Oskar Schindler, page 22
German labor policies for Jews varied throughout the General Government and changed as the Germans developed new confinement and death policies for them. In the summer of 1940, Dr. Max Frauendorfer, head of Hans Frank’s Labor Division (Hauptabteilung Arbeit), issued regulations that laid out general guidelines for the use and payment of Jewish workers in the General Government. The police were to deal with questions regarding Jewish labor, though in reality it was overseen by Frauendorfer’s labor offices throughout the General Government. Frauendorfer argued that it was necessary to use Jewish labor because so many Poles were being sent to Germany to work. He added that many Polish Jews were skilled laborers and were to be used as part of the normal labor pool throughout the General Government. Because the Jewish Councils had limited resources, Frauendorfer decreed that Jews used in the normal labor market were to be paid salaries equal to 80 percent of that paid Polish workers. These guidelines did not apply to Jews used as forced labor.58
Frauendorfer’s policies were totally ineffective. Polish and German businessmen were unwilling to pay Jews wages anywhere near Frauen-dorfer’s rates; if they were paid anything at all, it was usually in foodstuffs bought on the Aryan side. In all likelihood, the food given to Tusia Müller by Mrs. Holzinger was probably her salary. This situation worsened with the opening of the ghettos, which limited the ability of many Jews to continue to work openly in the free Polish or German side of the economy outside of the ghetto. This was particularly true after the Germans had begun to think seriously about the so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question in the fall of 1941. Their plan would involve closing most ghettos, though questions remained about the use of Jews in slave labor situations, particularly after the experiment with Soviet POW slave labor had failed.59
Various factories and businesses in the ghetto were owned by Poles and Germans, who used Polish and Jewish workers. One of the more famous was opened on the site of the former Optima Chocolate Factory on ul. Wgierska opposite the Jewish Orphanage, which was run by JSS. The factory, which was operated by the Zentrale für Handwerklieferun-gen, employed Jewish craftsmen who made shoes, furs, and clothing for the Germans.60
Julius Madritsch, Raimund Titsch, and Oskar Schindler
Another well-known factory in the ghetto was owned by a Viennese businessman, Julius Madritsch. He came to Kraków in the spring of 1940 to keep from being drafted into the Wehrmacht. Though he initially became a trustee for two Jewish confectionary stores, Hogo and Strassberg, at the end of 1940, Madritsch soon was able to open a sewing factory that employed Jewish and Polish workers. Early on, Madritsch gained a reputation similar to Schindler’s when it came to the treatment of his Jewish employees. Most of the Schindlerjuden I interviewed knew of Madritsch and said he had a reputation as a good man who treated his Jewish workers well. Mila Levinson-Page worked for Madritsch and said he was “wonderful to his Jews.” Helen Sternlicht Jonas Rosenweig, one of two Jewish maids who worked for Amon Göth in Płaszów, remembered Madritsch well. Unlike Oskar, she recalled, Julius Madritsch never ran around with women. And on one occasion, Julius brought Helen medicine for her ailing mother.61
The two men became friends. And when it came time for Marcel Goldberg to make up the famous “Schindler’s List” in the fall of 1944, Schindler told Goldberg to be sure to include Madritsch’s people. Several years after Oskar Schindler was nominated to be a Righteous Gentile, Julius Madritsch and his factory manager, Raimund Titsch, were declared Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem. If you stand at the site of Schindler’s carob tree at Yad Vashem, you can see Madritsch and Titsch’s trees on the Avenue of the Righteous. Yet after the war, the friendship between Schindler and Madritsch soured because of a dispute over the transfer of some of Madritsch’s Jews to Brünnlitz and related matters. Oskar, though, always remained fond of Titsch.62
