Oskar Schindler, page 13
Hitler briefly removed Canaris as head of Abwehr in early 1942 after Himmler accused him of using Jewish agents. Though Canaris was able to convince the Führer to return him to his command, his influence waned considerably after this incident. At about the same time, Thomas lost out in a power struggle with Albert Speer, who became the new Minister of Armaments and Munitions after Todt’s accidental death. By the end of the year, Thomas had lost all authority over armaments issues and in early 1943 asked to be relieved of his military duties. A few months later, the military, with the aid of the Gestapo, arrested Dohnányi for corruption; Oster was placed under house arrest and transferred to the Führer-Reserve, where he could still wear his military uniform. Ultimately, Oster was dismissed from the service. Though the military cleared Dohnányi in 1944, he was now turned over to the RSHA. In early 1944, Hitler fired Canaris. Abwehr was taken over by the RSHA. Thomas, Canaris, Oster, and others involved in various resistance activities during the war were arrested and tortured after the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. Canaris, Oster, and Dohnányi were executed at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. Thomas managed to survive the war. He died in American custody at the end of 1945. 120
What do all of these developments and intrigues have to do with Oskar Schindler? Quite a bit. Schindler relied heavily on his ties with Abwehr and the Armaments Inspectorate, particularly General Schindler, to help him acquire the vital armaments contracts necessary to open or keep his factories running in Kraków and Brünnlitz (Brnenec).121 Emilie also used Oskar’s contacts with Abwehr and the Armaments Inspectorate to get him out of jail on numerous occasions during their years in Kraków. Moreover, Schindler’s work as a courier for the Jewish Agency in Budapest was partly facilitated through his Abwehr ties. What is difficult to determine is the impact of these connections on Schindler’s personal feelings towards Hitler and the Nazi system. Was his effort to use and later save the Jews who worked for him in Kraków and Brünnlitz affected by his ties with Abwehr and Armaments Inspectorate officers who held anti-Hitler and anti-Nazi sentiments?
3.
SCHINDLER AND THE EMALIA CONTROVERSY
THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME QUESTION ABOUT WHEN OSKAR Schindler first came to Kraków after the outbreak of World War II. Emilie Schindler says in her memoirs that Oskar went to Kraków in mid-October, but Thomas Keneally places him there at the end of the same month. Robin O’Neil says that Oskar received orders from Abwehr on October 17, 1939, to report immediately to Major Franz von Korab in Kraków for further duties. Yet other sources indicate that Oskar was in Kraków well before the third week of October because of his importance to Abwher regionally. O’Neil says in his unpublished manuscript on Oskar Schindler, The Man from Svitavy, that “Oskar had followed on the heels of the invading German army” into Kraków, which surrendered to the Wehrmacht on September 6. This is almost the identical phrase used in a Gestapo investigation in 1940 centering around the July 1939 break-in of Oskar’s apartment in Mährisch Ostrau. It stated that Schindler “had gone to Poland with the advancing German troops.”1
This explanation is more probable than the idea that Oskar did not arrive in Kraków until the third week of October. He already had an apartment in Poland’s ancient capital by this time, a sign that he was already familiar with the intricacies of the new German administrative system there. Then what did happen to bring Oskar to Kraków on October 17? More than likely, it was the date of his permanent formal transfer to Ab-wehr headquarters in the new capital of the General Government. Traveling with him was another Abwehr agent, Josef “Sepp” Aue. Indications are that Schindler and Aue were sent to Kraków to open businesses that would serve as Abwehr fronts. We do not know whether the two men were close friends or not, but they shared accommodations in Poland for the next few months.2
