Oskar Schindler, page 49
For the next two weeks, the SS placed Pemper in solitary confinement in the camp’s small jail in the “Grey House,” one of the few original buildings still standing at Płaszów. This was a frightening place and even today, standing alone as it does on the edge of the former camp site, has an ominous look about it. Joseph Bau, a draftsman at Płaszów, has provided us with the only detailed look at the principal buildings at Płaszów in his memoirs, Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry? The camp’s jail was in the basement of the “Grey House,” which he described as a “chamber of horrors.” There were only a few cells in the basement. One was just large enough for a man to stand in; another was just long enough “for shoving a prone person in headfirst, as in a grave.” There were several other isolation cells, which had small slots for water. Nearby was a bench for whipping prisoners with thick leather whips “made from dried-up bulls’ genitalia.” Few prisoners came out of the “Grey House” alive.151
Two weeks after his detention, an elderly SS judge questioned Pemper. During the two-hour interrogation, Pemper gave all the details he knew about Göth’s illegal black market deals. He also told him where he could find the correspondence relating to Göth’s illicit activities. Pemper went into details about Göth’s theft of food from the camp and about the goods he had taken from Jews after the closing of the ghetto that were supposed to be sent to the Reichsbank. When he had completed his testimony, Pemper was released back into the prisoner population. Two weeks later, he was among the seven hundred men selected for transport to Brünnlitz. But this was not the end of his dealings with the SS over Amon Göth’s crimes. In late February or early March 1945, he was taken to Groß Rosen and again interrogated by an SS judge from Munich. For the most part, the judge asked Pemper the same questions that he had been asked by the SS court investigators in Płaszów.152
In his testimony in Göth’s trial in Kraków in 1946, Pemper told the judges that based on the questions asked him by the SS judges in Płaszów and Groß Rosen, he surmised that they were investigating a number of charges against the former Płaszów commandant. This included his theft of valuables from prisoners, which he failed to turn over to the SS, his luxurious lifestyle, and his failure to supply prisoners with adequate nourishment. Pemper told the Kraków court that he also thought the SS was investigating charges against Göth that he had violated concentration camp regulations, particularly when it came to abuses in the penalty company.153 Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein, who also testified against Göth in 1946, went into some detail about one of Göth’s favorite ways to abuse prisoners. It was called the Mannschaftszug (crew train) and was devised by Göth and SS-Untersturmführer Anton Scheidt. The Mannschaftzsug was used in the quarry, which operated twenty-four hours a day. Only women were permitted to work there. Polish women worked in the quarry in twelve-hour shifts during the day; Jewish women worked at night. Thirty-five women were attached to each side of a train of small cars on which were loaded 9,000 kilograms (19,800 lbs) of stone for road work at the upper end of the camp. The women involved, who hauled from twelve to fifteen loads per shift, had to move each load up a very steep incline. Göth was proud of the Mannschaftszug and, on Christmas Eve 1943, he decided to display his unique form of torture to a group of prominent SS officers gathered at his villa for a party. Needless to say, most of the Germans at the party were disgusted by Göth’s display. To counter the negative response, Ruth was able to convince Göth to let the female workers return to their barracks for the night.154
Pemper said that one SS judge told him that such work was a “synonym for death” because it meant “very hard work along with beating and often with death.” The SS drew a fine line between what it justified as politically approved killings and “selfish, sadistic, or sexual punishment.” In fact, in the fall of 1942, the SS legal department (Hauptamt SS-Gericht) asked Heinrich Himmler about these very issues. The Reichsführer SS responded that “if the motive is purely political there should be no punishment unless such is necessary for the maintenance of discipline. If the motive is selfish, sadistic, or sexual, judicial punishment should be imposed for murder or manslaughter as the case may be.”155 Pemper said that the SS also charged Göth for the Chilowicz murders and that one SS judge told him that Göth had killed Chilowicz and the other OD men because they knew too much.156 In the end, Göth’s brutal mistreatment of his prisoners came to haunt him, though the SS never charged him with the mass murder of thousands more because Himmler’s organization approved of such crimes as politically motivated.
