Oskar Schindler, page 26
What followed for those Jews gathered at Plac Zgody was a slow, brutal march to the Kraków-Płaszów rail station. The Germans kicked and beat them along the way and shot those who were too slow or feeble to make the two-mile march in the summer heat. According to Tadeusz Pankiewicz, their route was covered with dead bodies and blood. Because the march took place in broad daylight and followed ul. Wielicka, the only road to Płaszów, it was difficult to hide the tragedy that was unfolding along this long boulevard. When the new group of Jewish deportees reached the rail station, they were sent to Bełżec, where the Germans murdered them.32
Two days later, the Germans ordered all Jews remaining in the ghetto to report to the offices of the JSS on Józefińska 18 to receive a new identity card, the Blauschein. The Gestapo oversaw the process and decided who would receive the new work card. Their decisions were arbitrary and had nothing to do with the recipients’ skills. The only thing that seemed to affect the Gestapo’s decisions were bribes funneled through Jewish cohorts such as Aleksander Förster and Symche Spira, or efforts by German factory owners to protect their skilled Jewish workers.33
Jews who did not receive the Blauschein were then taken to the grounds of the Optima factory two blocks away. The Germans followed this up with a new decree that stated that anyone caught without a Blauschein would be shot on the spot. On the morning of June 8, the Germans began to march all the Jews at the Optima factory grounds to the Prokocim rail station two miles north of the Płaszów depot. Like Płaszów, the Prokocim station was then in a remote suburb of Kraków, which helped the Germans keep the deportation out of full public scrutiny. When the Kraków Jews got to the trains, they found other Jews from nearby towns already on board. The Gestapo took about thirty younger Jews off of the train cars before it left for Bełżec. These Jews were sent to the just-opened Julag I slave labor camp in nearby Płaszów.34
All total, the Germans shipped 7,000 Jews to Bełżec from June 2 to 8, 1942. Though operational only since March 17, 1942, about 80,000 Jews had already been murdered at Bełżec by the time Kraków’s Jews arrived there in June. Ultimately, about 600,000 Jews, over a quarter of them from the Kraków region, would die at Bełżec before it closed at the end of 1942. 35
What impact did these deportations have on Oskar Schindler? For one thing, he was able to save Abraham Bankier and thirteen of his other Jewish workers from certain death on June 8. This event is depicted in one of the most poignant scenes in Schindler’s List, though Spielberg chose to have Liam Neeson save Itzhak Stern, the composite film character played by Ben Kingsley, instead of Bankier. Thomas Keneally more accurately portrayed this scene as well as the full horror of the June 1942 deportations. Basing his portrayal on Schindler’s account of these events, Keneally seems to have expanded greatly Schindler’s comments about what actually took place. According to Keneally, Bankier told Schindler that he and the other Schindlerjuden had forgotten to pick up their new Blauscheine from the Gestapo.36 One did not “pick up” the Blauschein from the Gestapo. You stood in line and hoped you would get one. The only thing that helped one receive a Blauschein was bribery, close ties with the Jewish OD’s leadership, or intervention by a German factory owner. And it is hard to imagine that Oskar did not intervene to insure that Bankier got the Blauschein from the Gestapo.
So what really happened? Here is Oskar’s account:
In Cracow a Mrs. E. [Edith] Kerner [one of Oskar’s secretaries] called me one morning with the news that some of my Jewish workers had been arbitrarily added to an extermination transport, which went from the Cracow ghetto to the Prococym train depot, in order to be shipped east. Four hours later I regained my fourteen men from the already closed-up cattle wagons at the Prococym depot (among them A. Bankier, Reich, Leser) despite weak protests by the accompanying SS guards that the number was not right.37
This was all Oskar ever said about the incident. The key to what probably happened centers around one word in Oskar’s statement: arbitrary. There was no science to the last roundup in the Kraków ghetto in the summer of 1942. It is quite possible that Bankier and the other Schindler-juden were picked up by the Germans even though they had the Blauschein. Given Oskar’s earlier problems with the Gestapo, it is possible that the Gestapo picked up Bankier and the other Schindler Jews as a warning to Schindler. It is also possible that Oskar was out of town at the time because he traveled frequently. However, given the severity of the Germans moves into the ghetto, his staff would have gotten in touch with him and warned him of the problems some of his Jewish workers were facing. Whatever prompted the attempted deportation of Schindler’s fourteen Jewish workers, his dramatic intervention at the Prokocim train station on June 8 saved them from certain death.