But Titsch was more than just a good human being; he was also an excellent photographer who secretly took photographs of Amon Göth and the Płaszów forced labor camp after Madritsch moved his sewing factory there in 1943. It is Titsch who has provided us with pictures of the overweight, half-naked Göth; some show him armed for target practice, live Jews his targets; other show him standing with his vicious dogs, Rolf and Ralf. Titsch, who knew the photographs were deadly evidence, always kept them hidden, even after the war. According to Thomas Keneally, Titsch did not have them developed but instead hid them in a park in Vienna. Titsch learned after the war that he was listed as a traitor in the files of ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen; Organization of Former SS-Members), a secret SS network, and feared for his life. In 1963, Leopold Page bought the secret photographs from Titsch for $500, who was seriously ill with heart disease. Later, Page would donate the entire Titsch collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.63
Madritsch’s story, which is drawn from his brief memoirs, Menschen in Not! (People in Distress), is important for the details he gives us about the inner workings of the German administrative system in Kraków, particularly as it relates to helping Jews. What Schindler and Madritsch achieved was far too complex to have been done without the help of others. Madritsch’s story provides a deeper look into the complexities of life and business for factory owners like himself and Oskar Schindler. Yet Madritsch’s account of his years in Kraków also provides us with a deeper look into the world of Oskar Schindler. Until the last year of the war, Schindler and Madritsch seemed quite close. Schindler even asked Madritsch to move his sewing factory to Brünnlitz. Madritsch’s account of his failed efforts to gain permission for the move, his attempts to put some of his Jews on Goldberg’s “Schindler’s List,” and his donation of fabric to Schindler adds depth to the Schindler story.64
Madritsch wrote in his memoirs that he sought to avoid the draft not because he was a shirker, but to avoid serving as an involuntary mercenary for the “‘new apostles’ [the Nazis], who had already forced on [his] homeland the blessings of the Thousand Year Reich.” There is no doubt that Schindler and Madritsch were drawn together by their common Austrian heritage. The key to success for a German businessman in the General Government was well-placed contacts and Madritsch, like Schindler, had many. He got his start in business through a friend, Fritsch, who managed the Stafa department store in Kraków. Fritsch in turn introduced Madritsch to Dr. Adolf Lenhardt, a Viennese economic specialist with the General Government. Lenhardt helped Madritsch find a position as a textile specialist with the Textile Trade Association in Kraków (Textilfachmann zur Textilhandelsges m. b. H., Krakau) and later managed Madritsch’s second sewing factory in Tarnow. At the same time, Madritsch became trustee for the two confectionery businesses.65
Madritsch was even-handed in his dealings with his Polish and Jewish workers, who gave him insight “into the methods that the German civil administration and the SS and police chiefs were using.” Soon after he got into the confectionery business, Madritsch learned that he could make a great deal more money manufacturing textiles. When word spread among the Jewish community that Madritsch was considering opening a textile factory, representatives of the Judenrat approached him about the prospect of hiring Jewish specialists. Madritsch’s greatest difficulties with German authorities came after the opening of the Kraków ghetto. He had to intervene constantly with the SS, the police, and the Labor Office to obtain work permits for his Jewish workers. An Austrian countryman, Major Ragger, frequently intervened for Madritsch with the SS and the police. But he had more trouble with the Labor Office, which insisted that he hire Poles instead of Jews. General Government labor officials charged that Madritsch was “a saboteur of the Jewish transfer [into the ghetto] and could encounter difficulties with the Gestapo.” Evidently, this did not deter Madritsch, who was able to hire an increasing number of Jewish workers because they were “important to the war effort.”66
In the midst of the opening of the Kraków ghetto in the spring of 1941, Madritsch was finally drafted into the Wehrmacht. From April 1941 until November 1942, he had to turn over the trusteeship of his factory to Heinz Bayer. He had been quite concerned about who would take over his half completed sewing factory because the previous trustee, Lukas, an SA (Sturmabteilung, Storm Division; Storm Troopers) Führer, had initiated a reign of terror over the workers. Raimund Titsch, Madritsch’s “collaborator,” continued to run the factory and kept Madritsch, who was stationed in Vienna, informed about developments there and in Kraków. Titsch kept a detailed account of all the firm’s business affairs in a personal diary. Before Bayer assumed management, he met with Madritsch in Vienna, where they decided to set up a new business; they would use Madritsch’s special business certificate, which gave him the right to operate a factory that produced goods for the military and allowed him to use Jewish workers. But like Schindler, Madritsch also relied on several Jewish workers, such as Naftali Hudes and Mr. Karp, for advice on setting up his new factory.67
