Oskar Schindler, page 21
Within days of Wächter’s March 3 decree, 15,000 Jews began to abandon their homes in Kasimierz and slowly make their way across the Vistula to the three hundred or so homes in Podgórze abandoned by the 3,500 Poles who once lived in them. The Poles, in turn, took up residence in the former Jewish homes in Kasimierz. What was once a normal, though rundown, suburb of Kraków now became a crowded Jewish ghetto where disease and hunger were constant threats to human life. Stella Müller- Madej described the traumatic forced march into the ghetto:
A lot of people were heading for the Ghetto, big groups and small. Some were carrying only bundles, and others had all their possessions loaded on horse carts. Daddy was pushing a nondescript wagon that he had borrowed from the janitor.
It was a beautiful sunny day, but no one was smiling about the splendid weather. The whole crowd around us was grey, gloomy and sad. I felt bad because we must have looked the same in such company. To cheer things up, I said to Daddy, who was pushing the cart with a vacant expression on his face, “Let’s pretend it’s our car, and we’ll step on the gas and run from the bridge here down to Zgoda Square, OK?”38
An excited Stella jumped up on the cart, only to see the family’s bundles tumble to the ground. After helping Stella put them back on the cart, her father began cheerfully to push it along the street. Stella and Adam, her brother, followed along
skipping and letting out Indian whoops. Mummy and my brother picked up the parcels that fell along the way. Some people looked at us indignantly, while others laughed at the sight. I heard somebody say, “Quite right. We shouldn’t let it get us down. It’s not as though we were going to our death.”39
It is not a long walk from Kazimierz to Podgórze, though it probably seemed an eternity to those Jews carrying their lifelong possessions with them on unwieldy carts, wagons, or their backs. Stella and her family probably crossed over the Piłsudski Bridge, Kraków’s oldest, though they could have crossed another one just upriver. Because Germans destroyed all of Kraków’s bridges on the Vistula at the end of the war, the second bridge into the ghetto no longer exists, though one can still see its markings from across the river.40
Stella and her family were given a room with a kitchen in a building on ul. Czarnieckiego; the common toilet was in the courtyard. The place was dirty and filled with roaches. Stella’s mother, Tusia, declared that she would “rather not live at all than vegetate for even a week in such conditions.” Tusia returned to her grandmother’s apartment outside of the ghetto for a few days while Stella’s father, Zygmunt, did what he could to make the room livable. In one of the Holocaust’s illogical twists, Stella’s grandmother was not required to move into the ghetto.41
There is a vivid photographic collection in the Archiwum Pavstwowe in Kraków that paints a graphic picture of the forced Jewish exodus into the ghetto. To facilitate the rapid movement of Jews from Kazimierz and other points in the city to Podgórze, the Germans forced Jews either to walk or take trains or boats across the Vistula to the ghetto. Whatever household goods were permitted in the ghetto were loaded on decrepit horse-drawn wagons; men, women, and children carried whatever personal goods they could. Often, Jews had to push their furniture and other personal items on aging carts. Germans guards were everywhere and they constantly checked and rechecked identity cards. The stress of the transfer showed darkly on the face of every victim.42
The forced move into the ghetto came just before one of Judaism’s most important religious holidays, Passover (Pesach), which in 1941 was between April 12 and 19. The Germans often chose a period around a special Jewish religious holiday such as Passover or Rosh Hashana to implement a major transfer or roundup. The idea was to use the period of strict Jewish religious observance to catch their victims when they were most off guard. Whether this was the intent in March 1941 is uncertain. Regardless, because of Passover, the ghetto remained quiet until after the week-long holiday. Afterwards, bricklayers began to construct the three-meter (9.8 feet) wall around the ghetto. They placed over the Podgórze Market Square entranceway a large blue Star of David. Below it was a phrase in Yiddish: Jüdischer wojnbecirk (Jewish Housing Estate). Two large blue lamps stood above this entranceway; the Germans had workers finish the walls near it with what appeared to be the tops of Jewish gravestones. The Germans also decreed that all signs and other public inscriptions in Polish had to be redone in Hebrew throughout the ghetto. The only exception was the Polish sign over the entranceway to Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s pharmacy, Pod Orłem.43
