Franci's War

What are you willing to do to survive? What are you willing to endure if it means
you might live?
In the summer of 1942, twenty-two-year-old Franci Rabinek - designated a Jew
by the Nazi racial laws - arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto
forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her threeyear
journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to
the slave labour camps in Hamburg, and finally Bergen Belsen.
Franci, a spirited and glamorous young woman, was known among her fellow
inmates as the Prague dress designer. Having endured the transportation of her
parents, she never forgot her mother's parting words: 'Your only duty to us is to
stay alive'. During an Auschwitz selection, Franci would spontaneously lie to
Nazi officer Dr Josef Mengele, and claim to be an electrician. It was a splitsecond
decision that would go on to endanger - and save - her life.
Franci's story is an astonishing account of one woman's attempt to survive
those dark years. Heartbreaking, candid, and sometimes unbearably funny, she
gives voice to the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends. Her
testimony sheds new light on the alliances, love affairs, and sexual barter that
took place during the Holocaust, offering a compelling insight into the resilience
and courage of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Above all, Franci's
War asks us to explore what it takes to survive, and what it means to truly live.