About the Memoir

In the summer of 1942, twenty-two year-old Franci Rabinek arrived at Terezín, forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezín to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labor camps in Hamburg, and Bergen Belsen. After liberation by the British in April 1945, she finally returned to Prague.

Franci was known in her group as the Prague dress designer who lied to Dr. Mengele in Auschwitz, saying she was an electrician, an occupation that both endangered and saved her life. In this memoir, she offers her intense and candid account of those years. Franci’s War is the powerful testimony of one incredibly strong young woman who survived. 

 

Franci's War was edited and fact-checked by her daughter, journalist Helen Epstein. She also write the Afterword to the book.