Oskar Schindler, page 14
The first official decree of Dr. Bieberstein’s administrative board came on September 21, when Bieberstein asked the city’s Jews to begin working to fill in the various antiaircraft ditches throughout Kraków. This was the beginning of the German forced-labor practices that transformed the General Government’s Jews into slaves of the Third Reich. Once Hans Frank was in power, he decreed that all Jews between twelve and sixty were obligated to work for a two-year term in a forced labor camp. Frank’s subordinate, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Wächter, the governor of the Kraków district, decreed on November 18, 1939, that all Jews in his district older than twelve were required to wear a white band with a blue Star of David sewn on it. Wächter added that the white band had to be 10 cm wide and the star had to be 8 cm in diameter. The Kraków governor defined a Jew as someone “who is or was a believer in the Jewish faith” and whose mother or father “is or was a believer in the Jewish faith.” This order included temporary as well as permanent Jewish residents of Kraków.17
The final blow to Jewish dignity and pride soon followed when a series of decrees and regulations stripped Jews of their homes, businesses, and personal property. Oskar Schindler, like many other German carpetbaggers, would benefit greatly from these developments. But Jews had already lost many of their possessions during the random military and civilian plundering during the invasion and occupation of Poland in September 1939. In November, the Germans froze all Jewish and foreign assets in banks and other financial institutions and permitted them to keep only Zł 2,000 ($625) in cash. On December 5–6, 1939, the Germans blockaded all Jewish homes in Kazimierz and other parts of Kraków and brutally confiscated everything collectively valued more than Zł 2,000 ($625) from individual Jewish residences. Several days earlier, Kraków’s Jews had to report and then turn in their motor vehicles. On January 24, 1940, the city’s Jews were given five weeks to register their remaining property with the German authorities. They were also forbidden to change their addresses. According to Dr. Roland Goryczko, the lawyer appointed by the Polish trade court to handle the business affairs of the bankrupt Jewish factory just leased by Oskar Schindler, the registration order marked the beginning of official German confiscation of Jewish property in the General Government.18
In the midst of all of this, Oskar Schindler began his inquiries about Jewish property. The logical path for him was through the office of the Main Trusteeship Office East (HTO; Haupttreuhandstelle Ost), created by Hermann Göring on November 1, 1939, and headed by Max Winkler, a close associate of Joseph Goebbels and Reich Commissioner of the German Film Industry. Though headquartered in Berlin, the HTO had branch offices (Treuhandstellen) throughout German-occupied Poland, including Kraków. Those in each of the General Government’s four districts were overseen by the General Government Trustee Office (Treuhandstelle für das General Gouvernement). Göring’s directive, later clarified in early 1940, recognized two methods of property seizure based on taking over (Beschlagnahme) property rights and confiscation (Einziehung). According to a new directive issued by Göring on January 24, 1940, the HTO could take over or confiscate all property deemed important to the public interest. Local HTO offices would then be responsible for overseeing the stolen property and putting it in the hands of carefully selected Treuhän-der (trustee). Polish property that was not officially registered with the Germans was considered ownerless and was subject to seizure by the HTO. Jewish property seized by the HTO, the military, or other organs of state for the benefit of the Reich was not bound by Göring’s property seizure directives. For Jews, the only things exempt from seizure were personal items.19
When Oskar Schindler began to look for confiscated Polish property to build his new business career in the fall of 1939, the seizure of Polish property, whether it be public, private, or Jewish, was just getting under way. Jewish property was certainly being stolen in the immediate months after the German conquest by the military, the police, and a few civilians. On September 29, for example, the military issued a decree allowing for the immediate seizure of property that was improperly managed or that belonged to absentee owners, an action that became a pretext for the confiscation of much Jewish property. Oskar, though, despite his Abwehr ties, had to follow a more formal, legalistic route to acquire property in Kraków at this time.20
