Unconquered Ballerina: Deadly Striptease at the Door of the Auschwitz Gas Chamber

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Striptease in Auschwitz. It seems incredible, but it really happened. A famous Polish dancer staged a demonstration in front of the gas chamber doors, seducing the Nazis. Everything happened spontaneously: a plan ripened in the girl's head how to repulse non-humans who were ready to send almost three thousand Jewish women to death …

The name of the dancer who was not afraid to resist the Nazis is Franziska Mann (nee Rosenberg). Her pre-war life was connected exclusively with ballet, she won solid European competitions, constantly shone on stage and even dreamed of her own dance school. Even before the war, Francisca managed to get married. When the Nazis occupied Poland, the girl ended up in the Warsaw ghetto.

In order not to give up what she loved, Franziska was ready to perform even in a cabaret. She still dreamed that she would get a standing ovation on the stage of concert halls, not the local theater in the ghetto. Franziska was in good standing with the Nazis: she was one of the few allowed to leave the ghetto territory, since she worked as a courier between the ghetto and the German headquarters, located in the hotel "Poland".

In 1942, the Nazis launched a program according to which Jews were supposedly given the chance to go abroad if they had a passport of a neutral country. Of course, the Jewish Poles did not have such passports, but the Nazis turned out to be cunning: rumors were secretly spreading about how to buy such passports. The sum was called fabulous - about one and a half thousand dollars (today it is about 20 thousand dollars). For this money, one could obtain a life-saving citizenship in one of the Latin American countries.

The program was launched in order to force those Jews who had previously managed to hide in the "Aryan" part of the city to come out of the underground. In this case, they not only declassified themselves, but also voluntarily gave up their entire fortune. Franziska was one of those through whom information was disseminated among the Jews. Presumably, she did not know how things would be, and really believed the promises that, upon presenting a passport, it would be possible to escape from Poland. Looking ahead, we will say that in this way only a few hundred people were saved, this was done so that everyone else believed the promises and willingly began to buy the cherished passports.

People who were "lucky" to buy fake passports had to get to the German border by train, and from there - get the coveted freedom pass. However, everything turned out to be completely different. The train, which carried almost three thousand people, went to the south of Poland, to where the Auschwitz camp was located. In fact, this was the only time when a comfortable passenger train arrived here.

The passengers were deceived, saying that they had arrived at the border with Switzerland, and Franz Hessler, who introduced himself as an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich, met them near the carriages. The Nazis explained that the procedure for crossing the border requires disinfection, so they strongly recommended that all passengers follow to the locker rooms.

Apparently, at that moment, some of the passengers still guessed what had happened. In the women's locker room, panic began, some girls and women instantly realized what lay ahead. Francisca was one of them. She turned out to be one of the few who did not cry and scream, she did everything calmly. Seeing that the guards were watching her every movement with curiosity, she began to deliberately smoothly pull off all her clothes. The striptease attracted the attention of the Nazis, no one could take their eyes off the dancer, who was stripping naked. Apparently, at this moment, Francisca had an idea how to take revenge on the murderers.

Franziska deliberately stayed in her shoes until she literally drove the Nazi overseers to exhaustion. Then she swiftly removed her shoe and threw it in the face of one of the guards. The blow with the heel was so strong that the Nazi grabbed the cheek with both hands. Franziska was not taken aback and at that moment snatched the weapon from him. Several shots followed: the SS man Joseph Schillinger was killed, and Emmerich was wounded in the leg so badly that after treatment he was permanently crippled. Other women, seeing what was happening, also attacked their tormentors. There was no chance of escape, but they beat, bit and scratched the Nazis. It was a riot, choked with blood, but it showed that even in the face of death, one can remain a fearless fighter.

The SS men forcibly ran out of the locker room, closed the doors and shot everyone in the room through the thin walls. Franziska Mann and all the other women died as heroes.

There are many known cases when the prisoners of Auschwitz displayed heroism. The tragic feat of Gisela Pearl - one of the terrible pages of history. This doctor, without equipment, medicines and anesthesia, performed more than three thousand abortions so that pregnant prisoners would not fall into the hands of the bloodthirsty sadist Mengele …