Oskar Schindler, page 45
The Beginning of the End: Emalia and Płaszów
In many ways, the tragic action at Płaszów on May 14 underscored the contrast between life under Amon Göth and Oskar Schindler. For those forced to continue to live in Płaszów, life remained tenuous. For those two miles away at Emalia, life was more secure. The Jews working at Emalia and living in Schindler’s sub-camp were not forced to participate in the May 7 medical inspection in Płaszów, nor were they put onto the May 14 transport to Auschwitz. But as Soviet forces moved closer and closer, the security that many of Schindler’s Jews enjoyed at Emalia would soon disappear. There were certain things that even Oskar Schindler could not control. Many who had enjoyed the security of “Schindler’s Ark” would soon find themselves in transport to other concentration camps or back at Płaszów. Others who had enjoyed the security of political or financial prominence at Płaszów would take advantage of their situation to have their names and those of their families placed on the famous “Schindler’s List.” But before that happened, a series of dramatic changes took place at Płaszów in the late summer and early fall of 1944 that affected not only all the Jewish workers employed by Oskar Schindler but also those who lived at Płaszów. And in Berlin, Oskar Schindler pulled whatever strings he could to get permission to move part of his Kraków operations back to a site near his hometown in what was then the Sudeten region of Germany.
According to Itzhak Stern, by early July 1944, rumors spread through the camp about its liquidation. Later that month, Oskar received an order from the Armaments Inspectorate in Kraków to begin to plan the evacuation of the armaments portion of Emalia to Germany. Though it would be another six months before the Red Army would take Kraków, Soviet forces had already crossed the Bug River and moved into Poland on July 17, 1944. Seven months earlier, Amon Göth told Julius Madritsch that the WVHA in Berlin had ordered him to close his factory immediately to make room for German Armament Works (DAW; Deutsche Ausrüs-tungswerke) authorized factories. Madritsch immediately drove to Berlin, where he successfully petitioned the WVHA to keep his factory operating in Płaszów. He based his appeal on the treaty he had signed with HSSPF Ost Wilhelm Koppe in the fall of 1943 that guaranteed the operation of his factory “until the end of the war.” This contract was now invalid because Płaszów was under WVHA jurisdiction. Madritsch quickly enlisted the help of a fellow Viennese, Postrat Grohe, the director of the German postal service in the East, who substantially increased the size of his office’s order with Madritsch. Grohe also contacted the directors of the Compulsory Labor Service (Baudienst) and the Textile Economic Group (Wirtschaftsgruppe Textil), who wrote Oswald Pohl, the head of WVHA, that “the existence of my [Madritsch’s] factories were absolutely necessary [to the war effort].” Consequently, WVHA signed a new agreement with Madritsch on February 24, 1944, to keep his factory open for six more months.33
The Reich was desperate to maintain the dramatic rise in armaments output orchestrated by Albert Speer. These concerns even spilled over into the manufacture of uniforms, particularly after the Erntefest (Harvest Festival) massacre of 42,000 Jews in the Lublin district on November 3, 1943. General Maxmillian Schindler’s Armaments Inspectorate in the General Government received numerous complaints about the dramatic impact that Himmler’s last major “cleansing” operation in the General Government had on armaments-related production, particularly textiles.34
One of the most serious problems facing German industry in the last two years of war was manpower. As more and more German males were drafted into the military, the German economy, particularly armaments-related industries, came to depend more and more on forced and slave foreign labor to sustain the high levels of armaments production. Until the defeat at Stalingrad, the Reich had depended heavily on the conquered parts of the Soviet Union for its largest pool of foreign workers. With the growing loss of Soviet territory after Stalingrad, Germany had to look elsewhere to fill these needs. Poland had supplied the second largest group of forced laborers in the Reich, though by 1944 the Polish labor market was no longer a viable outlet for the Reich’s foreign labor needs. This desperation helps explain the dramatic shift in SS attitudes in late 1943 and early 1944 towards the use of Jewish slave labor first in the General Government and later in the Reich as factories began to be moved westward to escape capture by Soviet forces.35
Płaszów, for example, had become an important center for the export of Jewish labor to other armament sites in the General Government. On November 16, 1943, for example, 2,500 Jews had been shipped from Göth’s camp to Skarżysko-Kamienna to do munitions work for one of Germany’s largest arms manufacturers, the Hugo Schneider Aktienge-sellschaft Metallwarenfabrik (HASAG) of Leipzig. Two days later, 1,500 Jewish workers were sent from Płaszów to armaments plants in Kielce, Czstochowa, Pionki, Ostrowice, and Starachowice. This was about 15 percent of the Jews working in armaments-related work in the General Government. Hans Frank estimated in early 1944 that only 100,000 Jews were still alive in the General Government. Desperate for manpower, the Armaments Inspectorate in the General Government increased its appeals for Jewish laborers throughout the first half of 1944, but concluded that summer that the “reservoir of Jews will soon be exhausted.”36 Such desperate needs would ultimately play into Oskar Schindler’s hands as he planned to move his armaments factory into the Reich later that fall.
