Oskar Schindler, page 24
Madritsch goes on to mention four more mid-level German bureaucrats (Graßnickel, Stoffregen, Reddig, and Schneewind) from the trade association in Kraków who “helped . . . turn out production numbers according to the full number of laborers, even though [Madritsch] had at most 40 percent specialized workers.” Madritsch never says whether these officials helped out from the goodness of their hearts or because he bribed them. But regardless of their motives, these officials were able to rewrite reports that made it seem that 40 percent of Madritsch’s Jewish workforce was doing the work of “100 percent Jewish expert workers.” But his trade association friends did more than pad numbers: They made sure that Madritsch received orders that were easy to produce and used a minimal amount of cloth to insure greater profits.100
Like Schindler, Madritsch had to reward German officials and others with extensive bribes and gifts to insure their support. Over time, Madritsch found that doing business in the General Government became more and more expensive. He attributed part of this to the dramatic rise in the cost of living for civil servants in the General Government. Though many Reich officials initially left their families behind in the Reich, they often brought their families to Poland later to cut expenses. Consequently, Madritsch found these officials seemed “less reluctant” to accept bribes from businessmen such as Madritsch and Schindler. Yet an increase in the cost of living was not the only reason that some Germans accepted bribes. Some were simply greedy and corrupt. Regardless of the motivation, how did Madritsch acquire the extra funds for the bribes? He did it by efficiently cutting the cloth he had for uniform production and then having “his people” sell it on the black market. He used the extra funds to bribe German and Polish officials for extra pay or food for his workers.101
Though Madritsch never talked about the amount of money he made in Kraków and Tarnow, he did mention the amount of money he had to pay the SS for “subsistence” and for food subsidies. At the peak of his operations in 1943–1944, he was paying the SS Zł 350,000 ($109,375) a month for subsistence and spent Zł 250,000 ($78,125) a month for extra food for his workers. This seems like an incredible amount, but it was not out of line with the amounts paid by Oskar Schindler to the SS or spent for extra food during the same period, though Schindler’s figures seem lower than Madritsch’s estimates. It is possible that both men exaggerated the amounts they spent during the war to help Jews, but for different reasons. Moreover, Schindler, unlike Madritsch, does not discuss total monthly subsistence payments to the SS. Oskar wrote his principal financial report just after the war ended with the idea of getting compensation first from Jewish organizations and later from the West German government. Madritsch wrote Menschen in Not! in 1962 after his name came up as a possible Righteous Gentile candidate in Israel.102
The introduction to Menschen in Not! was written by Dr. Dawid Schlang, a professor at the University of Vienna and the general secretary of the Zionist Association in Austria. Dr. Schlang wrote, “We can consider him [Madritsch] with pure conscience as a member of the tiny and hidden Zadilkei [Tzaddik] Umoth Haolam [thirty-six righteous of the different peoples on whom the world rests],” a reference to the Talmudic legend of the Thirty-Six Tzaddikim, or righteous persons. The term Tzaddik is used in the Jewish scriptures to describe, among others, Noah, and refers to a person of great moral character who by his lifestyle inspired others to follow a similar path of faith and piety. The Talmudic legend says that no one except G-d knows the identity of the Tzaddikim, though the existence of the world depends on their unselfish lives and work.103
The evolving labor policies in the General Government, particularly as they related to Jews, created problems as well as opportunities for Oskar Schindler and Julius Madritsch. With the onset of the Final Solution, it became more and more difficult to hire and keep skilled Jewish laborers. On the other hand, the Third Reich’s growing labor shortages also created opportunities for German factory owners who were already accustomed to dealing with the General Government’s complex and corrupt black market. They discovered that well-placed bribes could get them almost anything, even Jewish workers. The skill of Germans such as Schindler and Madritsch was inherent in their balancing of personal concern for the well-being of their Jewish slave laborers with the broader Nazi demand for the elimination, through mass murder or forced labor, of all Jews from the face of Europe. During the latter years of the war, both German factory owners found a way to weave their way through the complex racial and economic worlds of the General Government, though, in the end, it was Oskar Schindler who did the most to save his Jewish workers.
5.
