Franceska Mann was a Jewish dancer from the city of Warsaw in Poland , considered one of the most promising dancers of her generation and a victim of the Nazi genocide .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 2 Presentations
- 3 Awards and recognitions
- 4 References
Biographical synthesis
The dancer Franceska Mann was born in Poland on February 4 , 1917 and died on October 23 , 1943 . She was a talented Polish dancer . His talent had opened doors as one of the artists most prominent in his time and had even kept the fourth place in the International Competition of Dance of 1939 , held in Brussels and attended by some 125 dancers from around the world.
Mann was performing as a dancer in Warsaw . She was basically one of the star figures of the Melody Palace nightclub and was considered one of the promising dancers of her generation.
In 1943 when World War II broke out , Mann was taken prisoner and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp .
According to some Auschwitz survivors, Franceska was forced to enter together with the group of Jews with whom she had come to undress in a room prior to a gas chamber , all under the pretext that they needed to be dewormed and disinfected before being delivered to the border with Switzerland , but the truth is that they were on the way to their own death.
One of the officers in charge of the routine operation, named Josef Schillinger then paid special attention to the beautiful dancer. It was at that moment that Franceska Mann decided to distract Officer Josef Schillinger and Sergeant Wilhelm Emmerich , who were watching her, with a kind of dance .
When Franceska had Schillinger hypnotized and glued to her body, she quickly took off one of her shoes and drove the stiletto into the SS officer’s eye . He then snatched the gun from him and fired two shots in the stomach, killing him. A third shot wounded Sergeant Emmerich. Immediately, the other women in the locker room, in a full act of female resistance, attacked the other Nazi soldiers. Alerted by the shots, reinforcements came and machine-gunned all the Jews who were there. There was not a survivor.
This heroic act carried out by this promising young dancer facing certain death is one of the heroic acts that never cease to amaze and move at the same time.
Presentations
1939 International Dance Competition , held in Brussels .
Awards and honours
4th place International Dance Competition of 1939 .