Oskar Schindler, page 46
Schindler stated after the war that his initial effort to move part of his Emalia operations to the Sudetenland was hampered by opposition from the “Reichsstatthalter [Reich Governor] Reichenberg” who forbade the employment of Jewish workers “in industry in the Sudetenland.” Schindler, was, of course, speaking in prewar terminology. On April 14, 1939, Hitler appointed Konrad Henlein as Reichsstatthalter of the Sude-tengau with Reichenberg (Czech, Liberec) as its capital. By 1944, Henlein was still head of this region, but now was the Gauleiter (regional head) of the Gauleitung Sudetenland (Sudetenland Region), which was an integral part of the Greater German Reich.54
Schindler’s claim that Henlein did not permit the use of Jewish slave laborers in the Sudetenland is not true. Though Henlein had implemented the Nazi Party’s harsh anti-Semitic policies towards the region’s small Jewish population (2,341 in 1939) during the war, there was little he could do to stop the employment of Jews in German factories there. Himmler, for example, had ordered the Organisation Schmelt, named after the police chief of Breslau, SS-Oberführer Albrecht Schmelt, to set up scores of armaments workshops and small factories in Silesia, and later, in the Sudetenland. Ultimately, Schmelt’s factories would employ over 50,000 Jews. Between 1940 and 1944, Schmelt built more than one hundred forced labor camps in Silesia and seventeen in the Sudetenland; they all used Jewish slave laborers. Himmler ordered these closed in 1943 though a number of them remained open as part of Groß Rosen’s satellite camp system. Schindler’s new camp at Brünnlitz simply became part of the Groß Rosen network. This did not mean, of course, that Oskar did not have to deal with opposition from Nazi leaders in the Sudetenland; he did, though it seemed to come more from local leaders in the Svitavy region than from officials in Reichenberg.55
It is quite possible, of course, that Oskar got some resistance from Sudetenland leaders about the prospect of opening a new armaments sub camp in the region. With the war nearing its end, they probably wanted to do everything possible to distance themselves from some of the Third Reich’s more damning racial policies. But most of the resistance to Oskar’s move came from Wilhelm Hoffman, one of two brothers who owned the large textile factory complex where Schindler wanted to move his small armaments factory. Schindler wanted to lease only a portion of the vast, sprawling complex. After the German occupation of the Sude-tenland, the Hoffmans, former cheese and butter makers in Vienna, became Treuhänder for the century-old textile factory owned by a Jewish family, the Löw-Beers. The Hoffman brothers purchased the former Löw- Beer factory outright during the war and renamed it Elisenthaler Tuch-und Hutfabriken Brüder Hoffmann.56
Given that the Hoffmanns had taken over a previously owned Jewish factory, it is not surprising that they would want to stop any Jews from working there in late 1944. Oskar said that Wilhelm, who had strong ties with local Nazi Party officials, did everything he could to stop Oskar from moving into his complex with his Schindler Jews. Hoffmann tried to convince district officials, the Gestapo, and local Nazi Party officials from letting Schindler “judaize” the region with his new factory. Hoffman argued that if they let Schindler open his factory using Jewish workers, they would bring typhus and other diseases with them. Hoffmann also warned local officials that if they let Schindler open his armaments factory, it could subject the entire factory complex to Allied bombing raids.57
It took many bribes and the help of two of Oskar’s friends in Berlin, Erich Lange of the Army High Command’s (OKH; Oberkommando des Heeres) Ordnance Department (Heereswaffenamt) and Oberstleutnant Süßmuth, who headed the Armaments Inspectorate office in Troppau (Opava), for Oskar finally to receive permission to move his armaments factory to Brünnlitz. Emilie Schindler said that Lange oversaw arms production in the region for the OKH. She liked the well-mannered Lange, who, she said, always wore civilian clothing when he inspected the Schindler factory in Brünnlitz to show his distaste for the “Nazi regime.” Lange explained that he was working for “his country and not for a specific government or system,” a standard line among Wehrmacht officers, particularly after the war. Emilie added that Lange “was known for his rectitude and sense of justice.” But he also had a reputation as a strict adherent of armaments production guidelines, which created some fear during his first inspection of the Schindler factory.58