ORIGINS OF THE SCHINDLER MYTH
DURING HIS TIME IN KRAKÓW, OSKAR SCHINDLER BECAME AN incredibly successful businessman, in part because of the genius of Abraham Bankier. But Oskar’s success was shadowed by the growing horror of the German occupation of Kraków and the desperate lives of the Jewish workers with whom he came in contact every day. From 1941 to 1943, they suffered from the threat of deportation to the growing collection of death camps such as nearby Auschwitz, which was the principal killing center of the Final Solution. Oskar’s principal Kraków factory, Emalia, was only a few blocks from the ghetto, and he was able to observe firsthand the horrors and degradation of ghetto life. He responded by treating his Jewish workers with kindness and dignity, which in turn attracted the glare of the Gestapo.
Yet how successful was Oskar Schindler as a businessman in Kraków from 1939 to 1944? According to the detailed financial statement that he prepared immediately after the war in Konstanz, Germany, at the insistence of one of his Schindlerjude, Rabbi Menachem Levertov, Oskar estimated that the revenue from his kitchenware products at Emalia was about RM 15 million ($6 million) and another RM 0.5 million ($200,000) from Emalia’s modest armaments production facility. In a document filed with German authorities from Buenos Aires in 1954, Oskar broke down his annual revenues for enamelware sales from 1940 through 1944. He said that he sold Zł 2.2 million ($687,500) in enamelware in 1940, Zł 2.6 million ($812,500) in 1941, Zł 3 million ($937,600) in 1942, Zł 3.5 million ($1,093,750) in 1943, and Zł 2.6 million ($812,500) in 1944, his last year of production in Emalia. These figures, which Oskar submitted in 1954, are considerably smaller than the figures that he put into his 1945 financial report, which he admitted he had created “out of my memory, without documents or files.”1
One document in Oskar’s Lastenausgleich file provides a more in-depth look at Emalia’s financial affairs. The firm’s 1943 year-end report, completed on May 15, 1944, and signed by Schindler himself, showed that Emalia had a year-end balance of Zł 7,601,054.98 ($2,375,329.60) and net proceeds of Zł 6,744,532.25 ($2,107,666.30). Oskar had undertaken an ambitious expansion program when he took over Emalia in 1939 and it showed up on his ledgers. By the end of 1943, Schindler was heavily in debt. He owed various banks, creditors, and other lenders Zł 3,849,411.11 ($1,202,940.90). He also had other debts totaling almost Zł 1.5 million ($468,750). A good portion of this was simply listed as part of his “Privatkonto” (private account). He also had other obligations, including debts to the “SS u. Polizeiführer” (Zł 118,360; $36,987.50) and the SS-run “Judenfonds” (Zł 35,832.61; $11,558.93). These were payments owed the SS for Jewish labor and support for 1943. 2
It is difficult to get a clear picture of Emalia’s revenues, debts and other expenses because most records for its operations no longer exist. Moreover, Emalia, like all other businesses in the General Government, operated under two sets of books. Those used for Emalia’s 1943 report were the “legal” books; another set existed for the black market economy, the principal source of revenue for Schindler. These “legal” books do tell that Schindler bore tremendous costs and obligations. Some of these are listed in his 1943 report, but because this file is incomplete, there is nothing to indicate the salaries he paid his Polish workers. He used Polish laborers almost exclusively to produce his enamelware and Jewish workers in Emalia’s armaments shop. This meant that Polish workers were far more valuable to Oskar than his Jewish workers. He used his profits from the production of enamelware to pay the RM 2.64 million ($1,056,000) and “the Jews of [his] factory, in order to secure their survival and to ease their painful fate.”3
It is also hard to determine how much Schindler spent on his Polish workers. Remember that he continued to operate his Emalia factory exclusively with 650 Polish workers until the Soviets occupied Kraków in January 1945. At his peak of operations in 1944, Oskar employed from 700 to 750 Polish workers at Emalia. He used another 350 Polish workers at his Proksziner vodka bottle plant across the street from Emalia until it closed in 1943. We have no record of what Schindler paid his Polish workers because there were two wage scales for Polish workers in the General Government. Official wage scales were frozen at prewar levels of Zł 200 to Zł 300 ($62.50 to $93.75) a month, though unofficial wages, which were the ones probably paid by Schindler, ranged from Zł 8 to Zł 35 ($2.50 to $10.94) an hour. It took Schindler three months to get Emalia up and running after he acquired it in November 1939. He initially employed seven Jews and 250 Poles, though he increased the size of both work forces substantially over the next few years.4
