp created, with commandants such as Rudolf Hoss overseeing the huge killing
operation, and he employed a number of evil and brutal guards to make the lives of prisoners
horrific.
Many SS guards would inflict torture each day with brutal beatings, and they would mistreat
everyone they came across and would even execute the inmate in front of thousands for slight
infringements of the law.
It really was a harrowing place, and many of the horrors of Auschwitz today still have
not been completely uncovered.
However the accounts of what happened to Francesca Mann when she arrived at Auschwitz are debated,
and according to some inmates the new arrivals including Francesca were not registered.
This would mean that they had been marked for extermination and execution as soon as
they entered the camp, and then these prisoners were taken into the gas chamber complex and
the crematoriums.
It’s believed that at this time Francesca was rather supcisious of what was happening,
and they were then told to go into the undressing room where they were ordered to take their
clothes off ready for disinfecting.
Francesca replied allegedly that something would happen, and what happened inside the
concrete undressing chamber shows that Francesca Mann would go down fighting being led to her
death.
One former prisoner wrote how two SS guards, Josef Schillinger and Walter Quackernack were
attracted to Francesca Mann and her striking black hair, as she was taking off her shoes.
It’s said that Francesca then allegedly undressed slowly, dancing to try and seduce
the SS guards.
She took off her blouse and then leaned against a pole to take off her high heel shoes.
But then she would strike.
As the guards approached her as she stood there, she took off her shoe, and grabbed
it before thrusting the heel of her doe against either Quackernack of Schillinger’s forehead.
As one of the guards grabbed for their revolver and pistol from its holster, Francesca Mann
then grabbed the gun, and she fired off two shots into Schillinger’s stomach.
Mann then called upon the other women to attack the SS guards, and one SS man had his nose
ripped off, and another was scalped as the women fought for their lives.
However this uprising was then dealt with brutally by the camp’s commandant Rudolf
Hoss.
We know for certain that Josef Schillinger died from his wounds after being shot in the
stomach, and that the women were all slaughtered by the SS.
It’s not known for certain what happened next with the execution of the women and Francesca
Mann.
Some reports say that the women were taken out of the chamber one by one, and that they
were then shot in the head for their mutiny.
Other accounts claim that whilst the women were locked in the undressing room, the SS
fired their weapons on the women slaughtering them all.
Others state that they were then driven into the gas chambers and within minutes they had
all been killed.
The Ss men that arrived to deal with the mutiny were heavily armed with machine guns and grenades.
Despite the fact the Germans destroyed huge amounts of their records to hide their crimes,
there is a German source that described the event.
Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoss would recall that following the arrival of a group of prisoners
who were waiting to be gassed, ‘“One transport from Belsen arrived, approximately two-thirds,
mostly men were in the gas- chamber, the remaining third was in the undressing room.
When three or four armed SS guards entered the dressing room to hasten the undressing,
mutiny broke out.
“The light cables were torn down, the SS men were overpowered, one of them was stabbed
and all of them were robbed of their weapons.
As this room was in complete darkness wild shooting started between the guard near the
exit door and the prisoners inside.
“When I arrived I ordered the doors to be shut and I had the process of gassing the
first party finished and then went into the room together with the guard carrying
small searchlights, pushing the prisoners into a corner from where they were taken out
singly into another room of the crematorium and shot, by my order, with small calibre
weapons.”
We know for certain that Schillinger was killed by a woman, and it’s accepted that this
was Francesca Mann.
Schillinger had been a butcher before he worked in Auschwitz, and he would beat inmates horrifically
and then supervise their gassings in the crematoria.
Adolf Eichmann would also state that he was killed by a woman, and another witness a Jewish
doctor and prisoner said of the event, ‘“Schillinger told the women to undress, and one woman said
she did not undress in front of men.
In consequence of this he raised his whip, his cane - he always walked around with a
cane - and he wanted to strike her.
“At this point, she drew a revolver and killed him with one shot.
From the time we received this information Schillinger never appeared in the camp, naturally,
because he had been killed.”
She also it’s known shot another SS guard named Emmerich, who was left for the rest
of his life with a permanent limp.
The Aushcwitz museum would also confirm the account of two SS guards being shot by a woman
on the 23rd October 1943 on the date that it’s believed Francesca Mann was killed.
But her actions of attacking an SS guard shortly before her death in an act of rebellion as
she would fight for her life was honourable, and many of the other women inside the chamber
knew that if they did not do anything they would die anyway.
The story of Francesca Mann’s execution is one which is debated, but it is known for
certain that at the age of 26 she was killed either executed by gunshot in the undressing
room or just outside it, or she was forced into the gas chambers like millions of others
during the Second World War.
She is known as the Ballerina of Auschwitz, but she would not go to her death without
a fight, and Francesca Mann’s story is one which deserves to be known.
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