Oskar Schindler, page 34
At its peak of operations, Płaszów had an SS staff of 636 guards who oversaw 25,000 prisoners. The Totenkopfwachsturmbanne (Death Head Guard Formations) at Konzentrationslager Kraków-Płaszów were commanded by forty-five officers and noncommissioned officers.102 According to survivor testimony, other than Amon Göth, SS-Unterscharführer Horst Pilarzik and SS-Oberscharführer Albert Hujar, the most hated and feared SS men in the camp, were the black-uniformed Ukrainians. According to Mie-tek Pemper, Pilarzik, who was initially the Jewish specialist for the HSSPF in Kraków, was a “horrific figure during the liquidation of the [Kraków] ghetto” in 1943. Pemper thought Pilarzik was either an alcoholic or a drug addict because “he rampaged like a hungry wolf or tiger,” murdering many Jews, during the ghetto’s closing. Later, Pilarzik served briefly as Göth’s adjutant but was dismissed because he had bragged at a local restaurant that he was the recipient of the Knight’s Cross. Hujar was the SS officer in Schindler’s List who, without Göth’s prodding, murdered Diana Reiter, the Jewish engineer who questioned SS construction methods.103
Schindler Jew Jack Mintz described the black-uniformed Ukrainians as “the best killers.”104 One “Black Uniform,” he said, would occasionally stand by the garbage pile outside the camp’s inmate kitchen and shoot any desperately hungry Jew who dug through the scraps of food looking for something to eat.105 The Ukrainian guards at Płaszów wore the black uniforms of the Allgemeine (general) or “Black” SS; others on the camp staff wore the grey uniforms of the Waffen SS (Armed SS), or “White” SS. The camps were under the control of the Waffen SS, the “Imperial Guard” of Nazi Germany. The use of foreign volunteers or recruits in the SS Death’s Head units, which guarded the camp, increased substantially as the war dragged on. The Ukrainian guards at Płaszów and elsewhere were drawn either from the large Ukrainian community in Poland or from Ukrainian prisoners-of-war volunteers who had once served with the Red Army. The Death’s Head units also had other foreign volunteers, such as ethnic Germans or Hungarians, who served as guards at Płaszów. Only about 15 percent of a forced labor or concentration camp’s personnel were career SS men. The handful of Germans who ran these camps relied heavily on foreign volunteers, recruits for guard service, and a cadre of inmate leaders. The members of the Wachbattalions, sentries armed with machine guns and spot lights who guarded the the watch towers and outer perimeters of the camp, were restricted to these zones of authority as well as their contacts with the prisoners. The foreign guards were also an important black market conduit for the inmates who relied on them for illegal foodstuffs, medicines, and other items to make life in these hell holes a little more tolerable.106
Initially, Zwangsarbeitslager Płaszów was administratively under the auspices of HSSPF Ost Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, though ultimately it was taken over by WVHA and transformed into a permanent concentration camp. The SS gave considerable thought to the structure and boundary networks in its camps. SS guards patrolled the inner boundaries that separated SS personnel facilities and work areas from the prisoners’ living complex. This was touched off by an outer perimeter of double barbed wire fences that created a no-man’s-land lined with gravel. Eleven watchtowers manned by two members of the Feldwache (outpost) SS guard teams were placed along this outer no-man’s-land. In addition, there was also an antiaircraft battery placed on a high tower on one of the promontories overlooking the rest of the camp.107
Once Płaszów was transformed into a concentration camp, a series of internal boundaries were created by barbed wire fences that essentially divided Płaszów into a series of small camps within a larger camp. This inner network of barbed wire boundaries was designed to create areas of limited access for prisoners and camp staff. Prisoners could enter the SS areas only during working hours, and normally the camp staff and guards did not enter the prisoner compound. To maintain this separation and distance, the SS relied upon a cadre of inmate leaders to serve as liaison between the SS administration and the prisoners. Within this group was what Wolfgang Sofsky has called a gradation of power based on the importance of power. Depending on one’s position in this camp hierarchy, an inmate could wield incredible power over his or her peers. The SS camp administration understood the value of this group and permitted them considerable leeway in how they conducted affairs and relations with other prisoners. Some inmate camp leaders used their positions to help others, though some abused their positions.108
According to Wolfgang Sofsky, the Nazi concentration camp “was a complete settlement with a network of streets and a railroad siding—a town for personnel and prisoners housing thousands, at times tens of thousands, of people.”109 It was, for all practical purposes, a self-sustaining SS community with all of the attributes and facilities of a small town.