The three entrances into the ghetto were guarded by Polish police in navy blue uniforms. Though circumstances varied from ghetto to ghetto, particularly in the General Government, the Polish police had authority over the Jewish Security Police (OD; Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) in the ghetto. The main entrance into the Kraków ghetto was at Podgórze Square, where the Germans opened the offices of the Judenrat and the German police. A second gate was built at the southeast rear of the ghetto at ul. Limanowskiego. The Germans constructed a third gate at the northeast entrance to Plac Zgody just before you crossed the Vistula on what is today Most (Bridge) Powstańców Ślaskich. If you were a Jewish worker fortunate enough to have a Blauschein issued by the Labor Office (Ar-beitsamt), you could work outside the ghetto. You would leave for your job as a slave laborer through the Podgórze Square gate and return that evening through the one at Plac Zgody.44
The population in the ghetto changed frequently. Soon after the ghetto opened in the spring of 1941, the Germans shipped Jews there from surrounding villages. That fall, authorities deported 2,000 Jews without proper identification from the ghetto.The roundups and deportations were planned by the Germans and undertaken with the help of the OD. In anticipation of the Kraków ghetto, the Judenrat created the Jewish OD force in Kraków at German instigation on May 5, 1940; the agency was headed by a former glazier, Symcha Spira, who was recruited by the Ju-denrat. Tadeusz Pankiewicz said that before the war Spira was an Orthodox Jew who wore a full beard and a long black capote. By the time he became head of the OD, he was clean shaven and wore a tailored uniform bearing many official looking insignias. Schindlerjude Malvina Graf described Spira as an immoral person who had many lovers. He also had serious health problems. The Germans liked him because he carried out their orders quickly and efficiently.45
Though requirements varied from ghetto to ghetto, OD candidates had to have completed some military service, fit certain weight and height requirements, have an unblemished past, and be nominated by several individuals. The successful nominee would then have to be approved by the Ju-denrat. In Kraków and several other ghettos, the Germans had their favorite nominees, such as Spira, whose nominations could not be challenged. 46 The Kraków Jewish OD was divided into two sections, the Civil Division (Zivilabteilung) and the “uniformed” regular OD. Jewish members of the Civil Division wore neckties and blue coats and the regular OD wore coats buttoned to the neck. Members of both OD units wore armbands on their right sleeves with Ordnungsdienst in Hebrew. The Gestapo had direct contact with members of the Civil Division; members of the regular OD received their orders from the Judenrat. The responsibilities of the OD combined those of a normal civilian police force with those of prison guards. They also had the right to impose sentences traditionally handed out by courts. But what people most remember about the OD was their help during roundups and deportations. In time, the OD became the most despised symbol of the Nazi system throughout the ghetto. Many OD policemen fell prey to the rampant corruption that plagued German rule in the General Government, which only added to Jewish hatred of these units.47
The Jewish OD were only part of a complex network of Judenrat organizations and facilities created to deal with the complexities of life and society in the Kraków ghetto. Among the most important was the Jewish Self-Help Society (JSS, Jüdische Soziale Selbsthilfe; ¢ydowska Samopomoc Społeczna) at ul. Józefivka 18. The JSS, headed by Dr. Michał We-ichert, was created in the spring of 1940 at the instigation of the Joint, which was searching for a Jewish-run organization in German-occupied Poland to distribute welfare aid to Polish Jews. The Germans insisted, though, that the JSS become part of a Nazi-run Main Welfare Council (NRO; Naczelna Rada Opiekuncza) that also had Polish and Ukrainian delegates. The NRO first came under the jurisdiction of the Nazi Party’s National Socialist People’s Welfare agency (NSV; Nationalsozial-istische Volkswohlfahrt) and later Hans Frank’s Population and Welfare agency (BuF; Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge), created in April 1940. The Germans insisted that the German Red Cross, which was part of the NSV, act as the JSS liaison with the Joint. The JSS was a General Government- wide organization. Both the JSS and the Joint had offices in Warsaw and Kraków.48