But Oskar also tried to save the son and brother of two of his Jewish workers when he arrived at the Prokocim railway station on that hot June day in 1942. According to Leon Leyson (Leib Lejzon), a retired educator who lives in Fullerton, California, Oskar spotted one of Leon’s older brothers, Tsalig (Betsalil), in one of the train cars. Leon’s father, Moshe, and another of Leon’s brothers, David, worked at Emalia. Though Tsalig did not work for Oskar, the German factory owner knew who he was and had seen him at Emalia with Moshe. Oskar offered to take Tsalig off of the train with Bankier and his other Jewish workers. Tsalig, though, refused because he wanted to stay with his girlfriend. This loving gesture cost Tsalig Leyson his life.38
Almost losing the irreplaceable Abraham Bankier to the Gestapo must have had a tremendous impact on Oskar. But even if Oskar was involved in saving some of his Jews, what impact did the June 1942 deportations have on his decision to commit his resources totally to this effort? It is hard to say. Oskar had seen war and death in 1938, and he probably saw some anti-Jewish and anti-Polish atrocities in the fall of 1939. But by 1942, such horrors touched him in a more personal way. Initially, though, he probably thought like most Jews that the deportees were being sent to the rumored barrack camps. He had already been involved in trying to help some of his Polish workers from being sent to Germany as forced laborers, so it is quite possible that he believed the rumors about the Jewish barrack towns. In time, though, new stories crept back into Kraków that told not of barrack towns, but of death camps. They were told by a Kraków dentist, Dr. Brachner, who had escaped when one of the transports arrived in Bełżec and hid in a latrine filled with human excrement for several days. One night, he slowly made his way back to the Kraków ghetto. Dr. Brachner told anyone who would listen of the horrors of Bełżec and its three (later six) carbon monoxide-fed gas chambers.39
Several months later, Pankiewicz received a letter from a woman who had fled the ghetto on the eve of the October 1942 Aktion. Her escape route took her to Bełżec, where she saw first-hand the horrors taking place there. When the trains arrived, she noted, the Germans occasionally kept cars on sidings until they were ready to murder the Jews on them. The cars were carefully guarded by Germans, and the Jews were given no water or food. When it was time for them to be gassed, German guards took the Jews still alive off the train cars and forced them to undress. They were then sent to the gas chambers. Afterwards, their bodies were cremated. The letter ended with an appeal to anyone reading it to spread the word about what was really happening to the Jews at Bełżec and not to believe German lies about the fate of Jews on any future transport to this particular death camp.40
Months before Pankiewicz read this letter, the Germans had unsealed the ghetto, but had also reduced its size. The northeastern part of the ghetto running from Podgórski Square between ul. Limanowskiego and ul. Rkawaka was now returned to Polish-German control. The Germans ordered that the walls in this portion of the old ghetto be torn down and barbed wire erected along the new boundaries. The ghetto was no longer as well-hidden from the Aryan side as it had once been. But the reduction in the size of the ghetto made it much more difficult to see into the ghetto from Lasota Hill, the highest point above Podgórze. In Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, this was the point where Oskar Schindler and his mistress, Eva Schauer (“Ingrid”), supposedly saw Amon Göth’s brutal closing of the Kraków ghetto on March 13 and 14, 1943. The eastern boundary of the ghetto, which was just on the other side of Rekawa Street, had been deliberately kept away from the foot of Lasota Hill when it first opened because it would have been easy to see into the streets of the ghetto. With the constriction of the ghetto in June 1942, it was even more difficult to see into the ghetto. Though one could probably have seen some things from Lasota Hill with binoculars, the view would have been severely restricted by the buildings outside and within the ghetto. More than likely, the story about Oskar and Eva (“Ingrid”) is apocryphal. But, even more important, Oskar had already seen enough brutality before the closing of the ghetto to convince him to commit himself and his resources to helping save Jewish lives.41