Once Oskar got his orders to break up his Jewish sub-camp (he continued to operate the enamelware part of his factory with 650 Polish workers until early 1945), the pace of the evacuation moved quickly. He got permission to keep three hundred workers at Emalia to help take apart and load that part of the factory that would be shipped to the Reich. The other seven hundred or so would be sent immediately to Płaszów. On the day of the selection, which took place at the end of the first week in August 1944, the SS lined Emalia’s Jews up as Oskar walked among them, selecting the three hundred Jews who would remain behind. According to Sol Urbach, Schindler first selected the most important Jews at Emalia, such as Abraham Bankier, to remain with him for a few more weeks. Then he began to select other Jews to be a part of Emalia’s remaining Jewish work force. As Oskar walked by, Sol decided to speak up, knowing full well that this could bring the wrath of the SS guards on him. He said, “Herr Schindler, kein Tischer ist geblieben” (Herr Schindler, you have no carpenter remaining with you). Oskar took Sol by the arm and put him in the group that would remain at Emalia.37
For the next two or three weeks, the three hundred Jewish males worked to prepare for Oskar’s move to the Reich. Though Schindler was still involved in negotiations about the location of his new factory, he would ultimately ship “two hundred and fifty wagons of machines, production goods, and construction material” to his new camp in the Sudetenland.38 One incident that seemed to hasten the pace of the work was the crash of an Australian B-24 Liberator bomber on the women’s barracks on August 17. Sol said that only the three crew members were killed. Soon afterwards, the three hundred Jewish workers were sent back to Płaszów and integrated into the general camp slave labor pool. Today, there is a small plaque at Telepod, the business complex on the former Emalia site, to honor the three crew members: Flight Leader John P. Liversidge (RAAF), Flight Lt. Pilot William D. Wright (RAF), and Flight Sergeant John D. Clarke (RAF).39
But what happened to the other seven hundred Schindler Jews who were sent back to Płaszów? According to Sol Urbach, there were four hundred men in this group and three hundred women. The men were shipped to Mauthausen almost immediately after they got to Płaszów. According to Schindler, “one hot summer day” he was invited to a security conference of the SS leadership at Płaszów. As he entered the camp’s main gate, he noticed on the railroad tracks that ran beside the main road leading into Płaszów a long train with scores of “cattle wagons” filled with thousands of inmates. Oskar soon learned that the transport was bound for Mauthausen, a large German concentration camp about a hundred miles west of Vienna, near Linz. Though Oskar did not mention the date, the detailed inmate list in the Mauthausen archives for this particularly transport is dated August 10, 1944. Because Oskar mentioned that the train had been on the siding since early morning, and Jews on the transport mentioned they sat on the siding in the cattle cars for three days, it was probably August 8, 1944. There were 4,589 Jewish males on the Mauthausen transport that day; about 400 were Schindlerjuden who had recently worked at Emalia. They were about to be sent to one of the harshest work camps in the Third Reich where almost 60 percent of the 198,000 prisoners sent there during the war died from disease and starvation. More than a third of those who died at Mauthausen were Jews, mostly during the last year of the war. But the Schindler Jews had a much better chance of survival than the others sent there that year.40 Several Schindler Jews on that transport confirmed Richard Krumholz’s statement that when they got to Mauthausen, they were “still physically strong from Schindler, not undernourished.” Their time at Emalia gave many of them the stamina they needed to survive the horrors of Mau-thausen or other camps.41
Oskar knew that some of his former workers were on the transport. He bribed Göth to allow him to supply the cattle cars with drinking water and also got permission to bring hoses from the camp to spray the train cars. As they sprayed the metal tops of the cattle cars with water, Schindler had to suffer from Göth’s mockery of his “humanitarian stupidities as well as the jeers of his SS retinue.” Oskar had two horse-drawn wagons filled with large containers and buckets brought to Płaszów; when they arrived, he had the buckets filled with water and placed in each train car. He then gave the train guards a basket filled with Schnaps (a German liqueur) and cigarettes “with the plea to open the sliding doors of the wagons” each time the train stopped. Oskar added in his 1955 report to Yad Vashem that though this “action may seem minor, it took courage to help the thirsty ones before a group of powerful SS men” gathered at Płaszów for an important security conference. Several Schindler Jews testified after the war that once the train was underway, the SS did supply the inmates with water during the few times it stopped during its slow three-day journey to Mauthausen.42
