Gisi Fleischmann

Gisi Fleischmann ( Gisela Fischer) (* 1894 in Bratislava, † October 18, 1944 in Auschwitz ) was a Slovak woman 's rights activist, and resistance fighter.

Life

Born and raised Gisi Fleischmann in an Orthodox Jewish family as the oldest of three children of Julius Fischer (1866-1936) and Jetty Elinger ( 1871-1945 ). Her parents ran a hotel and restaurant in Bratislava. Already as a young woman she joined the Zionist movement. She married in 1915 the merchant Josef Fleischmann, with whom she had two daughters: Alice ( 1917-1996 ) and Judith ( 1920-1997 ).

It became a leading official of the Slovak Zionist women's movement as President of the Slovak section of the Women's International Zionist Organization WIZO. From 1933 stranded in Slovakia increasingly more people who had fled from Germany because of the racist persecution, but really wanted to emigrate to Palestine. As a member of the Central Committee of Jews in Bratislava Gisi Fleischmann took over the emigration department of the Ustredna Židov. In 1939, she traveled to London to Henry Bunbery to organize opportunities for aliyah.

In 1941 she became the central coordinator in the network of Hechaluz by Nathan Schwalb and Saly Mayer, with the aim to preserve the Slovak Jews from deportation and allow them to escape from the areas controlled by the Nazis European countries.

After initial hesitation, and after 80,000 Slovak Jews were deported to Poland already, she supported the negotiation plan of Pracovná Skupina of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel who wanted to try to preserve the remaining in Slovakia 20,000 Jews by cash payments from deportation. It was her and her fellow militants of the Slovakian Jewish Council, supported by the Jewish Agency to retrieve several hundred children already deported from Poland and lead them to safety.

During the raids after the Slovak National Uprising, she was arrested on 28 September 1944, and initially deported to a labor camp Sered. Because she refused to betray others, it was a "return unwanted" deported in October 1944 with the Gestapo memo to Auschwitz where they were murdered immediately after arrival.