Jewish property was still hard to acquire in such situations because Jews in the General Government were not required to register their property with the HTO until late January 1940. And it was not until September 17, 1940, that Göring issued a new directive ordering immediate confiscation of all Jewish property in Poland with the exception of personal belongings and RM 1,000 ($400) in cash. These regulations were enforced unevenly throughout German-occupied Poland. In Kraków, for example, the new rule was applied only to homes that brought in rent of more than Zł 500 ($156.25) a month. Yet most of the private property seized in Poland by the Reich was Jewish-owned. The only exception was state-owned Polish property, which Frank declared in the fall of 1940 was now the property of the General Government. At the end of 1941, Germans only owned 157 private businesses out of 2,973 in Kraków. Non- Jewish Poles owned the rest.21
Initially, some effort was made to compensate Jews for their extensive property losses. Early in the occupation, the Germans seemed interested only in larger Jewish businesses and homes, though, over time, the Jews in the General Government lost everything. In Kraków, for example, the HTO agreed to pay former apartment house owners 75 percent of the property’s value; by the summer of 1940, the HTO reduced these payments to 50 percent. Jews who had money in the state-owned Polish Post State Savings Bank (Pocztowa Kasa Osczědnośsci) were allowed to take out only 10 percent of their savings, and their total withdrawals from their individual accounts could be no more that Zł 1,000 ($312.50). Those who had money in the Jewish credit unions after November 18, 1940, lost everything because they were liquidated on this date.22
On February 18, 1941, the General Government’s Trustee Office laid out specific guidelines for compensating former Jewish property owners. The first criteria for payment was that the former Jewish owner could not support himself from other sources of income. Second, if compensation was given, it could be no greater than a quarter of the former property owner’s net income. Moreover, German compensation could not exceed Zł 250 ($78) a month. Given that it required about Zł 1,300 ($406.25) a month in 1941 to meet the basic cost of living expenses in the General Government, these limits were another indication of German efforts to rid themselves of the Jewish population well before the implementation of the Final Solution. A third HTO criteria stipulated that compensation given could not affect the value of the seized property. Finally, and this was the most damaging to Jewish hopes of compensation, the HTO directive stated that Jewish property seized for the benefit of the Reich was not subject to compensation. Once the property was taken over, the new German owner was not obligated to pay any of the confiscated property’s prewar debts to Polish creditors. At the same time, the new owners had the right to demand payments from Poles for debts owed the former owners. Oskar Schindler would benefit from these German debt regulations.23
Some of the worst initial losses suffered by Polish Jews came in the midst of random property seizures by the Wehrmacht and the police forces in the early months of the war. Göring and Himmler both claimed extensive authority to seize property for the good of the Reich, which was then not subject to compensation consideration. Winkler, who technically answered to Göring, claimed the same rights for the HTO. The military and the police, and occasionally bold civilians, had no qualms about raiding a Jewish business, factory, or home and stealing everything inside. Stella Müller-Madej, a Schindlerjude, tells one such story in her memoirs. Early one November morning in 1939, three SS men entered her family’s spacious apartment on fashionable ul. Szymanowskego Karola. Like the Pfefferbergs, the Müllers were secular Jews who chose to live in a predominantly Polish neighborhood. At first, the Germans thought they had the wrong apartment because of its elegance and Stella’s mother, Bertha, a Jew of German descent with blond hair and green eyes who spoke impeccable German. Bertha politely informed the SS officer that she was Jewish. After a moment of hesitation, the SS officer informed Bertha that her family had half an hour to vacate the apartment. They would not be allowed to take anything with them. The officer assured the Müllers that they would receive a detailed inventory of everything in the apartment. The family quickly dressed and added extra layers of clothes. Bertha was also able to sneak a few items from her jewelry box, though she was sure the Germans would keep their word about a receipt for the confiscated items. But when they walked out the door, they lost everything. Such tragic stories were repeated time and again throughout German-occupied Poland during the first years of the war.24
