Resister · 1892-1944
Gisi Fleischmann
She negotiated, bribed and organised for the Jews of Slovakia, and when she could have left she stayed.
A hotelier's daughter
Gisi Fleischmann was born Gisela Fischer on 21 January 1892 in Pressburg, today Bratislava, the youngest of three children of hoteliers. She married Josef Fleischmann in 1915.
Before the deportations
She founded the Slovak chapter of WIZO, the women's Zionist organisation, and ran the Bratislava office of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). She also brought several hundred Jewish children from Poland.
The Working Group
From spring 1942 Fleischmann led the Working Group (Pracovná skupina) inside the Jewish Center. It negotiated bribes with Dieter Wisliceny. Transports from Slovakia slowed, and after October 1942 they halted for about two years.
The Europa Plan
The Working Group then pursued the Europa Plan, a proposed ransom of occupied Europe's Jews for two to three million dollars. The plan collapsed. In April 1944 the Working Group's network helped distribute the Vrba-Wetzler report.
She stayed
Fleischmann sent her two daughters, Aliza and Yehudit, to Palestine and refused to leave herself. After the Slovak National Uprising in late summer 1944 she was arrested in mid-October and held at Sereď. Alois Brunner marked her file "Rückkehr unerwünscht" (return undesired). She was on the last transport from Sereď on 17 October 1944 and did not survive Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Further reading
- Campion, Joan. In the Lion's Mouth: Gisi Fleischmann and the Jews of Slovakia. University Press of America, 1987.
- Fatran, Gila. "The 'Working Group'." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 8:2 (1994).
- Bauer, Yehuda. Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945. Yale University Press, 1994.
- Rothkirchen, Livia. The Destruction of Slovak Jewry. Yad Vashem, 1961.
- Jewish Women's Archive: Gisi Fleischmann
- Wikipedia: Gisi Fleischmann
Related profiles
In the book
Gisi Fleischmann is one of the 36 women whose documented stories are told in Women Without Fear, a book and documentary project of The Legacy Project. The book is being prepared for publication. You can read one full sample chapter now, on Róża Robota.