Oskar Schindler, page 20
“What are you doing?”
“I am working in the city hall.”
“And your wife, how is she?”
“She is working in a paper store.”
“And your daughter?”
“She is working in a plant.”
“How the hell do you live?”
“Thank God, my son is unemployed.”19
Oskar Schindler was in Kraków for one reason only, and that was to make money. A lot of money. And it was the black market that gave him this opportunity. The most lucrative business was with the Wehrmacht, which brought huge amounts of goods through its contacts with the Polish black market. According to Jan Gross, the potential for great profits on such deals was enormous, and it was easy to make a fortune in a short time. Schindler quickly grasped the importance of contacts with the black market, which is why he gave Abraham Bankier such a prominent position at Emalia. And it was probably profit that motivated Schindler, no doubt prodded by the trusted Bankier, to hire more and more Jewish workers.20
Over time, though, Oskar Schindler did more than employ Jewish workers. He convinced the monstrous Amon Göth, the commandant of the Płaszów forced labor camp, to allow him to build a sub-camp with barracks and other facilities for his Jewish workers. Schindler even provided housing for 450 Jewish workers from nearby German factories. He became the protector of his Jewish workers and kept them healthy and well fed. And when other factory owners began to shut down their factories and return to the Reich with their profits in the face of the westward march of Stalin’s Red Army, Schindler arranged to open a new sub-camp and factory, Brünnlitz, near his home town of Svitavy, where he employed over 1,000 Jewish workers, most of whom survived the war. What brought about this transformation? How did a man of questionable morals who came to Kraków in the early months of World War II simply to make a great deal of money become one of the Holocaust’s most heralded Righteous Gentiles? This question begs no easy answer, though it probably lies in the evolution of Germany’s horrible mistreatment and eventual mass murder of the Jews, first in the General Government, and then in the rest of German-dominated Europe. Living as he did in the heart of the Nazis’ principal killing ground during the Holocaust, Oskar Schindler was surprisingly knowledgeable about German plans to murder all the Jews of Europe. His transformation ran parallel to the development of the Third Reich’s deadly Jewish policies between 1939 and 1942.
German Policy Toward the Jews in Kraków and the General Government, 1940–1942
By the fall of 1940, the German administrators in Kraków had stripped the 60,000 Jews living there of most of their legal and property rights. Yet Kraków’s Jews lost more than their property. They were also stripped of their jobs in non-Jewish businesses and institutions and robbed of most of their bank accounts and other investments. Though the local branch of the Main Trusteeship Office East (HTO; Haupttreuhandstelle Ost) in Kraków agreed to compensate former apartment house owners 75 percent of their former property’s value, this was reduced to 50 percent in the summer of 1940. Over the next six months, German compensation to Jewish property owners dwindled to almost nothing. And even if Jewish property owners did receive compensation, they were severely limited in their access to these funds in the Polish Post State Savings Bank or in Jewish credit unions.21
The gradual impoverishment of Kraków’s Jews was part of the greater German effort to rip Jews from the fabric of General Government society. On April 11, 1940, Hans Frank met with several Wehrmacht generals who complained that they had to live in apartment buildings where the only other tenants were Jews. The following day, at a meeting with his department chiefs in the Mining Academy in Kraków, Frank said that the situation was intolerable: If the Nazis wanted to maintain their authority in the General Government, German officials should not have to meet Jews when they entered or left their homes because they might “be subjected to the risk of falling victims to epidemics.” Consequently, the Governor General informed his administrators that he intended to rid Kraków of as many Jews as possible by November 1, 1940. Frank admitted that his scheme would result in a massive deportation of Jews. Yet such an action had to take place because “it was absolutely intolerable that thousands and thousands of Jews should slink about and have dwellings in a town which the Führer had done the greatest honour of making the seat of a high Reich authority.” Frank added that he intended to make Kraków “the town freest of Jews in the General Government.”22