The October 28, 1942, Aktion in the Kraków Ghetto
Two other things happened in 1942 that helped push Oskar along this path: more deportations from the ghetto in October 1942 and a visit from Abwehr friends interested in recruiting him in their efforts to help and save Jews. The gradual reduction in the size of the Kraków ghetto came in the midst of the greatest killing period of the Final Solution from 1942 through 1943. Making the Germans’ task easy was their control of more than half of Europe’s Jews in occupied parts of Poland and Russia. And because all six of the death camps, where about one half of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust died, were located in occupied Poland, the pace of mass murder was made easier. The Germans were so successful in their murderous campaign against the Jews that by the time Amon Göth was sent to close the Kraków ghetto, Heinrich Himmler had decided to shut down the remaining death camps opened as part of “Operation Reinhard” a year earlier. In little more than a year, the Germans had murdered 1,650,000 Jews in Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Auschwitz, Kulm-hof (Chełmno), and Majdanek remained open.42
The demands of the Final Solution drove the periodic German actions and deportations in the Kraków ghetto and elsewhere. The next Aktion came on October 28, 1942. The day before, Spira, Gutter, and other Jewish leaders were informed of the coming German moves in the ghetto. Though Gutter and Spira were pledged to secrecy, word spread quickly that a new wave of deportations would start on October 28. Some ghetto residents prepared hiding places while others sought refuge with friends outside of Kraków. By 9:00 P.M., October 27, armed Sonderdienst (Special Service) police under Orpo, the German Order Police, had surrounded the ghetto. The Sonderdienst units were made up of Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians who had volunteered for German service. At the same time, the Judenrat ordered all ghetto workers to gather at the ghetto’s main entrance at Wgierska and Limanowskiego streets early on October 28. 43
At 6:00 A.M. the next morning, SS-Sturmbannführer Willi Haase arrived to take personal charge of the deportation. As in the past, high-ranking SS and SD officers came to watch the roundup. But what was different about this Aktion was that German factory and business owners did everything possible to protect their most valuable Jewish specialists from deportation. Only weeks before, the SS and the Armaments Inspectorate had worked out their agreement whereby the SS supplied Jewish slave labor to companies doing business with the Armaments Inspectorate for a set daily rate. Ultimately, these factories were to move their operations to SS-run concentration and labor camps. In one sense, if a German factory owner could now prove that his factory produced goods important to the war effort, it strengthened his ability to protect his more valuable Jewish workers. From Himmler’s perspective, of course, even these protected Jews “[would] disappear some day.”44
Oskar never eluded to this particular Aktion in his postwar writings, though he does claim to have known about the “opening of the extermination camps in the Polish territory” in 1942. Given his contacts, he was also probably well versed on the recent agreement between the Armaments Inspectorate and the SS. Consequently, it is hard to imagine that he was not at the entrance to the ghetto at 6:00 A.M. on October 28.45 Similarly, Julius Madritsch never referred specifically to the October 28 Aktion in his wartime memoirs, Menschen im Not!, though he does state that
one transfer action was followed by the next and we were always faced by ever new cries for help [from Jews]. At least I generally got notice of impending plans through informants at the various departments and therefore I could make preparations to deal with the dangers that my people were facing. We lived in a state of constant high pressure during such crises and were always on stand-by, since we knew that something was always planned, we just waited for the “when?” and were afraid of “how?”46
As Madritsch’s factory was just a half block from the ghetto’s entrance, it is probable that Madritsch or his factory manager, Raimund Titsch, were also at the October 28 roundup.