Given the importance of his Polish workers to his initial financial success, it should come as no surprise that some of his harshest conflicts with General Government officialdom at first concerned his Polish workers. He told Fritz Lang, for example, that he constantly complained about the lack of adequate food and consumer goods for his Polish workers. He wrote detailed letters of complaint to SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Koppe, who replaced Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger as the HSSPF (Höhreren SS- und Polizeiführer; Higher SS and Police Leader) for the General Government in 1943. According to Oskar, he complained about the growing “superman” syndrome among the General Government’s bureaucrats; they “would soon ruin the economy” with regulations that would “murder the cow they intend to milk.” Koppe later told Oskar that he would not tolerate continued “crass criticism of his agents and their actions,” and the only thing that kept him from putting Oskar in a concentration camp were his “well-known positive contributions to the economy.”5
Evidently such a warning did little to deter Schindler, who continued to protest labor conditions for his Polish workers and the deportation of Polish workers to the Reich. He also helped some of his “Aryan” Polish workers or their friends obtain their freedom from detention or POW camps, helped stop their deportation to Germany as forced laborers, and was even able to persuade German authorities to return some of their apartments. Oskar thought he was protected not only by his own fearlessness and impudence but also by his expertise, which had helped get him elected head of the sheet metal processing industries organization (Fachgruppe Blechverarbeitenden Industrien).6
In many ways, it would seem foolish openly to criticize the SS, particularly as the Gestapo arrested him three times during the war for bribery and “fraternization” with Poles and Jews. His last arrest in 1944 was the most serious because it involved substantiated charges that Oskar had bribed “the SS leader with a sum that exceeded two hundred thousand słoty [sic].” In his 1945 financial statement, Oskar said that he spent about Zł 550,000 ($171,875) bribing SS officials such as Göth, SS-Oberführer Julian Scherner, the HSSPF in the Kraków District, SS-Obersturmführer Rolf Czurda of the SD, and SS-Untersturmführer Leonhard John, the deputy commandant of the Płaszów camp. Göth received about half the Zł 550,000 ($171,875), so it is quite possible that Scherner, as Kraków’s HSSPF, was the unnamed “SS leader” who took in excess of Zł 200,000 ($62,500) in bribes from Oskar.7
Yet Oskar seemed fearless when it came to confronting Koppe or Krüger about matters that affected the financial well-being of his factories. This is probably why he got away with it. He evidently knew his boundaries when he wrote his letters of protest, and he likely wrote them in the context of worrying about policies that hurt the economy and thus the war effort. And there is probably a good chance that Koppe and Krüger both received bribes from Schindler. Though he never mentions Koppe or Krüger by name, Oskar does say that in addition to the Zł 550,000 he spent to bribe Göth and others, he also spent “several hundred thousand Zł [złotys]” for “‘smaller’ presents and countless compensations, which were demanded by SS-officials in exchange for small favors.” For these small favors he gave out watches, cameras, saddles, boots, and shoes, though in three instances he gave SS officials a BMW sports car, an Adler limousine, and a Mercedes Benz convertible. It is doubtful that the cars went to lower-level SS officials.8
Emalia
Oskar Schindler operated Emalia (Deutsche Emailwarenfabrick Oskar Schindler) from November 1939 until January 1945. Oskar made few references to the running and production of the factory after the war except in the context of his various claims for compensation. But one can piece together something about the nature of the factory and its complex from these claims as well as in documents and factory plans found in the Lasten-ausgleich archives in Bayreuth, the famed Schindler Koffer (suitcase files) at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. There is also documentation on Emalia in Polish court records in the Archiwum Pavstwowe in Kraków and the Schindler files in the archives of the Joint in New York. Though there are still parts of Emalia on its old site on ul. Lipowa 4 in Kraków, not much of the old factory remains except for the storied front gate and upstairs office complex. The original factory smokestack was taken down in the late 1990s and many of Emalia’s buildings were torn down and replaced by newer structures after World War II.