Spielberg captured this powerful moment in his film, as did Keneally in his novel. But did it really happen? Yes. Abraham Zuckerman, one of Oskar’s closest American friends after the war, had worked at Emalia since early 1943. He was on the Mauthausen transport in Płaszów that hot August day in 1944. He told me when I interviewed him and his business partner and fellow Schindlerjude, Murray Pantirer (Mejzesz Pun-tirer), in their Union, New Jersey office, that he and the other Schindler Jews had been put on the cattle cars immediately after they got to Płaszów. Once the cars were filled, they were moved to a rail siding. The rail cars were so tightly packed that the inmates had to stand up. They stood there in the sweltering heat for three days without food or water. Some of the men on the train went crazy; others died from dehydration and starvation. Some of the inmates even drank their own urine. Zuck-erman said that “the stench was unbearable. It was impossible to move the corpses.”43
This probably explains why Marek Finder, the husband of Schindler-jude Rena Ferber Finder, passed out when he was put on the Mauthausen transport. Marek did not wake up until he reached Austria. He told me that he felt guilty about not remembering anything about the transport or the Schindler incident and wondered why he could not recall anything during the horrible six or so days on the train. When I told him that his mind and body had probably shut down to protect his sanity, he seemed relieved.44 Murray Pantirer was one of the Jews who hosed down the train cars. Schindler, who was wearing a white suit, yelled “Macht schnell!” (Hurry up) to make the workers with the hoses on top of the train cars move as quickly as they could. Their efforts were hindered because, instead of fire hoses, they used garden hoses to pour water on top of the metal roofs of the cars. Unfortunately, it was so hot in the cars that when the water hit the metal roofs it turned into steam, “simmering those who’d been baking inside.” Al Bukiet later testified that the steam “almost killed” them.45
It is doubtful whether Oskar could have done more to help his Emalia Jews even if he knew where he was going to be permitted to open his new factory. But at the time he was not even certain of this. Once the Armaments Inspectorate in Kraków informed him that he had to move his factory westward, Oskar was told he could move to any factory site in the Rhineland in the western part of Germany or to a village in the Semmer-ing Pass area in Lower Austria. In his 1956 report to Yad Vashem, Itzhak Stern quoted a letter he had just received from Schindler in which Oskar told him that he had refused this offer because he “would have to leave [his Jewish] workers behind.” Stern said Schindler’s decision not to abandon his Jewish workers was “characteristic of this man and the determining action of his life.”46
Yet there was more to Oskar’s decision than just wanting to save his Jewish workers. Schindler had already revealed his postwar plans to the Jewish Agency representatives he had met in Budapest a year earlier. He wanted to return to the Sudetenland and start a factory in his former homeland. Mietek Pemper told me that Schindler told him during the latter days of the war that he had moved his factory back to the Svitavy area to restore his family’s honor, which had been lost when his father’s factory had closed during the Depression. Oskar also did not think that the Soviets would occupy Bohemia and Moravia at the end of the war and that Czechoslovakia would be restored as a nation. His new operations at Brünnlitz could then be transformed into a major source of enamelware for postwar Europe. Oskar hoped that his Jewish workers would stay with him to fulfill his dream.47
But what Jews did Oskar have in mind? According to Emilie Schindler, Oskar told her after he got the evacuation order that he did not know many of his workers and knew only “the names of a few who [came] to our office” when something was needed. “But I have no idea about the others.”48 This is probably true, though it contradicts the image of a man struggling in Spielberg’s film trying to come up with the names of 1,000 Jewish workers to put on the famous “Schindler’s List.” Oskar was a busy man during the war and was seldom on the factory floor. Moreover, he did not begin to use Jews in large numbers until 1943 and he left daily supervision and contact with them to others such as Bankier. This did not mean that he did not care about his Jewish workers, or for that matter, the large number of Poles who worked for him. He was simply too busy to get to know many of them.