The Nazis had struggled with the so-called Jewish question since Hitler had become chancellor of Germany in early 1933. Over a six-year period, they had stripped Jews in the Greater Reich of all of their economic, professional, and political rights in an effort to force them to leave Hitler’s Nazi kingdom. In Poland, they faced new problems because of the size of the Jewish population. Reinhard Heydrich, the Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) and soon to be head of the Nazis’ new super police organization, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA; Reichssicherheitshauptamt), laid out the Germans’ general blueprint for dealing with the Jews of Poland in a memo, “The Problem of the Jews in the Occupied Areas,” that followed a September 21, 1939, meeting with Einsatzgruppen leaders in Berlin. Besides providing the guidelines for the creation of the Judenräte and other issues, Heydrich also spoke of the “final goal” towards the Jews, which, he said, would take some time. The first stage of this long-range “game plan” was the “concentration of the Jews from the countryside to larger cities.” Jews from those parts of Poland who were to be integrated into the Greater Reich were dumped into an area in the interior of Poland that later became the General Government. Towns and cities chosen as concentration areas were to be near a railway line or junction; Jewish communities with fewer than five hundred people were to be dissolved and the inhabitants moved to the nearest concentration point.23
Essentially, Heydrich was thinking of the creation of a ghetto system throughout what remained of German-occupied Poland. On September 20, 1939, General Franz Halder, commander of the Army General Staff, noted in his diary that the “ghetto idea exists in broad outline”; two days later, Heydrich told General Walther von Brauchitsch, the Army commander in chief, that he planned to create a Jewish state near Kraków under German administration. Brauchitsch protested, and Reichsführer- SS Heinrich Himmler, Heydrich’s boss, intervened to assure the army chief that this was a long-range objective that would be realized in the future. The time frame for meeting this goal, a year, was laid out into another memo Heydrich sent to his department chiefs in the RSHA on September 27, 1939. The plan, which Hitler had approved, was to send all Greater Reich Jews to urban ghettos in the soon-to-be created General Government. These transfers would give Reich officials a “better chance of controlling them [the Jews] and later removing them.” Reich Gypsies, or Roma, were also included in this directive.24
The idea of ghettos for Jews was nothing new. The first ghetto for Jews was created in Venice in 1516. The idea of forcing Jews to live in separate parts of cities spread to other European countries over the next four centuries. The purpose of the ghetto was to limit Jewish contact with Christians and to control Jewish economic activities. With the coming of the Enlightenment and the emancipation of the Jews, ghettos fell into disfavor in Christian Europe. The last ghetto in Europe, in Rome, was closed in 1870. The Nazis revived ghettos for Jews seven decades later.25
What complicated all of this was the uncontrolled movement of Jews and Poles into the General Government from the recently conquered western Polish territories and Jews and Gypsies from the Greater Reich. There were about 600,000 Jews in the conquered Polish western provinces. Frank also expected that another 400,000 Jews would be sent into his “kingdom” from the Greater Reich. Himmler also intended to move about 400,000 Poles from this region into the General Government. Once this transfer program was completed by the spring of 1940, the General Government would have a Jewish population of 2 million.26
Initially, the idea was to create a special Jewish reservation in the Lublin district. However, once the massive transfer began on December 1, 1939, Frank became concerned over the implications of such large population movements within his so-called kingdom. With the backing of Hermann Göring, Frank insisted that he be given full control over all shipments of Jews and others into the General Government. On March 23, 1940, Göring halted all further transports into the General Government. It was in the aftermath of this controversy that Frank decided to force Kraków’s Jews out of the city. The expulsions were to take place in two phases. On May 18, 1940, German authorities announced that Kraków’s Jews had three months to leave the city for another town in the General Government. Those who left by August 15, 1940, could choose their new place of settlement and take all their personal possessions with them. Those who did not leave voluntarily would be expelled after August 15 and would be limited to 25 kilograms (55 lbs.) of baggage per person; all other property would be transferred to the Kraków district Trustee Office.27
