8. A Cruel Trick and Dashed Hopes
Once she got to Auschwitz, the doomed Franceska Mann pulled off a feat of incredible – and inventive – defiance that earned her a place in history. On October 23rd, 1943, 1700 Jews boarded passenger trains headed to what they believed was a transfer camp near Dresden. They were told that they would get off the trains there, then go through bureaucratic formalities and health checks, preparatory to getting sent to Switzerland in exchange for German POWs. Instead, the trains stopped at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Mann was one of the passengers who got off the trains. She and the other women were told that the Swiss authorities required that immigrants be disinfected before they could cross the border into Switzerland. Instead of a disinfection station, they were taken to an undressing room next to the gas chambers and told to undress. It was in that room, as other women disrobed, that Mann suspected what was in store, and decided to become a one-woman resistance movement.