Oskar credited Süßmuth, who worked closely with Lange, with convincing district officials of the value of Schindler’s operations. Lange, of course, was Oskar’s liaison with Maurer’s D2 office, which would make the final decision on Schindler’s Armaments Inspectorate proposal to open a factory using Jewish labor. Maurer’s office would review Schindler’s plans on the housing and care of his Jewish workers and make certain that there was adequate security to prevent escapes. If the plans met D2 guidelines, then they would be approved. And it was Lange who intervened when Oskar’s Jews found themselves trapped in Groß Rosen or Auschwitz en route to Brünnlitz and helped to have them released and on their way to the Sudetenland.59
Yet Süßmuth was involved in more than just helping Oskar get permission to open his Brünnlitz factory. According to Oskar, he also helped transfer about 3,000 Jewish women from Auschwitz to small textile plants in villages in the Sudetengau and southern Poland in the fall of 1944. Süßmuth moved the women out of Auschwitz in small groups of three hundred to five hundred to help them escape “extermination by the SS murderers.” Oskar added that this helped these women survive “the last year of the war.” Oskar mentioned five villages in his report to Yad Vashem in 1955. Four of them, Freudenthal (Bruntl), Jägerdorf (Krnov), Grulich (Králíky), and Trautenau (Trutnov) were in the Sudetenland; the fifth, Liebau (Legnica), was just over the border in Poland.60
Presumably Süßmuth was involved in these transfers at the same time that Oskar was preparing for the transfer of 1,000 Jews from Płaszów to Brünnlitz. Interestingly enough, Auschwitz records do indicate that between October 14 and November 4, 1944, there were four separate transports from Auschwitz II-Birkenau to “other concentration camps” for 322, 348, 497, and 320 women. In addition, there were two larger transports (2,219 and 2,362 women) to “other concentration camps” on October 10 and November 4. Since Auschwitz records usually listed just the main camps in their transit records and not the sub-camps, it is quite possible that these were the women transferred by Süßmuth to other parts of Poland or the Sudetenland.61
But it took more than just the intervention of Süßmuth and Lange for Oscar to win final approval for the transfer of his workers from Płaszów to Brünnlitz. It would also take a lot of money and gifts. After the war, Oskar estimated that he spent RM 100,000 ($40,000) on bribes to complete the relocation of his armaments factory. He said that authorities knew that he was pressed for time and that his “generosity would be further increased by delays and displays of disinterest.” In other words, authorities in the Sudetenland, the Ostbahn (Eastern Railroad), the Armaments Inspectorate, the OKH, the WVHA, Kraków, Płaszów, Auschwitz, and elsewhere involved in the transfer decision took advantage of the situation and used Oskar‘s desperation to get whatever they could out of him. Schindler was also hurt by the fact that his reputation had been damaged by his arrest by the SS in the early fall of 1944 for corruption. He had to supply these officials with “donation packets” filled with “foreign cigarettes, cigars, Schnaps, coffee, ham, textiles, etc., for astronomical prices on the black market” to keep things running smoothly throughout the late summer and early fall of 1944. And this was just the beginning of the new round of bribery. When Oskar finally got his workers to Brünnlitz, he had to spend even greater sums on “donation packets” for officials in the Sudetenland and Groß Rosen.62
The Chilowicz Murders
Oskar described this period as a nerve-racking time of desperation and uncertainty. It involved numerous trips to the Sudetenland and Berlin to sort out the difficulties he was having in getting permission to transfer part of his Emalia operations. These difficulties were complicated by his own arrest by the Gestapo for a few days in September 1944 and his interrogation by SS officials as part of the investigation into Amon Göth’s crimes. This investigation and some of the events that led up to it would have a very direct impact on Schindler’s efforts to save as many of his Jews as possible. In just a matter of a few weeks in August and September 1944, these developments would bring about several dramatic administrative changes in Płaszów that would play a decisive role in which Jews would be put on “Schindler’s List.”