Keneally and O’Neil both claim that Oskar already had possession of the luxurious apartment at Straszewskiego 7/2 made famous in the film Schindler’s List. Today, the original top-floor apartment, with its wonderful balcony view of Wawel Castle and the small Planty Park across the street, is still as elegant as it was when Oskar lived there. But this was probably not his first apartment in Kraków. Though there is no question that Oskar ultimately lived at Straszewskiego 7/2, Polish court records in Kraków dealing with the lease of his first factory there in early 1940 and his signed sworn statement for the Gestapo in Kraków on August 22, 1940, about the robbery in Mährisch Ostrau the previous summer, listed two addresses. The first was on busy Krasivskiego Zygmunta, 24; the second was Fenna Serena Gasse 14/8. This seems logical because it is doubtful that Oskar had the means to live in the grand style that later became his hallmark. When he moved to Kraków in the fall of 1939, he was still an Abwehr officer searching for a front and a new career. And remember, he still maintained a home at Parkstraße 25 in Mährisch Os-trau for Emilie. His move from Krasivskiego Zygmunta to the quieter Fenna Serena Gasse, on the edge of Stare Miasto, and finally to the exquisite apartment on Straszewskiego, reflects his own success as a businessman in Kraków.3
Nonetheless, Oskar did not live a spartan life in his new apartment on Fenna Serena Gasse 14/8. Leopold “Poldek” Pfefferberg-Page, a Schindlerjude perhaps more important than anyone else in ultimately bringing Schindler’s story to the world, first met Oskar at the apartment of Poldek’s mother, Mila Pfefferberg-Page, in the fall of 1939. Page, who died in the spring of 2001, was born in Kraków on March 20, 1913. He attended the prestigious Jagiellonian University, no small feat, given the growing spirit of anti-Semitism in Poland’s universities and the calls for restrictions on Jewish enrollment. A year after Poldek earned his master’s degree in 1936, some Polish universities adopted a “seating ghetto” policy that required Jewish students to sit in segregated parts of classrooms. Yet for anyone who knew the feisty Poldek Pfefferberg-Page, the restrictions and taunts that he met as a university student only stiffened his resolve to complete his education.4
After graduation, Poldek taught physical education in a Jewish gymnasium (college preparatory high school) until the war broke out in 1939. Whenever I mentioned certain Schindler Jews during the few conversations we had, he would remind me that this or that person had once been one of his students. He served as a lieutenant in the Polish army, probably with the Eleventh Infantry Division, which retreated to Przemyśl, a medieval fortress town on the Polish-Soviet Ukrainian border, after its defeat at the hands of the German Fourteenth Army near the San River on September 10–12. Three days later, after a fierce defense by the city’s Polish troops, Przemyśl fell to the Germans. Poldek, who was wounded in the San River battle, recovered in the military hospital in Przemyśl until he was captured by the Germans. While there, he worked for the Poles and then the Germans as a hospital orderly. German hospital authorities gave him a pass that allowed him to travel with ambulance crews working in the city.5
He took advantage of the pass while in transit from Przemyśl to the Greater Reich. One night, he was on a POW train for captured Polish officers that stopped in Kraków. The Polish officers were taken off of one train, Poldek among them, to wait for a new one. An hour or two before dawn, the bold Poldek approached the sleepy, lone German soldier guarding the several hundred officers in the first class waiting room in one of Kraków’s railway stations and showed him the military ambulance pass that had allowed him to move freely throughout Przemyśl. Poldek fluttered the impressive-looking multi-stamped document in front of the soldier’s face and explained in German the rights of movement afforded him in the document. The flabbergasted guard nodded his head in approval as Poldek walked out the door of the waiting room and into the dark streets of his beloved Kraków.6
Schindler, whom Pfefferberg-Page would later call his closest friend, first met Poldek in less than auspicious conditions. In fact, Page intended to kill the unknown German during their first encounter. After his escape, Poldek blended in with the hundreds of other Polish officers still moving freely throughout Kraków because the Germans had not had time to process them. As an escaped POW, Poldek hid out with friends, visiting his parents only under the most secretive conditions. According to Thomas Keneally, who worked closely with Page when he wrote Schindler’s List, said that Page felt so comfortable in Kraków in the early months of the German occupation that he was able to return to his teaching job.7