These developments had a direct impact on Oskar Schindler’s ability to acquire property in the early months after the outbreak of World War II. The extensive Trustee offices (Treuhandstellen) were just being set up as he was looking for a cheap piece of property in Kraków. Moreover, Oskar was in a hurry to begin his new business, whether it be for profit or as an Abwehr front. Even if he was receiving some of his startup money from Abwehr, he still did not have unlimited funds. And he now had two homes, a wife, and several mistresses to take care of. Most important, he needed good business advice. If his wartime and postwar experiences are any indication, Oskar Schindler was not much of a businessman. He was extremely impatient, particularly when it came to details, and did not handle money well. He would need someone to help him find an appropriate business to invest in and someone to run it. Perhaps Steven Spielberg best captured the essence of all of this in the fictitious scene in Schindler’s List that had Liam Neeson (Schindler) and Ben Kingsley (Itzhak Stern) together in an office. Neeson was trying to find out whether Kingsley knew of any Jewish businessmen willing to put up funds to help him open a factory. In return for their investment, Neeson explained, they would receive manufactured goods to trade on the black market. When Kingsley asked what Neeson would bring to the bargain, he responded, “I would see that it had a certain panache. That’s what I’m good at, not the work, not the work. Presentation.”25
Schindler, Stern, and Bankier
Josef “Sepp” Aue told the Czech secret police after World War II that Oskar Schindler was the principal figure involved in helping him acquire a business in Kraków during the early months of the war. According to Aue, all this was linked to the activities of two Abwehr operatives in Kraków at the time, Walter Muschka and Oskar Schmidt, who went by the cover name of Ervin Kobiela. Aue claimed that Muschka was head of an office in Kraków that oversaw the confiscation of Jewish property. Robin O’Neil claims that Muschka was head of the General Government’s Trustee Office in Kraków, though this office did not exist at the time. More than likely, Muschka oversaw a Wehrmacht Wirtschaftsstelle that handled Jewish property confiscations. According to Aue, Abwehr’s office in Kraków was headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Kipka. SS-Hauptsturmführer Rolf Czurda served as his deputy. This link between Abwehr and the SS was not as strange as it seemed. Ties between both organizations had grown closer in the days leading up to the war and would become even closer. They had both worked together on the invasion of Poland, and some Abwehr officers in Poland were drawn from SS units. Abwehr officers had trained members of the SS Standby Troops (VT; Ver-fügungstruppen), the forerunner of the Waffen SS (Armed SS), in security and counterespionage matters, and members of Himmler’s newly created super police organization, the RSHA, taught Abwehr officers police tactics. At a distance, ties between Abwehr and the Gestapo, an arm of RSHA, were so close that some anti-Nazis thought that Abwehr was an extension of the Gestapo. The special relationship between Abwehr and various branches of RSHA, which would wane during the war, would often work in Oskar Schindler’s favor.26
Certainly Schindler and Aue’s ties to Abwehr helped them acquire property in Poland. When they arrived together in Poland in late September 1939, Oskar immediately took Sepp to meet with Muschka and Ko-biela. Kobiela took Aue aside and asked him what type of business he wanted. Sepp replied that it did not really matter to him. Kobiela suggested that he might be interested in a Jewish firm, J. L. Buchheister & Co., at 15 Stradom Street. When Aue agreed, both men went to the shop, where Kobiela introduced himself as a clerk for the Wehrmacht’s Wirtschaftsstelle (Economic Planning Office). Kobiela demanded that the owner give him the contents of his cash register as well as a detailed inventory of all of his shop’s goods and other possessions. The Abwehr agent then told Mr. Buchheister that when he had completed the inventory, he should leave the shop and never return. The shop was now controlled by Josef “Sepp” Aue. He said that when he took it over it had on hand about Zł 650,000 ($203,125) in textiles and Zł 500 ($156.25) in cash. Like Schindler, Aue formally took control of this company in early 1940 after official confiscation regulations were put in place.27 Though Aue told the Czech secret police that he stopped working for Abwehr when he came to Kraków, his asking known Abwehr operatives to help him find a factory negates this claim. Though he might not have formally been working for Abwehr, he could never escape obligations to Canaris’s organization, at least while he remained in Kraków. In fact, he was part of a larger Sudeten-German Abwehr network that was actively involved in property acquisitions in the General Government’s capital in the early months of the war. Muschka and Korbiel, for example, not only helped Schindler and Aue acquire property but also helped Oskar’s right-hand man in Ostrava, Frantiåek Turek, acquire a business there.28