One of the most controversial issues in the Holocaust was the role played by those in what Primo Levi described in The Drowned and the Damned as a “gray zone” of “protekcja [privilege] and collaboration” that existed between the Germans and others who ran the camps and its Jewish prisoners.63 Levi, an Italian Jew who spent the latter part of the war in Auschwitz and became one of the foremost essayists on the Holocaust, went on to say in his autobiographical Survival in Auschwitz that “if one offers a position of privilege to a few individuals in a state of slavery, exacting in exchange the betrayal of a natural solidarity with their comrades, there will certainly be someone who will accept. . . . The more power that he is given, the more he will be consequently hateful and hated.”64 This was certainly true in Płaszów. Some of the most prominent people in the Schindler story, during and after the war, were part of this administrative “grey zone.” Yet, with a few exceptions, these were honorable human beings who used their positions to help their fellow Jews. Yet, as Wolfgang Sofsky has pointed out, there was also a camp aristocracy, what Levi called the “Prominents,” who wielded vast power and lived lives of comparable luxury unknown to the average prisoner.65
The Jewish OD (jüdischer Ordnungsdienst; Jewish Order Service) men lived in their own barracks with their families; office functionaries lived together in a barracks set aside for some of the more privileged prisoners. Mietek Pemper admitted in his testimony during Amon Göth’s trial in 1946 that there was a time when he received extra food rations because of his special status as a Płaszów stenographer.66 A member of the “grey zone” also had easier access to the black market and medical facilities. And though Mietek Pemper and Helen Sternlicht Jonas Rosenzweig and others like them lived in constant fear for their lives, they had a better chance of surviving the Holocaust than many of the transit prisoners who stayed briefly in Płaszów on their way to Auschwitz or another death camp. Primo Levi, in fact, noted that it was the “Prominents” who represented “a potent majority among survivors.” 67 But as Isaiah Trunk has pointed out in his study of the Juden-rat (Jewish Councils) during the Holocaust, even those Jews forced to work for the Germans would themselves be the Shoah’s “final victims.” 68 The key here is how one used one’s influence and power in the camps. Most of the prominent Schindlerjuden in Płaszów used what modest power or influence they had to help others, though there were exceptions. Very often, of course, those they helped were relatives or acquaintances. Those who abused their power came to be, as Primo stated, the “hateful and hated.”69
In her memoirs, Malvina Graf, a Cracovian Jew who survived the Kraków ghetto and Płaszów but was not on one of “Schindler’s Lists,” expressed some of her own frustration towards those she thought were among the privileged in Płaszów. She wrote that Göth showed some favoritism towards some of his Jewish prisoners, particularly Mietek Pem-per and the two Rosner brothers, Henry and Leopold. Henry and Leopold were both musicians who played frequently for Amon Göth and were featured in the film, Schindler’s List. She remembered two occasions when Göth intervened to save a friend of Pemper’s or Pemper himself. She evidently got her information from her sister, Balbina, who worked for Kerner in the Jewish OD office. On one occasion, a friend of Pemper’s, Luisa Lis, was taken to Chuwoja Gorka, Płaszów’s principal killing site, for execution. When Göth learned of this, he personally went to “Prick Hill,” stopped the executions, took Luisa out of the execution line, and brought her back to the women’s camp. Graf’s point in all this had less to do with Pemper than with her concern over the feelings of those on Chu-woja Gorka after Göth left with Luisa. “They were given a last bit of hope when their executions were ‘stayed’ only to see that their deaths had been postponed only momentarily.”70 Graf added that in August 1944, Göth needed someone to type a highly secret letter for him. She claimed that to maintain such secrecy, “any secretary who typed a letter containing information was shot immediately after completing the task.” To protect Pem-per, Graf claimed, Göth instead asked for a volunteer to come to his villa and prepare the letter. A Mr. Goldstein volunteered, typed the letter, and was then executed.71
Anything is possible, of course, though this story does not fit with what we know about the operations of Göth’s office. He only allowed his part-time German secretary, Frau Kochmann, to type his most sensitive letters, though he often called Pemper to his villa late at night for dictation. This was a chaotic period in Płaszów and Göth was nervous about Dr. Konrad Morgen’s criminal investigations into SS camp corruption elsewhere. This was also when Göth sought permission to murder Chilowicz and several other prominent OD men in the camp on false charges, so it is quite possible that the letter in question was the one to HSSPF Wilhelm Koppe asking permission to kill Chilowicz and other prominent OD men. Pemper, whom Göth seemed to trust, was not expendable because he was too valuable to the commandant. Given the sensitive nature of the letter to Koppe, it would also have been unwise for Göth to have Frau Kochmann type it, because she probably would have shared its contents with her husband, a judge in the city. So it is quite possible that he chose a volunteer to type it, and then had him killed on Chuwoja Gorka. This, of course, is all speculative and had nothing to do with Mietek Pemper. But Graf’s comments about Pemper reflect some of the unspoken frustration I have sensed from Jewish survivors of Emala and Płaszów who did not make it to “Schindler’s Ark” in Brünnlitz. For every Jew saved by Oskar Schindler, there were many, many more who did not, some of them former Schindlerjuden at Emalia. Some survived and others did not because they did not have the connections, means, or luck to make it onto his famous “list of life.”
