The 1st of September 1939. After a false accusation that the Poles attacked a
German radio station, Nazi Germany launches a “retaliatory” campaign against Poland triggering
World War 2. Poland finds itself fighting a two front war when it is invaded by the Soviet Union
from the east on the 17th of September. Warsaw officially surrenders to the Germans on the 28th
of September and one day later in accordance with the secret protocol to their non-aggression pact,
Germany and the Soviet Union partition Poland. In the fall of 1940, German authorities establish
a ghetto in Warsaw, Poland’s largest city with the largest Jewish population.
Almost 30 percent of Warsaw’s population are packed into 2.4 percent of the city's area.
German policy toward the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is particularly brutal and ruthless. Extreme
overcrowding, minimal rations, and unsanitary conditions lead to disease, starvation, and the
death of thousands of Jews each month. One of the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto is Franceska Mann.
Franceska Mann known as Franceska Manheimer was
born on the 4th of February 1917 in Warsaw then Kingdom of Poland.
Franceska, a beautiful and exceptionally talented dancer, studied ballet and contemporary dance at
the school of Tacjanna Wysocka, and later under Irena Prusicka where she studied free dance,
ballet and tap dance together. She was acquainted with famous female artists of the
time such as the singer Wiera Gran and stage and theatrical actress Stefania Grodzieńska.
During her studies and after graduation, Mann gave recitals at the Grand Theater in Warsaw and was
one of the most beautiful and promising Polish dancers between 1936-1939 both in the classical
and modern repertoire, performing on opera and cabaret stages, in cafes, revue shows as well
as at private parties, and even in front of the camera – in the short film “Poles are famous”.
In May 1939, a few months before the outbreak of war, her talent was even recognized at the
International Dance Competition in Brussels, where she performed a ballerina dance inspired
by Degas’ ballet sketches, and placed 4th among 125 other young ballet dancers.
The Second World War started on the 1st of September 1939 with the invasion of Poland.
Warsaw suffered heavy air attacks and artillery bombardment and German troops
entered the capital on the 29th of September shortly after its surrender.
The campaign in Poland ended on the 6th of October the same year with Germany and the Soviet Union
dividing and annexing the whole of the country. On the 23rd of November 1939, German civilian
occupation authorities required Warsaw's Jews to identify themselves by wearing white armbands
with a blue Star of David. The German authorities closed Jewish schools, confiscated Jewish-owned
property, and conscripted Jewish men into forced labor and dissolved prewar Jewish organizations.
On the 12th of October 1940 German authorities had decreed the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw.
The decree required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into a designated area,
which German authorities sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940.
One of the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto was Franceska Mann
and her husband Marek Rosenberg with whom she had a daughter.
In December of the same year the Germans called for the death penalty
for Jews who had left the ghetto without permission. The same penalty awaited any
person who knowingly gave shelter to such Jews. The ghetto, which became the largest of all the
Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, was enclosed by a wall that was
over 10 feet high, topped with barbed wire, and closely guarded to prevent movement between the
ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. The population of the ghetto, increased by Jews compelled to move
in from nearby towns, was estimated to be over 400,000 Jews. German authorities forced ghetto
residents to live in an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per
room. Proper hygiene was almost impossible, as many homes did not have running water.
Extreme overcrowding, minimal rations, and unsanitary conditions led to disease,
starvation, and the death of thousands of Jews each month. An average daily
food ration in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw was limited to 184 calories, compared to 2,613
calories for the Germans. An official German order stated that “the basic provisioning of
the Jewish Residential District must be less than the minimum necessary for preserving life,
regardless of the consequences.” The hunger in the ghetto was so great,
that dying people were laying on the streets and small children were seen begging.
Between 1940 and mid-1942, 83,000 Jews died of starvation and disease.
When a resident from the Warsaw Ghetto passed away, their families would place the body in the
street and it would be picked up in the morning by a funeral cart that made its rounds every day.
In the ghetto Mann performed at the Femina Theater, Melody Palace or Café Bagatela until the
19th of April 1943 when the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after the German troops and police entered
the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants to the forced labor camps in Lublin district.
The ghetto inhabitants offered organized resistance in the first days of the operation,
inflicting casualties on the well-armed and well-equipped SS and police units.
They continued to resist deportation as individuals or in small groups for four weeks.
It was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II and the first
significant urban revolt against the German occupation in Europe.
In the end however, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground.
They burned and demolished this part of Warsaw, block by block, in order to smoke out their prey.