When Oskar acquired the lease on the bankrupt Jewish factory, Rekord, Ltd., on November 14, 1939, two buildings stood on the site: the factory itself, which included a separate 45-meter-high brick smokestack, and a warehouse. The original complex, all built in 1935, fronted ul. Lipowa. During the next four years, Schindler enlarged his factory. In 1940, he built a pay office and a medical-dental outpatient clinic, a canteen and workers’ eating room, and a joint garage-stable. In 1941 and 1942, he erected a large building for stamping and pressing and for storing sheet metal and tools. In 1942, Oskar added the office complex with its gated factory entranceway and glass-enclosed staircase. This complex is about all that remains of the original Schindler factory. The new administration building included Emalia’s central office, a small guard and porter room just inside the gate, the central telephone office, the factory co-op, a chemical storage room, a showroom, a new pay office, the employees’ kitchen and dining room, the director’s office, a conference room, and an apartment for Oskar.9
In 1942 and 1943, Schindler added a building for two new low-pressure boilers. During this time he also signed a contract with Siemens Bauunion G.m.b.H. to begin constructing a large hangar-style stamping facility. Siemens began work on the facility in the fall of 1943 and completed it the following summer at a cost of Zł 248,071 ($77,522).10 As the tide of war changed, Schindler became more concerned about protecting his considerable investment. In 1949, he prepared a report as part of his ongoing efforts to obtain compensation for his lost factories and personal wealth. He based the estimates in this report on another document he completed on May 6, 1945, just two days before he fled Brünnlitz to avoid capture by the Red Army. He estimated the value of Emalia at DM 1,910,000 ($573,573.57).11
On July 10, 1943, he took out two insurance policies with Die Versicherungs-Gesellschaft “Silesia” A.G. for Zł 4,110,000 ($1,284,375) to protect his factory from “Brand, Blitzschlag und Explosion” (fire, lightning, and explosion). One policy ran from June 7, 1943, to the same date in 1950; the second provided coverage from 1943 to 1953. His annual premium for both policies was Zł 16,113.60 ($5,035.50). On February 11, 1944, Schindler increased his coverage on both policies to Zł 5,137,500 ($1,605,469). However, reflecting the uncertainty of the times, the premiums, Zł 2,167.49 ($677.31), covered only from January 15, 1944 to June 7, 1944. 12
Oskar’s building program intensified after he formally bought Emalia in 1942. And this was no easy task, given the nature of the German bureaucracy. Emalia was the property of the Polish regional trade court in Kraków. Schindler, who initially leased the factory in November 1939, worked with the court’s legal representatives, first Dr. Roland Goryczko and later Dr. Bolesław Zawisza. As part of his original lease deal, Oskar bought the former Rekord, Ltd.’s original equipment in early 1940 for Zł 28,000 ($8,750) and paid the court a quarterly rent of Zł 2,400 ($750).13
At first, Oskar seemed satisfied with his lease agreement, though when he began to enjoy considerable profits from his investment he became interested in owning Emalia outright. Oskar had cleverly leased Emalia from the Polish trade court just two months before a law requiring the compulsory seizure of Jewish property went into effect. Consequently, Oskar, but more precisely, the court’s legal representative, then Dr. Goryczko, could argue that because Rekord, Ltd., once a Jewish business, had gone bankrupt in the summer of 1939 and was now being leased by a German, it could never legally fall under the requirements of the January 15, 1940, compulsory Jewish property seizure law.14
Oskar signed a new lease with the Polish trade court on January 31, 1942, but within a few months moved to buy Emalia outright. This was to be done at a public auction, which was announced first for April 21, 1942, but was delayed until June 26, 1942. The reason for the change in date was to insure that all appropriate documents were in place indicating that the factory was not eligible for seizure as a Jewish factory by the Trustee Office. Fortunately, Dr. Zawisza, now the Polish trade court’s Emalia representative, had already recommended to the court that Oskar be allowed to buy the property. This meant securing statements from Nathan Wurzel that he was not the former owner of the factory and had no claims against it. Once Zawisza secured these statements, the auction could go forward. Everything was prearranged, obviously with the help of some well-placed bribes, and Oskar Schindler bought Emalia from the Polish trade court for Zł 254,674.66 ($79,585.83) in cash on September 16, 1942. Given that he insured Emalia for over Zł 4 million ($1.25 million) the following year, the purchase would seem like quite a bargain. But remember that by the time that Oskar bought the factory outright in 1942, he had already invested heavily in new equipment and buildings. The funds from the sale of the former Rekord, Ltd. to Oskar Schindler were deposited into a bank in Kraków. Rekord, Ltd.’s creditors could then apply to the court for payment of the company’s debts.15
