Wieslaw keilar biography of christopher

What would you do in the face of certain death? Would you accept your fate or fight until your fleeting breath? For Franceska Mann, or Franciszka Mannówna, a Polish-Jewish dancer on her way to the Auschwitz gas chamber, the answer was a no-brainer.

Franceska Mann was a beautiful and exceptionally talented dancer, pirouetting her way through many prestigious shows and competitions, including the Brussels International Dance Competition of May 1939 where she won fourth prize.

She danced regularly in Warsaw’s Melody Palace nightclub before the outbreak of the Second World War and her career-shattering imprisonment in the Warsaw Ghetto. In 1943 she was transported out of Poland, presumably in connection with the Hotel Polski Affair, where Jews hoping to escape to South America with foreign passports were tricked and sent to Auschwitz instead.

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According to some accounts, these ‘exchange Jews’ were told that they had in fact arrived at Bergau to