In his April 12, 1940, meeting with his department heads, Frank had said that from 5,000 to 10,000 Jews would have to remain in Kraków because the Germans needed their handicraft, trade, and business skills. Frank expanded this number to 15,000 in his May 18 decree. The Juden-rat under Dr. Bieberstein was to insure that all Kraków Jews complied with the May 18 regulations. Initially, the Judenrat asked Jews who had come to Kraków from other parts of Poland to consider voluntary resettlement. When this appeal did not work, the Judenrat reminded the city’s Jews of the August 15 deadline. On July 23, German authorities informed the Judenrat that it would not change the August 15 date for voluntary departures. Two days later, a notice signed by Dr. Bieberstein appeared in the new Jewish newspaper, the Gazeta Żydowska, reminding Kraków’s Jews of the German regulations regarding voluntary resettlement. It also included information about other cities in the General Government where Jews could settle.28 The notice ended with
therefore we ask all Jews of Cracow to change the place of residence voluntarily and immediately irrespective of the fact if the order to move has been delivered or not. The permits to travel by train, identity documents and all sort of information concerning the possible reductions can be obtained from the Migration Committee of the Jewish Community in Cra-cow, in Brzozowa 5. 29
Though many Jews did leave Kraków during this period, far too many Jews were still in the city on August 15. The Germans responded by forming a joint German-Jewish eviction committee that issued special residency permits, the Ausweis, for Jews who could stay in Kraków. The committee, however, issued far more permits than the number allowed legally to stay in the city. An official investigation concluded that the reason for the excess permits was bribery or an honest desire to help fellow Jews. It also indicated that some former Kraków Jews had returned illegally to the city because they could not find homes in other parts of the General Government.30
The failure of the voluntary resettlement program frustrated the Germans; on November 25, 1940, the Kraków district’s governor, SS-Brigadeführer Otto Wächter, issued a new decree in Polish and German about illegal Jewish residents in the city. He stated that “in order to cleanse Cracow of its Jews and leave in it only those Jews whose professions are still needed,” it was now forbidden for Jews to enter Kraków. Only Jews with the Ausweis (dokument odroczenia) could remain in the city. The Ausweis had to be carried at all times; those caught without it would be expelled from Kraków. Jews without the Ausweis had to present themselves at the Regional District Office for Refugees on ul. 3 Pawia between December 2 and December 11, 1940. This was to be done alphabetically over a five-day period. Wächter warned that the Germans intended to enforce the new decree and warned that anyone who failed to abide by it would be severely punished.31
By this time, Wächter had already gained a reputation for brutality. A year earlier, he reported to Frank that posters had appeared all over the city on November 11 commemorating Polish independence day. The governor general ordered Wächter to arrest and shoot one man from every building on which the posters appeared. Wächter dutifully rounded up 120 Poles for execution. Consequently, no one should have been surprised when Wächter began his brutal round up of Jews throughout Kraków, regardless of whether they had the Ausweis or not. Jews caught in the Nazi dragnet were sent to the former Austrian fort on ul. Mogilska and then, after they were opened, to ghettos in Warsaw, Lublin, Hru-bieszów, and Biała Podlaska. A year earlier, Biała Podlaska had been the terminus point of the first SS death march, which involved eight hundred Jewish prisoners of war from the Polish army. The Germans continued to inter Jewish POWs in a camp in Biała Podlaska until 1941, when the camp was closed.32
The Germans harassed the Jews who stayed in Kraków. In January and February 1941, they forced all Jews over age sixteen to spend a set number of days clearing the streets of snow. At the same time, Wächter decreed that all Jews living in the city would have to replace their Ausweis with a new identity document, the Kennkarte. But before they could receive the new document, Jews had to submit the old Ausweis with confirmation of the actual number of days they had worked in January 1941. On February 27, 1941, Wächter declared the Ausweis an invalid document. The only Jews allowed to remain in Kraków after this date were those with the Kennkarte or those promised one.33