Sadly, the most hated Jews at Płaszów were also the most powerful at one time or another. This list included Wilek (Wilhelm) Chilowicz and his wife, Maria Chilowicz, and his top assistants, Mietek Finkelstein and Maier Kerner.72 Other prominent OD men were Wilhelm (Wilek) Schnitzer, Chilowicz’s secretary, Romek Faeber, and Schoenfeld.73 Each of them, or at least their fates, would play an important role in determining which Jews would be sent to Oskar Schindler’s new camp in Brünnlitz, which meant life, and who would not. Chilowicz was the head of the Jewish OD unit at Płaszów. It was his responsibility to maintain order in the closed Jewish portions of the camp and to help oversee all movements of Jews in and out of the camp. For better or worse, these responsibilities gave Chilowicz and those closest to him vast power over the Jewish inmates in Płaszów.
To visualize this, go back and watch how Steven Spielberg traces the story of Marcel Goldberg, the real author of “Schindler’s List,” in his film. He begins in the early part of the film with Goldberg sitting near Leopold “Poldek” Page and other Jewish black marketeers in Kraków’s Marjacki Bazylika (St. Mary’s Basilica) as Oskar Schindler tries to interest them in doing business with a German. What follows throughout the rest of the film is the subtle tale of Goldberg’s gradual moral degeneration. Schindler, for example, gives Itzhak Stern first a lighter, then a cigarette case, and finally a watch to bribe Goldberg to send more Jews to his factory from Płaszów. And though Spielberg erroneously made Oskar Schindler and Itzhak Stern the authors of the famous “Schindler’s List,” it is apparent in his depiction of Goldberg throughout the film that he was aware that this OD man had a lot more to do with this matter than either Schindler or Stern.74
What corrupted Chilowicz and men like him was power mixed with greed. Wolfgang Sofsky said that the camp “aristocracy” had “everything the other prisoners lacked: enough to eat, warm clothing, sturdy shoes.” They slept in their own beds, were clean-shaven, and did not have to shave their heads. If they were ill, they were given special medical care. They had access to the camp’s brothel and to numerous other forms of entertainment. But “during the day, they spread terror in the camp, supported and admired by their servants and lackeys.” At night, while playing cards, “they consumed the day’s loot—a bottle of liquor, some cigarettes. In the midst of hunger and misery, the aristocracy lived in its own special world.”75 This was the world of Wilek Chilowicz and those closest to him.
In fairness to Chilowicz, a few Schindler Jews, Roman Ferber among them, spoke kindly of him. Chilowicz, who had no children, hid Roman in the camp. But Ferber also admits that Chilowicz was Göth’s “flunky” and helped the commandant “amass a fortune on Kraków’s black market.” He also admitted that Chilowicz “collected quite a nest egg for himself.”76 Dr. Stanley Robbin said that it was Chilowicz who sent him to Emalia, ultimately a life-saving gesture.77 Abraham Zuckerman remembered one occasion when he and several hundred other Jews were taken by Chilowicz to Chuwoja Gorka after several women had escaped. Zuckerman was fully prepared to die. Instead, Chilowicz just lectured them harshly about the escapes and told everyone to go back to work. Zuckerman thought that Chilowicz “had some compassion . . . and he only put on a display of anger for his Nazi superiors.”78 While she was in Płaszów, Stella Müller-Madej remembered hearing that Chilowicz was “trying to do some good things” for them, although she never saw any of his good deeds. She added that he was “not a kind person” and “shouts at us all the time, calling us sons of bitches, an expression that is always on his lips.”79