If he did, the window of opportunity was narrow. The war broke out on the same day that many Jewish schools throughout Poland were about to open. Some state-run Jewish schools tried to reopen at the end of September, though official permission was not granted until October 8, when military authorities agreed that all schools in operation before the war could begin the fall term. When the General Government came into existence, Nazi officials ordered all Jewish schools closed. The doors of the last Jewish school in Poland were shut on December 4, 1939. Jewish students and teachers were also forbidden to attend or teach in the limited number of non-Jewish schools now allowed to operate in the General Government. Though German policy towards Polish education would change over the next few years, Frank and Himmler both thought the schools that provided Poles with the necessary skills to serve the economic needs of the Greater Reich should remain open. Elementary and vocational schools were allowed limited classes, but universities and gymnasia, traditionally centers of intellectual enlightenment and bastions of Polish culture, were closed.8
Poldek Page had been working with his mother’s interior decorating business and first met Oskar Schindler at his mother’s apartment on ul. (ulica; street) Grodzka 48. Grodzka is one of the main streets running just to the north of Wawel Castle to the center of Stare Miasto, the elegant Rynek Krakowski (Kraków Market Square). The Pfefferberg apartment was on what remains one of the most historic and beautiful streets in Kraków. Though many of Kraków’s Jews lived in the nearby old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, there were others, particularly more secular Jewish families who were later saved by Oskar Schindler such as the Pfefferbergs and the Müllers, who lived in other parts of Kraków.
From Poldek’s initial perspective, Oskar Schindler symbolized all that was evil about Poland’s German occupiers. But when Schindler knocked on Mina Pfefferberg’s apartment door in November 1939, Poldek’s initial fear was arrest by the Gestapo as an escaped POW. The ever cautious Poldek went to the kitchen door, one of two hallway entrance ways into the Pfefferberg apartment, and peered out. He immediately thought it was the Gestapo because the tall, blondish, well-dressed German was wearing a Nazi Party badge on his lapel. The Gestapo was responsible for threats to internal state security. Now that the military had relinquished control over Kraków, the Gestapo was responsible for arresting so-called enemies of the state. As a Jew and an escaped POW, Poldek qualified. For the former high school teacher and Polish officer, this meant life, and possibly death, in a concentration camp if arrested. For his parents, it could also mean the loss of their home and personal possessions.9
Consequently, Leopold Page had a lot to fear when he saw Oskar Schindler at the front door of his mother’s apartment. Mina was terrified, and Poldek hid in the kitchen when she went to the door. Ideally, he would try to escape; but, if necessary, he was prepared to shoot Schindler with the .22 pistol he kept hidden in his parent’s apartment. When Mina opened the door, Oskar saw the terror on her face and quickly reassured her: “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not here to arrest anybody, I am here to make business with you because I took an apartment, a Jewish apartment, and I pay money to this Jewish fellow, and he said that you were in interior decorating, and he was decorating his apartment.” Poldek, who by this time was standing behind the double doors separating the dining room from the living room, was relieved. As Schindler struggled to speak with Mrs. Pfefferberg in broken Polish, Poldek came through the door and interpreted for them. Though Oskar would later become fluent in Polish, it is doubtful that he knew very much in 1939. But Czechs and Poles can understand each other if they converse in their separate languages. My Polish research assistant, Konstancja Szymura, and I had this experience in the summer of 2000 when we were looking for Emilie Schindler’s remote Bohemian village. As we stopped frequently to ask directions, we spoke in Polish and received directions in Czech.10
Leopold Page would later say that he felt an immediate closeness to Oskar Schindler, and by the end of their first meeting they had become friends. Oskar was so reassuring that Mina Pfefferberg agreed to decorate his new apartment. Oskar then asked Poldek whether he would find him some black market items for his new apartment as well as other black market goods. Little did Schindler know how well connected Leopold Page was to the thriving black market in Kraków. Almost from the moment he escaped German military detention, Poldek was active in the black market jewel trade. Poles, Jews and non-Jews alike, but particularly Jews, were desperate for food, which the Germans carefully restricted.11