The first phase of the selection centered around the random choice of workers to be deported and those to remain in the ghetto. The Germans ordered all other Jews remaining in the ghetto to gather by 10:00 A.M. along ul. Józefińska near OD headquarters. The Germans added that everyone should leave their apartments unlocked before they left for the gathering point on Józefińska. Once again, the Germans’ decision about who would remain and who would be deported was made capriciously. Even physicians, who wore special armbands to protect them from deportation, were ordered to line up for transport. When it became apparent that some Jews were hiding, Haase shouted so all could hear, “Alle Männer und Frauen gehen ruhig nach Hause” (All men and women can now return to their homes). Relieved, the Jews left their hiding places. But Haase was not finished. To draw more Jews into his net, he later announced that the “Ghetto ist Judenrein!” (The ghetto is free of Jews). Though many hidden Jews were not taken in by Haase’s latest ruse, others were, and they were bloodily driven to the deportation point by the German, Latvian, and Lithuanian guards who had spread throughout the ghetto.47
Soon after 10:00 A.M. on the 28th, the SS and the Sonderdienst began to search for Jews hidden throughout the ghetto. Some began desperately to prepare hiding places in their apartments, attics, and basements. Tadeusz Pankiewicz recalled how a friend hid her parents in a pantry in the foyer of their apartment. She took out the shelves and built a hidden space in the back of the pantry to conceal her parents. She then put hooks at the front of the pantry and hung coats on it. The Germans thoroughly searched the apartment, but never discovered the two elderly people hidden behind the coats.48
Those found hiding were shot on the spot or beaten as they were being driven to the collection point. By this point, most of the ghetto’s Jews were huddled in terror in Plac Zgody. As the day progressed, the roundup became more violent and deadly. At noon, the Germans went into the Jewish Hospital at 14 Józefińska and shot all the bedridden patients. One woman who was in labor was thrown into a deportation truck; other patients were shot as they tried to flee. Haase was ever present, surrounded by his assistants. Gutter, Förster, Spira, and other Jewish collaborators, who did everything they could to please their SS masters. When one frantic woman begged Gutter for help, he kicked her and turned away. She then turned to Spira, who walked away while one of his Jewish OD men beat her with his riding crop.49
Children and the elderly were singled out during this action and murdered in large numbers. At the Hospital for the Chronically Ill (Szpitala dla przewlekle Chorych) at ul. 15 Limanowska, the Germans beat the patients as they forced them down the stairs and into the street. Those on crutches were tripped and forced to crawl on their knees. Once outside, the Germans ordered the elderly patients to climb onto a courtyard wall and jump off. As they fell, the Germans shot them. By 5:00 P.M. on the 28th, the Germans had completed the roundup and were moving the new deportees to the Płaszów train station. They had murdered 600 Jews during the Aktion and sent 6,000 to 7,000 to Bełżec. But not all the Jewish victims were murdered by the Germans and their allies; some committed suicide to escape the horror of the ghetto Aktion and deportation.50
Several weeks after the October 28 deportations, the Germans slightly reduced the size of the ghetto. The eliminated sections, which were to the west of Plac Zgody, were those closest to Schindler’s factory at 4 Lipowa. According to a decree issued by Frank on November 14, 1942, there were now to be five closed ghettos in the General Government in Kraków, Warsaw, Lwow, Radom, and Czstochowa. The rest of the General Government was now declared “Judenrein.” Jews living outside one of these ghettos were ordered to return to one of them.51
Five thousand Jews remained in the Kraków ghetto. On December 6, 1942, the SS divided it into two sections. Ghetto A was to be for Jews with jobs; Ghetto B was for those without work. The SS also used Ghetto B as a dumping place for another 2,000 Jews from surrounding areas. Ghetto A was subdivided into three specific labor sections corresponding to the “R,” “W,” or “Z” now worn by Jewish laborers. After a few days, each section of the ghetto was sealed off. All that remained of the former Kraków ghetto was a four-square-block area less than half of the original ghetto’s size.52
The brutal roundup triggered a reaction from the recently formed ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa; Jewish Fighting Organization), which in Kraków drew its membership from two Jewish resistance movements in the Kraków ghetto, Akiba, and Hashomir Hatzair. Both were associated with prewar Zionist youth movements in Kraków. Before the 1942 roundups, Akiba and Hashomir had been involved in various underground activities to help Kraków’s Jews. However, in 1942, they began to shift their efforts to armed resistance, often in league with the PPR (Pol-ska Partia Robotnicza; Polish Workers Party), and its armed wing, the Gwardia Ludowa (GL; People’s Guard). Working in and outside the ghetto, the Jewish rebels initially committed small acts of sabotage and assassinations of Germans in Kraków and Jewish informers in the ghetto. They also stole German uniforms from Madritsch’s Optima factory in the ghetto. However, their most daring raids took place on December 22, 1942, in response to the October 28 Aktion in the ghetto.53