Weichert, who longed for independence from JSS headquarters in Warsaw and the Kraków Judenrat, partially got his wish after Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, and closed the Joint office in Warsaw. Though Joint Warsaw continued to operate illegally, it lost control of its JSS offices elsewhere in the General Government. Undeterred, the ambitious Weichert continued to run the Kraków JSS office, now in the ghetto and later in Płaszów. Initially, Weichert tried to help Jews throughout the General Government, though when the SS took over all Jewish matters in the General Government on June 3, 1942, his efforts were increasingly limited to Kraków’s Jews. By this time, with an eye towards the closing of the ghettos in the General Government, the SS ordered the dissolution of the NRO. Weichert was permitted to take over a new organization, the Jewish Aid Center (JUS; Jüdische Unter-stützungsstelle), which was responsible for providing Jews in slave labor camps with whatever aid arrived for them from abroad. JUS continued to operate even after the the Kraków ghetto was closed in the spring of 1943, aided by at least one future Schindlerjude, Dr. Chaim Hilfstein. The SS finally shut down JUS in August 1943, though Weichert continued to work for the Polish relief organization, the Chief Aid Committee (Rada Głowna Opiekuncza). Weichert somehow managed to continue to send goods into the German slave labor camps. In early 1944, the Germans allowed him to reopen JUS; when the Germans closed it again in the summer of 1944, Weichert went into hiding. He survived the Holocaust, but many Jews, as well as the Polish courts, viewed him with suspicion. He was tried several times in Poland because of suspected collaboration with the Germans. He was found innocent on each occasion and ultimately migrated to Israel.49
One of the most fascinating aspects of Weichert’s efforts to help Jews in the General Government was his contact with Oskar Schindler. There is no direct evidence concerning their relationship; but as both men were deeply involved in efforts to help Jews in the ghetto and in Płaszów, Weichert and Schindler probably had some sort of working relationship, particularly after Schindler made his first trip to Budapest in 1943 to bring Jewish Agency funds back to Kraków. According to Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein, a Schindler Jew who wrote one of the most important books on the Jews of Kraków during the war, two of Weichert’s contacts in Kraków were Itzhak Stern and Mietek Pemper, two of Oskar Schindler’s closest Jewish associates during and after the war. Stern and Pemper, who worked in the office of Płaszów camp commandant Amon Göth, supplied Dr. Weichert with “secret documents and decrees,” which he turned over to the Polish underground. Dr. Bieberstein also says that Weichert supplied Schindler with his first shipment of medicines after he had moved part of his factory from Kraków to Brünnlitiz in the fall of 1944. Dr. Bieberstein was a prominent physician who headed the Hospital for Infectious Diseases in Kraków before the war and continued to serve in this position when the Germans moved it to the ghetto. Tadeusz Pankiewicz described Dr. Bieberstein as “an exceptional human being” who continued his hospital administrative work in Kraków after the war until his migration to Israel.50
There were three hospitals, an orphanage, and a post office in the Kraków ghetto, as well as a public bath complete with facilities for delousing and disinfecting. It is unclear, though, whether this also served as a mikvah (Jewish ritual bath). Sol Urbach said that he remembered the mikvah before the war because it was near the home of his relatives, who used it. However, he had no memory of the public bath in the Kraków ghetto; he said that while they lived in the ghetto, people found ways to maintain their own personal hygiene. He never was deloused or disinfected while in the ghetto and never had to carry an Entlausungsschein (delousing certificate), a document required elsewhere that certified the carrier had been deloused and disinfected.51
Religion and Jewish education flourished in the ghetto, though the latter was officially outlawed.52 There were three synagogues in the Kraków ghetto and Tadeusz Pankiewicz said that people continued to observe Shabbat and the Jewish holidays while living there. He said that their suffering was always evident on their faces during these times of worship. He often observed Orthodox men and women standing outside the makeshift synagogue near the rear of his pharmacy separately reciting their prayers on Shabbat. He added that the Kaddish, the prayers for the dead, were frequently recited in almost every Jewish ghetto home.53