Thomas Keneally tells a different story about Aue and Schindler’s relationship, which he based on interviews with Jewish survivors. The Czech secret police files and Schindler’s own comments about this were not available to the Australian novelist when he did his research for Schindler’s List in the early 1980s. According to Keneally, Aue and Schindler first met at a party in late October 1939 at the apartment of one of Schindler’s girlfriends, a Sudeten German Treuhander named Ingrid. Sepp Aue invited Oskar to drop by his office the next day. It was during this meeting that Schindler was supposed to have first met Itzhak Stern. Stern, at home with the flu, had been called to the office by Aue to check into a payment discrepancy involving two German soldiers and one of the company’s Jewish bookkeepers. While Stern was trying to resolve this matter, Aue introduced him to Schindler, a meeting that would begin a lifelong friendship. According to Keneally, though Stern spent only a few minutes with Oskar, he was able to review the business records of the Polish Jewish firm, Rekord, Ltd., that Schindler proposed to take over. Stern told Oskar that he was familiar with this company and that his brother, Natan, had worked for one of Rekord’s Swiss creditors. He explained that Rekord, which had made enamelware, had been badly managed and had gone bankrupt. After glancing at Rekord’s books for three minutes, Stern told Oskar that it was a good business, particularly with military contracts looming on the horizon. He added that Rekord had been grossing more than Zł 0.5 million ($94,340) a year and that new equipment could easily be acquired to expand its production. Stern went on to tell Schindler that the best way to acquire Rekord was through the Polish Trade Court instead of the Treuhandstelle. What Schindler could do, suggested Stern, was lease Rekord with the option later to buy it outright. “As a Treuhänder,” Stern noted, “only a supervisor, you were completely under the control of the Economics Ministry.” According to Keneally, the first meeting between Schindler and Stern ended with a modest philosophical discussion on religion. Stern’s last comment was a quote from the Talmud: “He who saves the life of one man saves the world.” Keneally implied that Oskar seemed to agree with this thought, and has Stern saying that “it was at this moment that he . . . dropped the right seed in the furrow.” This is the beginning of the story that it was Stern who gave Oskar Schindler the timely business advice he needed to acquire Rekord, Ltd., and planted the seed that later led to Schindler’s decision to hire and save Jewish workers.29
Stern tells a somewhat different story. In fact, what we know about the early phase of Stern’s relationship with Oskar comes from the detailed testimony Stern gave to Dr. Kurt Jakob Ball-Kaduri, who worked for Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, in late 1956, and the testimony he provided Martin Gosch and Howard Koch in 1964. Both men were preparing a film script for a movie on Oskar Schindler. Over the next year, Stern supplied Dr. Ball-Kaduri with supplemental details and documents. The Yad Vashem archivist was simultaneously corresponding with Oskar Schindler in Buenos Aires. With the exception of Schindler’s own postwar accounts, Stern’s lengthy testimony in German and his remarks to Gosch and Koch are some of the most important accounts we have of Oskar’s wartime activities. Even before Dr. Ball-Kaduri got to know Stern and Schindler, he had already gained a reputation for accuracy. Prosecutors in the 1961–1962 trial of Adolf Eichmann used testimony collected by Dr. Ball-Kaduri. During the trial, State Attorney Ya’acov Bar-Or noted that Dr. Ball-Kaduri, a specialist in the history of Central European Jews, began to record their testimonies after the end of the Holocaust. When Yad Vashem (Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority) came into existence in 1953, Dr. Ball- Kaduri volunteered to continue his work for the new Israeli Holocaust memorial institution. Bar-Or told the Eichmann court that Dr. Ball-Kaduri’s recorded testimonies “constitute today the only record and the only proof about some most important events.”30
According to Stern, his first meeting with Oskar Schindler took place on November 18 or 19, 1939, not late October. At the time, Stern was at home, ill and suffering a high fever. Aue, who had just taken over Buch-heister, called Stern into the office to resolve a situation involving one of the Jewish clerks accused of theft. The day before, two German soldiers had walked into Aue’s new shop and bought several bolts of cloth worth Zł 60 ($18.75) with an outdated 1858 German bill and a 1914 German occupation note. The morning after the sale, Buchheister’s German bookkeeper saw the bills in the cash register and accused the Jewish clerk of stealing Zł 60 and replacing the money with outdated German bills. Stern listened to the story and realized that if he did not resolve it quickly, the Jewish clerk could be shot. Stern told Aue: “Well, this is a piece of false money—we don’t need this—and I forgot about it anyway, that we had charged this up to a matter of profit and loss.” Stern then took the two bills and threw them into a nearby stove. Aue really liked the way that Stern handled the matter and told him that he wanted to share something confidential. Stern assured Aue that anything he told him in confidence would remain their mutual secret. Aue then introduced Stern to Oskar Schindler.31