WVHA had specific guidelines for the structure of the camp and the placement and borders for each of its sections. The ideal camp structure and substructure was a rectangle with most camp buildings running along an east-west or north-south axis. Theoretically, on a flat plane, one could stand at one end of a smaller camp and easily see the other end of the camp if one’s view was not blocked by buildings or trees. Given the hilly nature of Płaszów, this was a little more difficult, though even here it is possible to observe rudiments of the rectangular design. The center of the camp was the administrative area, which contained the commandant’s office as well as branches of all the different WVHA offices that served as liaisons between the camp administration and WVHA offices in Oranienburg. In Płaszów, the administration building sat just to the right of the main entrance as you entered the camp. Consequently, when Oskar Schindler came to Płaszów he did not have far to go to meet with camp officials or to chat with Mietek Pemper and Itzhak Stern. And if he was invited to a party or gathering at Göth’s villa, he only had to travel about a quarter of a mile or so down SS Straße to the commandant’s very comfortable quarters. This meant that Schindler probably did not ordinarily see some of the more awful aspects of the camp, which were fairly well-hidden in the distance. But he certainly knew a great deal about them. The administrative offices of the camp were surrounded by barbed wire, as was the communications center just across the street.110
SS master planning also dictated comfortable quarters for SS officers and barracks for the guards. In Płaszów, the SS barracks were just across SS Straße from the administrative offices and partially built over the sites of the former Jewish cemeteries. The guards’ barracks centered around a self-contained community area with its own kitchens, infirmary, laundry, and other basics. Farther along SS Straße was the housing of the SS officers, including the Göth villa. There was also a small collection of SS houses just beyond the camp’s industrial quarter. The industrial part of the camp, which lay just to the left of Göth’s villa, housed the workshops of the various factories permitted to operate in the camp. The largest of these was Julius Madritsch’s sewing factory, who housed his workshops in six barracks. Furriers and upholsterers also operated in the industrial complex. Resting between this part of the camp and the SS administrative and housing complex was the camp quarry. The balcony of Amon Göth’s house looked over a portion of the quarry and it is from here that he occasionally shot workers. It is hard to imagine this today because trees on the back edge of the Göth property block this view. One of the camp’s common grave sites, Lipowy Dolek, was wedged between the industrial complex and the quarry.111
To the south of the quarry were the camp’s printing press and a smaller number of workshops for shoes, watches, electrical goods, and paper. Just beyond this on the southeastern edge of the camp was Hujowa Gorka, or, as the inmates called it, “Prick Hill,” the camp’s principal execution and burial site. Bergens Straße ran through the middle of the camp and separated the quarry and industrial-manufacturing portion of the camp from the inmates’ enclosure. The center of this part of Płaszów was the hated Appellplatz (roll call, or parade ground or place), where inmates not only had to endure twice-daily roll calls but also humiliating and at times deadly punishments. The Appellplatz was surrounded on two sides by numerous men’s barracks. The camp latrines and barracks were located just to the south of this area; the female inmates were housed in barracks just beyond the male complex. The camp’s kitchen and food storehouses lay just beyond the inmate’s living quarters and were surrounded by barbed wire. Just beyond this small area was the camp’s hospital. The barracks of the jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (Jewish “order service,” or Jewish camp police) sat between the male and female camps. Far in the distance in the south were the barracks of the Feldwache, who manned the guard towers and guarded the outer perimeter of the camp.112