The Germans ended the operation on the 16th of May when Jürgen Stroop,
who led the suppression of the uprising, announced in his daily
report to Berlin that “The former Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more.”
However, thousands of Jews survived in Warsaw, hiding outside the ghetto.
Soon German agents and their collaborators spread the rumor that Jews could buy foreign passports
and other documents, and then as foreign citizens, leave territories occupied by Nazi Germany.
Tricked by Germans in what became known as the Hotel Polski Affair, around 2,500 Jews,
estimates range as high as 3,500, came out of their hiding places and moved to Hotel Polski.
The Polish Underground warned Jews that this was probably a trap,
but many ignored the warnings. One of them was Franceska Mann.
Although they had been told that they were being taken to a transfer camp called Bergau
near Dresden, from where they would continue on to Switzerland to be exchanged for German
prisoners of war, on the 23rd of October 1943, a transport of around 1,700 Polish Jews,
including Franceska Mann, arrived on passenger trains in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
At Auschwitz, the process of selection and murder was carefully planned and organized. When a
train stopped at the platform, the arrivals were lined up into two columns – men and boys in one,
women and girls in the other. The SS physicians such as Josef Mengele performed a selection.
The only criterion was the appearance of the prisoners, whose fate, for labor or for death,
was determined at will. The SS personnel – when supervising the loading of prisoners who were
to be transported in cars to the gas chambers – often behaved inhumanly, and tortured the
incoming prisoners in a cruel way, beating the women, the men and the children with a stick
or with a cane while forcing them into the cars. The SS men kept the people fated to die unaware
of what awaited them. They were told that they were being sent to the camp
where work was waiting for them, but first they had to undergo disinfection and bathe.
They were then told politely to hang their clothes on the hooks,
take a shower and were even promised they would be provided with soup and tea or coffee.
However they were taken into the gas chambers, locked in, and killed with Zyklon B gas.
After the victims were murdered, their gold teeth were extracted, and women’s hair was
shorn by the Sonderkommando which were groups of Jews forced to work in the crematorium.
The bodies were hauled to the crematorium furnaces for incineration,
the bones were pulverized and the ashes were scattered in the fields.
This was the end which awaited Franceska and her daughter as well. The Germans told her and other
women to remove their clothing, which they had been wearing since they had left Poland,
so that they could be sanitized before crossing the border with Switzerland.
The women were taken into an undressing room next to one of the gas chambers and
ordered to undress. We will never find out if Franceska was told what was about to happen
by a member of the Sonderkommando or not but she somehow foresaw her fate and in a
desperate attempt to protect her daughter and herself from certain death, she took action.
There are several versions of what happened next. Filip Müller, a member of the Jewish
Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, later recalled how Franceska had noticed that the two men were ogling
her and she launched into what appeared to be a titillating and seductive strip-tease dance.
The SS men were hypnotised. Franceska undid her garter and approached Oberscharführer Quakernack
and removed her heels with a swift move. She then bent down, grabbed the right shoe
and hit Quakernack with the metal end of the heel right in the nose. His bones crunched,
he howled with pain, dropped his pistol and hid his face in his hands. What happened
next later felt like a movie on fast-forward: Franceska grabbed the gun and fired two shots,
wounding Oberscharführer Josef Schillinger in the stomach. He cried out and fell to the ground.
Then she fired a third shot killing an SS Sergeant named Emmerich.
The shots also served as a signal for the other women to attack the
SS men - one SS man had his nose torn off, and another was scalped.
Soon after, reinforcements were summoned and the camp commander,
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came with other SS men carrying machine guns and grenades.
One account details that the women were gunned down, while another claims they were forced
into the gas chamber. What is certain is that after the uprising, the hundred Jewish women,
including 26 year old Franceska Mann, were all killed that day in Auschwitz.
Schillinger, whom Franceska had shot in the stomach, died on the following day.
The uprising had a significant psychological impact on Auschwitz
prisoners. As Holocaust survivor Wieslaw Kielar stated in his memoir, Anus Mundi:
Five Years in Auschwitz: “The incident passed from mouth and embellished in various ways grew
into a legend. Without doubt, this heroic deed by a weak woman in the face of certain death,
gave moral support to every prisoner. We realized all at once that if we dared
raise a hand against them, that hand might kill; they were mortal, too.”
There were many tears shed for Franceska Mann and all the innocent and brave women
who stood right behind her and before being killed, rose up against their Nazi murderers.
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