| Franceska Mann known as Franceska Manheimer was born on the 4th of February 1917 in Warsaw then Kingdom of Poland. Franceska, a beautiful and exceptionally talented dancer, studied ballet and contemporary dance at the school of Tacjanna Wysocka, and later under Irena Prusicka where she studied free dance, ballet and tap dance together. She was acquainted with famous female artists of the time such as the singer Wiera Gran and stage and theatrical actress Stefania Grodzieńska. During her studies and after graduation, Mann gave recitals at the Grand Theater in Warsaw and was one of the most beautiful and promising Polish dancers between 1936-1939 both in the classical and modern repertoire, performing on opera and cabaret stages, in cafes, revue shows as well as at private parties, and even in front of the camera – in the short film "Poles are famous". In May 1939, a few months before the outbreak of war, her talent was even recognized at the International Dance Competition in Brussels, where she performed a ballerina dance inspired by Degas' ballet sketches, and placed 4th among 125 other young ballet dancers. The Second World War started on the 1st of September 1939 with the invasion of Poland. Warsaw suffered heavy air attacks and artillery bombardment and German troops entered the capital on the 29th of September shortly after its surrender. The campaign in Poland ended on the 6th of October the same year with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of the country. On the 23rd of November 1939, German civilian occupation authorities required Warsaw's Jews to identify themselves by wearing white armbands with a blue Star of David. The German authorities closed Jewish schools, confiscated Jewish-owned property, and conscripted Jewish men into forced labor and dissolved prewar Jewish organizations. On the 12th of October 1940 German authorities had decreed the establishment of a ghetto in Warsaw. The decree required all Jewish residents of Warsaw to move into a designated area, which German authorities sealed off from the rest of the city in November 1940. One of the Jews imprisoned in the ghetto was Franceska Mann and her husband Marek Rosenberg with whom she had a daughter. In the ghetto Mann performed at the Femina Theater, Melody Palace or Café Bagatela until the 19th of April 1943 when the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after the German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants to the forced labor camps in Lublin district. The ghetto inhabitants offered organized resistance in the first days of the operation, inflicting casualties on the well-armed and well-equipped SS and police units. They continued to resist deportation as individuals or in small groups for four weeks. It was the largest uprising by Jews during World War II and the first significant urban revolt against the German occupation in Europe. In the end however, the Germans razed the ghetto to the ground. They burned and demolished this part of Warsaw, block by block, in order to smoke out their prey. The Germans ended the operation on the 16th of May when Jürgen Stroop, who led the suppression of the uprising, announced in his daily report to Berlin that "The former Jewish Quarter in Warsaw is no more." However, thousands of Jews survived in Warsaw, hiding outside the ghetto. Soon German agents and their collaborators spread the rumor that Jews could buy foreign passports and other documents, and then as foreign citizens, leave territories occupied by Nazi Germany. Tricked by Germans in what became known as the Hotel Polski Affair, around 2,500 Jews, estimates range as high as 3,500, came out of their hiding places and moved to Hotel Polski. The Polish Underground warned Jews that this was probably a trap, but many ignored the warnings. One of them was Franceska Mann. 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 prisoners of war, on the 23rd of October 1943, a transport of around 1,700 Polish Jews, including Franceska Mann, arrived on passenger trains in Auschwitz-Birkenau. | 