Four days later, Wächter published a 13-point ordinance in the Krakauer Zeitung that announced the creation of the Kraków Jewish Living Quarter (Jüdischer Wohnbezirk), or ghetto. Wächter explained that the ghetto, which would be in the suburb of Podgórze, was being established for security and health reasons. Though the Germans opened the first Jewish ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski near ŀódź in the fall of 1939, they did not begin to open ghettos in earnest for six more months. The opening of ghettos in the General Government took place randomly between 1940 and 1942. The first was opened in ŀódź , which was now part of the Greater Reich, on May 1, 1940. Six months later, the Germans opened another in Warsaw. Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the beloved Christian pharmacist in the Kraków ghetto, said that by early 1941, rumors were widespread that more ghettos would soon be opened in other parts of the General Government. Kraków’s Jews hoped the new ghetto would include Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter in Kraków. Jews had lived in Kaz-imierz since 1495. Though long regarded as one of the poorer sections of Kraków, the “Jewish town” was the vibrant religious, cultural, and intellectual center for the city’s Jews. Consequently, Wächter’s decision to force Kraków’s remaining Jews across the Vistula river to the run-down industrial district of Podgórze shocked many of the city’s Jews.34
The second point of Wächter’s ordinance specifically established the boundaries of the new ghetto. Its northernmost border was the Vistula River. From there it would run along the rail line linking central Kraków with the suburb of Płaszów. It would include the central market square of Podgórze and end just below the Krzemionki Hills. The highest point here is Lasota Hill, where Oskar Schindler and his mistress, Amelia (Ingrid), an Abwehr agent, supposedly watched the violent closing of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943. Schindler’s Emalia factory on ul. 4 Lipowa was only a few blocks away from the ghetto’s western wall.35
Wächter’s decree ordered all Polish residents living in those parts of Podgórze to move to Kazimierz by March 20, 1941. Jews were given the same amount of time to move to the ghetto. About 3,500 Poles lived in three hundred homes in Podgórze. Many of them were stunned by the German orders. They organized meetings and explored ways to prevent the transfers. Parishioners of Podgórze’s striking neo-Gothic St. Joseph’s Church asked their vicar, the Reverend Jozef Niemezynski, to discuss their concerns with the Germans. Father Niemezynski told Wächter that to create a ghetto in Podgórze just beyond the church’s grounds would work a severe hardship on his parishioners. For one thing, the Catholic priest argued, many of the faithful now forced to move to Kazimierz would have not only to cross the Vistula to attend church, they would also have to walk completely around the walled-off ghetto to get there. Father Niemezynski was told that there were already too many churches in Kraków. In fact, Wächter said, the vicar was lucky that St. Joseph’s was not in the ghetto itself. If it were, then “all the faithful from the parish would be lost.” Other representatives told the Germans that it would be impossible to move some of their businesses and workshops to Kazimierz because of inadequate facilities there. Their appeals fell on deaf ears. The March 3 ordinance stood.36
The Judenrat was responsible for insuring that the transfers and the opening of the ghetto went smoothly. Excluded from the transfers from Podgórze to Kazimierz were major factories and businesses producing goods for the Wehrmacht. The Germans also permitted one other Aryan business to remain open in Podgórze, Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s pharmacy, Pod Orłem (Under the Eagle; today, Museum of National Remembrance). Pankiewicz and his Polish staff, Irena Droźdikowska, Helena Krywaniuk, and Aurelia Daner-Czortkowa, had to live outside the ghetto. According to Pankiewicz, the pharmacy, situated as it was on one of the ghetto’s main squares, Plac Zgody (Peace Square; today, Plac Bohaterów Getta, Plaza of Ghettos Heroes), “became witness to the inhuman deportations, monstrous crimes and the constant degradation of human dignity and self-respect of the occupants.” More important, Pankiewicz’s pharmacy provided the ghetto’s Jews with important contacts with the outside world. Schindlerjude Stella Müller-Madej described Pankiewicz as “a wonderful human being” and remained close to him after the war. On one occasion, he hid Stella under his desk during a German Aktion or roundup in the ghetto. In 1983, Pankiewicz was declared a Righteous Gentile (Righteous Among the Nations) by Yad Vashem in Israel.37