All of this took place in the spring and summer of 1942 when the SS was opening its death camps for Jews throughout occupied Poland and struggling with the Wehrmacht over control of Jewish workers. Heinz Bayer began to suffer from eye problems and stress caused by “the relentless persecution of the Jews.” Over time, Bayer became unfit for work; in August 1942, he resigned his position with Madritsch’s firm and returned to Vienna. Fortunately, the Wehrmacht gave Madritsch several long leaves to return to Kraków and in August 1942 allowed him to return to Kraków permanently. Madritsch was finally released from military service later that year. He said that if his superiors in Vienna had not allowed this, “everything [in Kraków] would have collapsed.” Madritsch added that Wehrmacht did not think much of his soldiery skills because his superiors “took only little delight in [his] ‘professional’ performance.”68 But would this completely explain their decision to grant him such extensive leaves to return to his businesses in Kraków? Probably not. Given the struggle that was taking place between the Armaments Inspectorate and the SS over Jewish labor in 1942, it is quite possible the Wehrmacht concluded that Julius Madritsch was more valuable to them running a military-related factory in the General Government than manning a desk in Vienna.69
The Controversy over Jewish Labor and the Final Solution
Madritsch returned to Kraków just as German policies towards Poland’s Jews were undergoing a dramatic, deadly change. When the Nazi leadership had set in motion plans for the mass murder of Europe’s Jews, they struggled for months with the role of Jewish labor vis-à-vis the goals of the Final Solution. As the death camps began to open throughout occupied Poland, the idea was to send able-bodied Jews to concentration camps as slave laborers and Jews incapable of work to the death camps. Yet even here there was controversy because of conflicting Nazi racial and economic goals. Though Nazi racial goals initially took precedence over economic ones when it came to the Final Solution, Germany’s desperate manpower needs forced Reich leaders to rethink this issue, particularly after the failed experiment using Soviet POWs as slave laborers. By early 1942, the SS began to shift to a policy of destruction through labor. According to Christopher Browning, this meant that “Jews capable of labor were to work productively and die in the process.”70
In the General Government, though, where Jews had come to play an important role in the industrial labor force, such a policy was counterproductive. This conflict came up during the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on January 20, 1942. Delayed because of the outbreak of war between Germany and the United States, Reinhard Heydrich called the meeting in hopes of obtaining “clarity on questions of principle” regarding the Final Solution from the prominent representatives of various ministries in the government and the Nazi Party who attended the conference. Dr. Josef Bühler, Hans Frank’s state secretary (Der Staatssekretär in der Regierung des Generalgouvernements) stated that he wanted to put it on
record that the Government-General would welcome it if the final solution [Endlösung] of this problem [Jewish labor not essential to the war effort] was begun in the Government-General, as, on the one hand, the question of transport there played no major role and considerations of labor supply would not hinder the course of this Aktion. Jews must be removed as fast as possible from the Government-General, because it was there in particular that the Jew as carrier of epidemics spelled a greater danger, and, at the same time, he caused constant disorder in the economic structure of the country by his continuous black market dealings. Furthermore, of the approximately 2.5 million Jews under consideration, the majority were in any case unfit for work.71
Bühler ended his remarks with a request that “the Jewish question in this area be solved as quickly as possible.”72 But the idea of concentrating those Jews essential to the German war effort in slave labor camps also concerned Bühler, who feared the camps would “destroy the existing organizational forms within which Jews were working and damage their ‘multifaceted use.’”73