As Płaszów was being broken up, Oskar seemed initially powerless to do anything to help save his former Emalia workers. To a great extent this was caused by uncertainty about the fate of his small-arms production facility at his Kraków factory. This part of his operations at Emalia is quite mysterious and none of the survivors I talked to knew anything about it. They did, though, remember working in some aspect of enamelware production or general work around Emalia. Oskar said in his 1945 report that the armaments wing of Emalia produced only RM 500,000 ($2 million) as opposed to RM 15,000,000 ($6 million) in enamelware production during the war. He said his Polish workers made the enamelware while his Jewish workers made the arms.49 It was the production of these arms, and not enamelware, which was still, up to a point, considered vital to the war effort, that convinced the Armaments Inspectorate to support Oskar’s efforts to move his armament operations, along with his Jewish workers, to Brünnlitz. Siemens-Bauunion G.m.b.H. had just completed a large building for this, which probably helped Schindler’s case because most of the machinery could be moved to wherever Schindler relocated his armaments production facility.
But what types of armaments did Oskar produce at Emalia? Thomas Keneally mentioned in his novel that at Brünnlitz, Schindler made “not one 45 mm shell, not one rocket casing.”50 It is logical to assume that the Armaments Inspectorate approved Schindler’s move to the Sudetenland based on the production of the same type of weapons he had made at Emalia. On my first visit to the Brünnlitz factory site, I met a young boy whose family lived in a small house that had once been part of the Schindler factory. He showed me a collection of small shells he had collected from the site. One set of shells were elongated and about ten to twelve inches; the others were shorter but much thicker. These shells were similar in size to three different types of shells produced for the German 3.7 cm Panzerabwehrkanone 36, the standard German World War II antitank gun. Francisco Wichter, a Schindler Jew who now lives in Buenos Aires and who was a close friend of Emilie Schindler’s, told me that they produced shell casings for antitank guns at Brünnlitz. Francisco had worked for Brünnlitz’s commandant, Josef Leipold, at several Heinkel aircraft factories in Poland and knew something about German weaponry. Midway through World War II, the effectiveness of the 1930s era 3.7 Panzerabwehrkanone 36 had been reduced because of better Allied armor. The Wehrmacht responded with a “spigot bomb” shell, the 3.7 cm Stiel-granate 41 (3.7 cm Aufsteckegeschoß), which extended the life of the 3.7 Panzerabwehrkanone. This was probably the shell that Oskar produced in Emalia and Brünnlitz.51
And though Oskar knew that the continued production of armaments at Brünnlitz would help save the lives of some of his Jewish workers, he was also aware that they would be under the jurisdiction of one of the remaining concentration camps in the Kraków region, Auschwitz or Groß Rosen. But this move was complicated by officials in the Sudetenland, who opposed moving more Jewish workers into the region. But first, at least according to Emilie, Oskar had to contend with Amon Göth’s opposition to the move. Oskar said after the war that Göth was supposed to move with Schindler to Brünnlitz. Emilie added that Oskar told her that Göth wanted to ship all of Płaszów’s Jewish inmates, including those at Emalia, to Auschwitz. She said in her memoirs that Oskar offered Göth “diamonds, jewelry, money, vodka, cigarettes, caviar,” but Göth would not budge. Oskar thought that maybe he should offer Göth “a couple of beautiful women to cheer him up.”52 If Göth was opposed to the move, then his opposition meant nothing after his arrest by the SS on September 13, 1944, for corruption and brutality. Oskar, who was also arrested as part of the Göth investigation, did move a lot of the former Płaszów commandant’s war booty to Brünnlitz. Göth, who still seemed to consider Schindler his friend, visited Brünnlitz several times during the latter months of the war while on parole.53
