This is from a true story about an event at a Nazi concentration camp. I don't like talking about Nazis. I don't like talking or thinking about fascists. I'd rather not hear a lot of the news we get about politics today.
I like that Biden identified Trump's urge toward vengeance and retribution as ancient. He might as well have linked it to cavemen and pointed out that civilization began because we had to learn to get along. The New Republicans are cavemen doing things as they feel like. They don't feel like getting along with anyone except each other. They like making the others squirm or suffer.
Franceska was a ballerina in Poland. The Nazis thought she and her kind were polluting the blood of the country. They even spoke languages “nobody ever heard of,” as Trump put it.
Freshly arrived at Auschwitz after an airless, lightless, packed, smelly, nerve-jangling noisy ride with long, unexplained stops, no food, and no water, Franceska emerged from the cattle car into a gray, cold day and was immediately ordered to the showers.
She and the other Jewish women surrounding her were ordered to strip naked in front of the guards. They leered at the full breasts of women new to camp and not yet shriveled into sallow skin and bone from starvation and overwork.
Franceska worked as a serious ballerina but knew full well what most men thought she did when she told them she was a dancer. The roll call officer was eyeing her every move. She eyed him back, and began removing her clothing lingeringly. When she knew she had his full attention, she turned it into a strip tease. He grinned when she tossed him her bra, and drew nearer.
She was naked now except for her high heels, and he was nearly upon her, captivated by her perfect form. Schillinger drew his pistol. Sadistic thoughts flitted through his glinting eyes.
She smiled into his hungry, sweating face while bending her left leg up behind. Her right hand removed the shoe. The Nazi was practically breathing on her when she smashed her sharp heel into his eye.
He dropped his pistol with a shriek and she nimbly grabbed it, straightened up, and killed him with two shots to the chest. She swiveled the gun toward a Nazi on her right and pulled the trigger a third time. They said later that Emmerich walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
The other naked women took the cue and attacked the guards with fists, kicks, nails and teeth. One bit off a guard's nose. Reinforcements appeared with machine guns and grenades to quiet the disturbance.
Maybe Franceska knew the "showers" were gas chambers. Or she knew the Nazis would, one way or another, give her no choices. We don't all know these things for sure as we live through them. We like to think they're going to be showers. Sometimes they are.
One lesson I take from this story is that one brave person fighting back can inspire the rest. But that bit of doubt--"maybe it's just a shower, after all"--kept most of the Nazis' victims from rebelling. Actually, the number one lesson forever and always is "hang onto democracy while you still have it."