Yet hints of normalcy in the Kraków ghetto were a façade. The threat of violence and death was constant. Stella Müller-Madej’s family lived in constant fear for their personal safety, particularly that of their children. Stella was eleven years old when the ghetto opened and her brother, Adam, was fifteen. Adam and his parents had to leave Stella alone every day to go to work. Stella’s parents instructed her to avoid the ghetto wall areas, strangers, and “quarrels with children.” The day-time hours were very lonely for the young girl; she recalled she “kick[ed] around the Ghetto streets as if [she] were in a bewitched world.” As the child of secular Jewish parents, she found the “little rabbis,” the Orthodox Jewish children with their hair locks and conservative dress, “especially irritating.” But what really frightened her was the random violence. On one occasion before the completion of the ghetto wall, a gang of Polish children began to pick on her. When a Polish worker helping to build the wall intervened, his colleague admonished him to “let the kids have fun with the little Jew.” He then said, “Hey, Sarah [the Germans by this time required all Jews to have a Jewish name, often Sarah for females, and to carry an Amtsbestätigung documenting such a change], here’s an apple for you.” Then he threw the apple in Stella’s face, bloodying her nose. Angry with his coworker, the kind Polish worker shouted, “You son of a bitch, I’ll show you! Aren’t they putting them through enough hell without us?” He then came over, wiped Stella’s face clean of blood, and warned her that it would be best if she did not return to the wall construction site “because something really bad might happen.” He then asked Stella’s name. Ashamed of the behavior of his coworker, he told Stella that his name was Antoni. In fact, he added, it would be okay if she came back to the construction site. If she did, he would bring her a toy.54
Though Stella’s parents forbade her to return to the wall construction site or to speak to Antoni, she did so surreptitiously. On one occasion, Antoni gave her a black puppy, whom Stella named Blackie. The puppy became Stella’s constant companion in the ghetto. In fact, though her parents had originally opposed her keeping him, they later agreed that Blackie was a good companion for Stella in these dangerous times. When the Germans had completed the ghetto walls, the atmosphere grew more deadly. Random acts of violence became more widespread and people no longer walked normally from place to place. In fear, they scurried about quickly to avoid being shot or beaten by Germans or Poles. The rumors of such mistreatment and death were often as frightening as the actual deeds. Stella constantly heard stories of German soldiers driving around in cars killing Jews “like birds on a roof,” or of children being tossed off a hill overlooking the ghetto by the “Blacks,” or the Baudinists (Baudienst), Poles drafted initially by the Germans for construction work and occasionally used to help the Germans with some of their Jewish roundups. But what most frightened Stella were the stories of Auschwitz she heard her father, who was now an OD man, whisper secretly to her mother.55
Yet it was not education, religion, or even the fear of indiscriminate violence that concerned most ghetto residents; it was work. A job and the precious Blauschein that came with it was the bridge to life for Kraków’s Jews. Her father, Zygmunt, had worked long hours in a quarry before he became an OD man. Adam was employed in a nail factory in the nearby Grzegózki district, and her mother, Tusia, ran the office of an Austrian German button factory on ul. Agnieszki near Kazimierz. The wife of the factory owner, Frau Holzinger, became friends with Tusia. She gave Stella’s mother extra food, which she smuggled back into the ghetto. According to Stella, none of the Germans who met Tusia in the Holzinger office believed she was a Jew. On one occasion, Mrs. Holzinger invited Tusia to a reception in her home. Tusia hesitated, but Mrs. Holzinger insisted and promised to drive her back to the ghetto when the party was over. Everything went well until Tusia’s Jewish armband fell out of her purse in front of some of the German guests. A few were members of the SS. Mrs. Holzinger tried to explain away the incident as a joke, but Tusia feared it would cost her her job. It did not.56
Some Jews worked outside the ghetto; others found employment in factories and other concerns within the ghetto’s walls. In an effort to bring some normalcy to life in the ghetto, several bakeries, dairies, and restaurants opened in the spring of 1941. One restaurant had a night club that featured the orchestra and two musicians who were made famous in Schindler’s List: violinist Henry Rosner and his brother, accordionist Leopold Rosner. The restaurant and bar were owned by Alexander Förster, who often entertained guests from the Gestapo there. Jews could provide the entertainment at such functions, but they could never be a part of them. With the exception of a few well-placed Jews such as Förster and Spira Symcha, few Jews could afford such luxuries or had the energy for them. Jews fortunate enough to have a job worked long, hard hours and usually came home exhausted, not only from the work but from the stress of living as forced laborers and prisoners of the Germans and their Polish collaborators.57