In the fall of 1943, Amon Göth, prodded by the creatively manipulative efforts of Mietek Pemper, received permission to transform Płaszów into a permanent concentration camp, and this assured the survival of many of the camp’s Jewish and Polish workers. In late October 1943, the WVHA informed Göth that it would be sending SS-Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Schitli to oversee the camp’s transformation from a forced labor camp into a concentration camp. Schitli had served as Schutzhaftlagerführer (head of the protective custody camp) at the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg and had begun his SS camp service career at the Sachenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. He served briefly as the commandant at Arbeitsdorf, a sub-camp of Neuengamme where the SS hoped to build a light-metals foundry. Schitli was removed from this post by Oswald Pohl for incompetency and was forced out of the concentration camp administrative service, only to resurface as part of WVHA’s Office Group C, which oversaw camp construction. Once at Płaszów, Schitli oversaw the division of the camp into separate zones, which were surrounded by barbed wire. A new guard force under the Waffen SS now took over the supervision of the camp, particularly the movement of camp inmates from the living area to the industrial complex.113
Mietek Pemper, Itzhak Stern, and the Transformation of Płaszów
Mietek Pemper is one of the most remarkable Schindlerjuden in the Schindler story, not only because of his intimate knowledge about the inner workings of Płaszów but also his very close friendship with Oskar Schindler, particularly after the war. Beyond this connection, Mietek Pemper is just a warm, gentle human being with a phenomenal memory. Dr. Moshe Bejski, a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice who later became chairman of the Designation of the Righteous Commission at Yad Vashem, told me when I interviewed him that when it came to facts about Oskar Schindler, the only other person he trusted more than himself was Mietek Pemper. Because of his keen memory, Pemper became the principal witness against not only Amon Göth but also Gerhard Maurer, both of whom were convicted and executed for war crimes. Pemper, who speaks perfect German, also served as a translator in some of the Auschwitz trials in Kraków in late 1947. 114
Yet who was this remarkable man? It took a while for me to find out. When I began my initial research for this book, one of the names that kept coming up in interviews with other Schindler Jews was Mietek Pemper’s. Because he served as Amon Göth’s stenographer and worked with him daily for sixteen months, other survivors explained that Pemper was the only one who could really answer questions about Amon Göth and his relationship with Oskar Schindler. I was also told that Mr. Pemper did not grant interviews and was unapproachable. I later learned during my two lengthy interviews with this very gracious, kind man that his distance came more from a certain humility and shyness, as well as a healthy suspicion of interviewers, than disinterest in telling what he knew about Oskar Schindler and Amon Göth. I encountered this suspicion time and again among other Schindlerjuden who were tired of being misquoted. In time, I gained the trust of scores of Schindler Jews because of my sincerity, patience, and scholarly approach to the subject. Over time, I learned to state in my introductory letters to them that I was a scholar, not a journalist. The trust and friendships that I developed with many of the Schinder Jews in the course of my research are some of the richest experiences of my life.
After he attended the Kraków opening of Schindler’s List, a New York Times reporter asked Mr. Pemper why he had “applied” for the job with Amon Göth. Mietek Pemper did not apply for this job; he was chosen by Göth, who asked Jewish congregation leaders in the ghetto to recommend someone who could do clerical work for him. Because Pemper spoke and read perfect German and knew German stenography, he was selected for the job. As a prisoner first in the ghetto and later in Płaszów, there was no way he could have applied for a “position” with Göth. Mietek Pemper was a slave laborer who was forced to work for Amon Göth. For the next sixteen months, his every waking moment was a living hell. He lived in constant fear of being murdered by Göth for the slightest infraction. One does not “apply” for death.115
Mietek Pemper, who was born in Kraków, was nineteen years old when World War II broke out. He came from a family with strong ties to the Habsburg world of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father and uncle had fought proudly in the Austrian army in World War I, and his grandmother, who had great regard for German culture, refused to speak Polish. Soon after the German occupation of Kraków, Pemper got a job as a stenographer with the Temporary Jewish Religious Community (TJRC) in Kraków, which the Germans intended to act as liaison between their administrators and the city’s Jews. He continued to work for the TJRC after the opening of the ghetto, and it was because of his work with this group that he was recommended to Amon Göth.116