The Wehrmacht, particularly the Armaments Inspectorate (Wi Rü Amt) under General Georg Thomas, was also fearful of such disruptions. Initially, the Armaments Inspectorate had opposed the use of Jewish labor for security reasons; but by the spring of 1942, the Armaments Inspectorate, working with the SS, used Jewish labor in an aircraft factory in Mielec. The idea was that Jewish workers would replace Poles and Ukrainians sent to the Reich as forced laborers. The Wehrmacht then began to experiment with the use of Jewish labor elsewhere in the General Government. General Maximillian Schindler, the head of the Armaments Inspectorate in the General Government, was so pleased with this experiment that in May 1942 he proposed the employment of 100,000 Jewish workers, which would release a similar number of Poles and Ukrainians for work in the Reich. The following month, General Schindler proposed moving all shoe and clothing factories from the Greater Reich to the General Government, where he would run them using Jewish laborers. In early July, General Schindler and Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, the HSSPF in the General Government, worked out an agreement whereby Jews working in the armaments industry would be housed in factory barracks or in SS-run slave labor camps.74
Hans Frank initially supported the idea of keeping some Jews to use as slave laborers in the General Government. He also seemed to support the pleas of some German officials that more food was needed to keep the “work Jews” fit for hard labor. But by the summer of 1942, with the war against the Soviet Union entering its second year, concerns over the use of Jewish labor in war production gave way to worries about a serious food shortage in the Third Reich. This fear played into the hands of Heinrich Himmler, who on July 19, 1942, announced that the General Government must be cleared of all Jews by the end of the year. The only exceptions were Jews in forced labor camps in Warsaw, Kraków, Czstochowa, Radom, and Lublin. All firms employing Jews were to be closed or transferred into these forced labor camps. Exceptions had to be approved personally by Himmler. The Reichsführer-SS added that these moves “were necessary for the new order in Europe as well as for the ‘security and cleanliness’ of the German Reich and its spheres of interest.” Himmler added that violations of his decree “would endanger peace and order and would create in Europe ‘the germ of a resistance movement and a moral and physical center of pestilence.’”75
Two days before the issuance of Himmler’s deportation decree, Krüger informed General Schindler of the termination of all deals between the SS and the Armaments Inspectorate dealing with Jewish labor. Krüger also told General Schindler of the new plan to house all Jewish workers essential to the war effort in newly constructed concentration camps. Because Himmler’s overall plan involved the closing of ghettos throughout the General Government, Krüger promised Schindler that this would be done “in agreement with the Armaments Inspectorate.”76
What General Schindler quickly discovered, though, was that Himm-ler’s massive Jewish deportation scheme was seriously affecting military production. Efforts were made to persuade the SS to take actions against Jews only after it discussed the matter with the Armaments Inspectorate. The Armaments Inspectorate also reminded the SS that with the shipment of so many Poles to the Reich, “Jews [were] the sole available labor manpower.” The problem was that the only factories covered by this agreement were linked to the defense contract plants (Rüstungsbetriebe), armaments factories that had direct contracts with the Armaments Inspectorate. The accord did not cover businesses involved in the production of armaments for firms in the Greater Reich or for the office of the military commander in the General Government.77
The Wehrmacht briefly tried to take a stand against Himmler. On August 15, 1942, a meeting was held in Kraków between representatives of the Armaments Inspectorate in the General Government and Krüger’s office. Members of the Armaments Inspectorate were told that the plan to use Jewish labor to replace Polish labor was null and void. They were also reminded of Hermann Göring’s recent statement:
We must get away from the notion that the Jew is indispensable. Neither Armaments Inspection nor the other agencies in the Generalgouvernement are willing [would retain] the Jews until the end of the war. The orders that have been issued are clear and hard. They are valid not only for the Generalgouvernement, but for all occupied territories. The reasons for them must be extraordinary.78
