Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
23 October
INSPIRING RESISTANCE AGAINST RACIST KILLERS
On this day in 1943, Franciszka Mann, a Polish-Jewish ballerina in the Auschwitz concentration camp, killed Josef Shillinger, a Nazi guard, and wounded two others, Walter Quakernak and Wilhelm Emmerich. She thus initiated an uprising among female Jewish prisoners before she was killed. Mann is said to have been forced to perform a striptease for the degenerates before stabbing one in the face with a stiletto heel, causing him to drop his firearm, which she then used to shoot two other officers.
إلهام المقاومة ضد القتلة العنصريين
23 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1943، قامت فرانسيسزكا راقصة الباليه اليهودية البولندية في معسكر اعتقال أوشفيتز بقتل مان جوزيف شيلينجر، الحارس النازي، وأصابت اثنين آخرين هما والتر كويكرماك وويلهلم إميريتش. وهكذا شرعت في انتفاضة بين السجينات اليهوديات قبل أن تُقتل. ويقال إن فرانسيسزكا مان أجبرت على التعري لتسلية الحراس المنحطين اخلاقيا قبل طعن أحدهم في وجهه بخنجر، مما تسبب في إسقاط سلاحه الناري الذي استخدمته بعد ذلك لإطلاق النار على ضابطين آخرين.
Mann, who was 26 at the time, arrived at Auschwitz that day on a transport of 1,800 so-called VIP prisoners from Bergen-Belsen in Germany, who had been lured into thinking they were en route to freedom as part of an exchange for German POWs ostensibly organized by the Allies. The Germans promised that Auschwitz was merely a stop on the way to Switzerland, but the women among the group soon found themselves being led to the gas chambers.
Jerzey Tabau, a former Birkenau prisoner, lodged a report with the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, stating:
On October 23, 1943, a transport of around 1,700 Polish Jews arrived on passenger trains at the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 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 POWs. One of the passengers was Franceska Mann. In July 1943, the Germans had arrested the 600 Jewish inhabitants of the Hotel Polski in Warsaw after the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
According to some versions, the new arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau were told that they had to be disinfected before crossing the border into Switzerland. They were taken into the undressing room next to the gas chamber and ordered to undress. Other versions of the story report the events that followed took place at either the selection ramp or a labour area of the camp. Regardless of location, what is confirmed is that Mann fatally wounded the roll call officer Josef Schillinger, using his pistol and then fired two shots, wounding him in the stomach. Then she fired a third shot which wounded another SS Sergeant named Emmerich. Eyewitnesses described Schillinger as a sadist.
Filip Mueller survived Auschwitz, where he served in a Sonderkommando unit assigned to the Auschwitz gas chambers. Mueller later wrote “Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers.”, in which he describes how “one single pistol in the hands of a weak woman created a panic among the SS men.” He says the SS fled the scene when Mann opened fire.
Forced to strip, Mann "had taken off her blouse and was standing in front of her lecherous audience in her brassiere. Then she steadied herself against a concrete pillar with her left arm and bent down, slightly lifting her foot, in order to take off her shoe. What happened next took place with lightning speed: quick as a flash she grabbed her shoe and slammed its high heel violently against [SS guard] Quackernack's forehead. He winced with pain and covered his face with both hands. At this moment the young woman flung herself at him and made a quick grab for his pistol. Then there was a shot. Schillinger cried out and fell to the ground. Seconds later there was a second shot aimed at Quackernack which narrowly missed him.
A panic broke out [among the SS] in the changing room. The young woman had disappeared in the crowd. Any moment she might appear somewhere else and aim her pistol at another of her executioners. The SS men realized this danger. One by one they crept outside." Mueller, Filip (1979), Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, pp 87-88
Quackernack survived that day. He was tried and executed after the war.
According to Tabau, the shots served as a signal for the Jewish women to attack the SS guards. Reinforcements were called and the camp commander, Höss, came with other SS guards. According to Filip Mueller, all people not yet inside the gas chamber were mowed down by machine guns. Accounts vary and some aspects of what happened next are unclear and contested. On that day, however, it is clear that Schillinger died, Emmerich was wounded, and all the Jewish women were killed.
2-minute video on Franceska Mann and the Jewish women who rose up against their SS guards in Auschwitz on this day in 1943
Supporters of those in the Gaza concentration zone who are resisting Israel's genocidal plans for them are inspired by the heroism of the doomed Jewish women that day, in a desperate revolt sparked by Franceska Mann. History cherishes those who resist - not the racist regime that planned/plans their disappearance. Whoever condemns the WWII resistance against the Nazis, or the Palestinian resistance to the apartheid regime, stands condemned by Marek Edelman and Michael Warschawski