The key to Pemper’s survival in the mercurial, deadly world of Amon Göth was his discretion, luck, and thoroughness when it came to his stenographic work. But behind his quiet demeanor was a determined young man with a photographic memory who was intent upon gathering every scrap of information possible about Göth and general SS policies and operations, whether they be in Płaszów or elsewhere. After the war, he was asked by Jan Sehn, one of the principal architects of Poland’s massive war crimes investigations, whether he knew anything about Gerhard Maurer. He explained that he could find no one who knew anything about Maurer, whom Sehn wanted to extradite to Poland for trial. Pemper told Sehn, whom he had met while preparing for his testimony in Göth’s trial, that he had seen two or three letters a week from Maurer in Göth’s office and remembered everything. According to Pemper, Sehn was delighted and “appeared happy like a child” at this news.117 As a result, Pemper became the principal prosecution witness against Maurer, just as he had been in Göth’s trial. Pemper’s testimony in Maurer’s trial shocked the defendant, who could not believe that a mere stenographer knew so much. According to Maurer, he had never heard of a Jewish inmate in such a sensitive position in a Nazi concentration camp.118
The principal reason Pemper had such access was the utter chaos and fear in Göth’s office, not only among the Jewish office workers but also the German and Polish staff. Amon Göth hated office work and was only there a few hours a day. He was also a night person, which meant that Pemper was at his beck and call twenty-four hours a day. He was required to spend each day working full time in Göth’s office in the administrative complex near the front gate, but he also had to go to Göth’s villa to take dictation. He spent a lot of time in Göth’s kitchen waiting for the commandant. That was where he got to know Göth’s two Jewish maids, particularly Helen Hirsch. Göth had a terrible temper and would lose it over the slightest thing, whether it be a misspelled word or a flower arrangement in his house that he thought was out of place. Göth’s office staff was terrified of him. Consequently, his officers and civilian staff members would often ask Pemper to draft letters for them because they were afraid of making mistakes. If the letters were about sensitive issues, Pemper would ask to see the secret files that were kept in a safe.119
Pemper was also helpful to Göth’s part-time German secretary, Frau Kochmann, the wife of a Kraków judge. Initially, Pemper was alone in the office until Göth hired Frau Kochmann, who wanted to work in the mornings. Like everyone on Göth’s office staff, she soon felt the commandant’s wrath. On one occasion, she made the mistake of putting the carbon paper in backwards when she typed a letter for Göth. He flew into a rage and began screaming at her. Frau Kochmann started to cry and later Pemper came up to her and suggested that he prepare the carbon paper in future. Frau Kochmann gladly accepted Pemper’s offer. Pemper made certain to supply fresh carbon paper for each letter to insure that he could read it later in a mirror. Once he had gotten to know and trust Oskar Schindler, Pemper shared everything he could with his future savior and friend.
But Mietek Pemper also did something else with the information he was gathering in Göth’s office. He decided to do what he could to help convince first Göth and then WVHA of the wisdom of transforming Płaszów into a permanent concentration camp, which he thought would save many lives. The seed for this idea came from two unrelated events in 1942: the transports from the Kraków ghetto to Bełżec and detailed armaments orders that he was asked to read from several hundred German and Polish companies to Kraków’s HSSPF offices. David Gutter, the head of the ghetto’s Judenrat, had been given these letters by Horst Pilarzik, who wanted him to organize them into a more efficient, easily accessible system. Gutter did not have time to do this and asked Pemper to help him. Gutter emphasized the secret nature of these documents and told Pemper to lock himself in a room while he read them and reorganized them. As he was reading these secret files, Pemper learned of SS plans to close the ghettos throughout the General Government and to intern those Jews necessary for armaments production in a few enclosed slave labor camps.120
Soon after Pemper became Göth’s stenographer at Płaszów, he came face to face with Pilarzik, who remembered that he had helped organize the files he had given Gutter. Pilarzik was now Göth’s adjutant. When they met, Pi-larzik said to Pemper, “Wash your chest. Do you know what follows now?” Pemper replied, “Yes, you will be shot.” Pilarzik was surprised and asked Pemper how he knew this. Pemper said, “That’s what ‘wash your chest’ means. So I must have done something wrong or incomplete.” Pi-larzik said no, that he did not mean it that way. But he did need the papers Gutter had given Pemper to organize back as quickly as possible.121