When World War II broke out, the Germans initiated a Reich-wide rationing system based on race. Hitler was determined that the German people would not suffer the same economic hardships they had endured during World War I, so the real burden of rationing fell on the shoulders of the occupied peoples, particularly the Jews. Ration books were distributed to Kraków’s Jews through the Temporary Jewish Religious Community and later the Judenrat (Jewish Council). In fact, food and the illnesses that came from lack of it became the largest initial problem faced by the Ju-denräte throughout German-occupied Poland.12
The food shortages faced by Kraków’s Jewish community were similar to those suffered by Jews in other parts of Poland during World War II. In 1939, the Stadtkommissar (city commissioner) in Łódź, for example, decreed that Jews were supposed to receive 25 percent of the city’s food allocations. In reality, Jews got much less because of problems with food distribution and deliberate German efforts to starve them. By the end of 1940, Warsaw’s Jews were allotted only 3,250 grams of bread apiece; the city’s Aryans received 6,100 grams. Warsaw’s Jews also got no sugar, flour, meat, eggs, or potatoes, which were reserved for non-Jews. The Polish historian Eugeniusz Duraczyvski estimated that the average daily food allotment for residents in Warsaw in 1941 was 2,613 calories for Germans, 669 calories for Poles, and 184 calories for Jews. Because of the underground economy, some Poles were able to buy food to increase their daily caloric intake by 1,000 to 1,500 calories.13
Underground activity was much more difficult for the General Government’s impoverished Jewish population, particularly after the creation of the ghetto system, which severely restricted their ability to buy food on the black market. The Judenräte throughout the General Government were able to set up food acquisition, production, and distribution systems, but they were barely able to raise Jewish caloric intake slightly above the 1,000 calories deemed necessary to sustain life over a long period. The situation worsened after Hans Frank decided in the fall of 1942 to stop supplying food to the 1.2 million Jews in the General Government not involved in jobs considered vital to the German economy. Starvation had now become an active German tool of mass death for Jews.14
When Oskar Schindler first talked to Page about helping him learn the Kraków black market system, he was thinking less about basic foodstuffs than the elegant life he hoped to live as a prosperous businessman and sometime Abwehr agent. One of the things that interested Schindler during his first meeting with Poldek was the fine blue silk shirt that the former Polish officer was wearing. Oskar asked him whether he could purchase more and how much they would cost. Though Poldek could buy them for Zł 5 ($1.56) apiece, he told Schindler that one shirt would cost him Zł 25 ($7.81). He added that he would need Oskar’s shirt size and an advance payment. Oskar gave Poldek RM 200 ($83.00). It was enough for Page to buy fifty shirts for Schindler, and the overly generous Oskar knew this. The following week, Oskar received a dozen shirts from Poldek. Thus began a close friendship that was to last until Oskar’s death in 1974. And though it was black marketeering that drew the two men together, there was also something else. Poldek Page and Oskar Schindler were similar in many ways. Both men were independent, self-assured, strong-minded, and intrepid individuals. These characteristics served them both well during and after the Holocaust.15
Page, though, had little to do with Oskar’s next step in becoming a prosperous German businessman in Kraków. Though Oskar had enough ambition and guile for several men, he needed other contacts to help him open his first business in the General Government’s new capital. From a distance, it would seem that not much effort was needed because Jewish properties were available to most Germans for the taking. But not in November 1939. By the time Oskar made his first visit to the Pfefferberg- Page apartment, German authorities were well on their way to depriving the city’s 60,000 Jews of their rights, dignity, and property. On September 8, SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach, the head of the First Operational Group of the SD and SS, ordered that all Jewish businesses were to display a Star of David on their windows by the next evening. On the same day, SS-Oberscharführer Paul Siebert, the head of Sipo’s Jewish affairs office, appointed Dr. Marek Bieberstein, a prominent prewar Jewish community leader, as head of the Temporary Jewish Religious Community in Kraków. Ten weeks later, this organization, still under Bieberstein, was transformed into a Judenrat. The Judenräte, which were used throughout German-occupied Europe, were to act as liaisons between the Germans and a city’s Jewish community and carry out the Nazi administration’s orders.16