Finally, Pemper testified, the SS charged Göth with allowing his prisoners to see “the secret acts, correspondence, which is unavailable for prisoners.” What the SS considered most important in these documents was the personal information, particularly the personnel evaluations of the SS men in the camp. These reports included negative comments that were only supposed to be seen by officers. Even noncommissioned officers could not see these reports. The fact that prisoners who worked in the camp’s offices had seen these reports was considered a serious crime by the SS.157
In his 1964 statement to Gosch and Koch, Schindler said that after Göth’s arrest on September 13, 1944, he “blamed everything on Oskar.” Göth, for example, claimed that Schindler had given him the RM 80,000 ($32,000) found on his person when they arrested him. He also told the SS Court investigators that all of the contraband that they had found at Płaszów had come from Schindler. As a final part of their investigation, Dr. Morgen’s SS team of lawyers and judges decided to detain Schindler, who at this time was at Brünnlitz preparing for the move of part of his factory from Emalia. On October 14 or 15, the twenty-four Jews unloading the huge wagon loads of goods from Emalia saw SS men snooping around the camp. They quickly hid some of Göth’s personal possessions, thinking they belonged to Oskar. They poured the illegal alcohol into the small river that ran beside the factory’s grounds, and hid the priceless cigarettes under a large transformer. This would later become the hiding place for Schindler’s storehouse of illegal arms. Oskar, who had not seen the SS men, was driving into the factory to eat lunch with his Jewish workers. As he approached the factory gate, two men in civilian clothes approached him and ordered him to get out of his car. They said, “We want to question you.” Oskar responded, “This is my factory—if you want to talk to me you can come to my car or else come over to my office.” The plainclothesmen then followed Oskar into his office.158
When they got to Oskar’s office, the SS men asked questions about “Göth’s loot.” Oskar told them that he knew nothing about the matter. He did admit that he had several of Göth’s suitcases, which Göth had asked him to take down, and that they could open them. The suitcases contained only dirty laundry. Oskar quickly surmised that several of his interrogators were SS judges and he knew that he was in a lot of trouble. His first thought was to contact the Abwehr and Wehrmacht friends who had helped him in the past. At this point, Emilie walked into the office and wanted to know why her husband was under arrest. When the SS men refused to give her an answer, Oskar told her to stay out of it, that it was “not her affair.” He did get word to Emilie to contact “Columbus,” Schindler’s secretary, Viktoria Klonowska, in Kraków; she, in turn, would contact someone who could arrange his release.159
At this point, the SS judges had Oskar handcuffed and taken by train to Kraków. As he got off the train, Oskar saw an old friend, Herr Hut, who walked up to him and shook his hand. One of the SS escorts chastised Hut for this: “You still dare to shake hands with this man, who is a prisoner?” Hut replied, “Well, under our law he’s innocent until proven guilty. As far as I’m concerned, he is a fine man, a man that I always knew, Oskar Schindler—a fine gentleman, and Herr Direktor, not a prisoner.” Schindler was then taken to Gestapo headquarters on Pomorska Street and put into one of the small, dark cells in the basement.160
That night, Hut came to see Oskar and brought him a good meal with wine. He also told Schindler that Emilie had contacted “Columbus” and that his secretary had begun contacting members of the “rescue network.” Ths next day, Oskar was taken into a interrogation room where he was questioned by twelve SS officers and judges. Oskar’s defense was fairly simple: “I don’t know anything about this. I didn’t give any bribes to Goeth—why should I? I didn’t need anything from him—I’m on my way to Brünnlitz. I don’t need any more Jews, I have all the workers I need. If I gave him this money, which he said I did, I gave it to him as a loan and there was no other reason.” He also testified, “I’m not a fag,” indicating that there was not a homosexual relationship between them.161
Oskar told Koch and Gosch that he was scared during the eight days he was in SS custody. He was no longer certain that his contacts could get him out of jail because the charge of corruption was so serious. He had been brought to Gestapo headquarters instead of Montelupich prison (where he had been incarcerated earlier), which also frightened him because “only the [word of a] top Nazi, Himmler, could save you.” So even though Schindler was treated well by the SS, he feared for his life. One of the Nazi officers who entered his cell spit on him and called him “a Jew-lover, king of the Jews.” Later, after his release, Oskar met this SS officer in public and got into a fight with him. Schindler knocked the SS man unconscious.162
On the fourth or fifth day of his imprisonment, Hut, “pale, unshaven, drunk,” visited Oskar and told him that Płaszów’s new commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Arnold Büscher, refused to send the three hundred women initially selected to go to Brünnlitz via Auschwitz. According to Schindler, Büscher thought that Oskar was shipping these women to his new camp “for his own special reasons, and that he wasn’t sufficiently anti-Jewish.” Büscher wanted to take the Schindler women off the list and replace them with a different group of women. Oskar, who was becoming increasingly worried about the length of his detention, now had even more reason to try to find a way to get out of the Gestapo jail.163
He asked Hut to contact General Schoen, who was evidently in charge of concentration camps in the region, and to tell him that Oskar wanted to see him. More than likely, Koch and Gosch got the name wrong. If this part of the story is true, and there is no reason to doubt Schindler on this point because other sources verify his imprisonment at this time, he probably asked Hut to contact General Schindler, who oversaw concentration camp labor for the Wehrmacht’s Armaments Inspectorate in the General Government. Regardless, the general did visit Schindler and told him, “Now don’t worry, we’re going to get you out of here, and we’re going to see that the whole blame is placed on Goeth.” The next morning, October 21 or 22, Oskar was released. But instead of returning to Emalia, he drove immediately to Płaszów to find out what had happened to the women.164
As luck would have it, Oskar arrived as 2,000 women were being loaded onto train cars for the transport to Auschwitz. When Schindler drove through the camp’s gate, his women saw him and began to cry out, “There’s Schindler . . . Schindler.” Oskar told Koch and Gosch that Büscher had a separation order for the Schindler women, though it is unclear what he meant by this. When Oskar got out of his car, Büscher asked, “What are you doing here? You have no business here, you are under arrest.” Oskar replied, “You’d be surprised, I have lots of things to do here. I spoke to your boss and do you know what you are doing? You are sabotaging production. Eight days of production for these 300 women. I want you to refer to your list and then separate these 300 women, then take them out of the 9,000 [2,000]—it’s an order, and this must be complied with, as I have this word from the head of the War Production in Berlin.” Büscher, who doubted what Schindler had just told him, decided to separate the three hundred Schindler women from the rest of the group, though they were all going to Auschwitz.165
But this did not end the matter because Büscher “was still determined to get his revenge on Schindler.” Büscher wrote Auschwitz’s commandant, Richard Baer, to send three hundred other women to Brünnlitz instead of the three hundred original Schindler women from Płaszów. Oskar stated that Büscher did this “just to harass Schindler and out of his hatred for him, because he felt that he was befriending Jews.” Then, according to the notes from Martin Gosch and Howard Koch’s meeting with Schindler in Paris in November 1964, Oskar went to Baer and said, “Look, if you give me 300 other women, I have to begin training them again, and this is pretty late to do this—the war effort needs the things that we are going to make, and you take away from me the women who are already skilled, the women I’ve already trained, and this is going to hurt our production down there, so it doesn’t make any sense.” Baer finally agreed to release the 300 original Schindler women to Oskar in return for a payment of six RM ($2.40) a day for each woman for the time they were in Auschwitz. Baer then pocketed this money.166
Unfortunately, as will be seen in the next chapter, the story about how Oskar got his three hundred women out of Auschwitz is fictitious. Schindler did not go to Auschwitz to save them. So how did Gosch and Koch come up with this tale? In 1955 and 1963, Schindler gave Yad Vashem and the West German criminal police a full account of how he had saved these women. This account is also backed up by testimony from Itzhak Stern, Emilie Schindler, and Mietek Pemper, though each account has slight variations. So Schindler either lied to Koch and Gosch in 1964 or fell prey to their continual editorializing during the lengthy interviews. But the story became part of many of the Hollywood myths that arose during this time about Schindler, and some of them ultimately made their way into Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, Schindler’s List.167
The only other time Oskar mentioned this particular detention was in his 1955 report to Yad Vashem. He said that a “recent arrest for several days by the Gestapo and my being turned over to the SS-Court Krakau because of Jewish interests (bribery of officials) cost much local [Sudeten] prestige.”168 Oskar, of course, had been a major contributor to Göth’s illegal financial empire and had a lot to worry about. And though Emilie Schindler did not mention his third arrest in her memoirs, Itzhak Stern said it was Emilie who got Oskar released after eight days “due to connections and [a] great bribe.”169
The arrest, detention, and questioning of Mietek Pemper and Oskar Schindler did not seem to help the SS in their investigation of Göth, who was ultimately released on his own recognizance from prison in late October 1944. The SS, though, continued to investigate the charges against him through the early months of 1945. One reason that Göth was never brought to trial by the SS was Himmler’s decision in the spring of 1944 to limit Morgen’s investigations to the Koch case. Mor-gen, who had set up investigative commissions in most of the concentration camps, evidently pursued the case against Göth against Himm-ler’s wishes. The Morgen investigations had caused quite a stir in the SS, which oversaw the mass murder of millions of Jews and others during the war. Moreover, given the widespread corruption in the SS, an aggressive investigator such as Morgen could create all sorts of problems for any number of officers in the large SS network of camps. In the end, the SS dropped the charges against Göth, though there was enough evidence to convict him of various crimes. Unfortunately, politics and the end of the war kept Morgen from adding Amon Leopold Göth’s name to his list of legal victories.170
Mietek Pemper told me that when Schindler got permission to open his new armaments factory in Brünnlitz, Göth, who at one point had thought of joining Oskar there, contacted Schindler and asked whether he could send his clothes and other personal belongs to Brünnlitz for storage. Oskar agreed, though it is uncertain whether he realized how much Göth planned to send him. Göth sent two large truckloads of goods to Brünnlitz that he ultimately wanted sent to his home in Vienna.171 Oskar explained in 1964 that once he got approval for the move, Göth made an arrangement with him to move his personal goods to Brünnlitz in return for some trucks that Oskar needed to help move machinery and other items to his new factory. Included in Göth’s shipment were 200,000 Polish cigarettes, jewelry, and other valuables.172 Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein remembered seeing these goods in storage in Brünnlitz. One day, he approached Schindler about the need for a bed or couch for the factory’s small sick room. Oskar told Dr. Bieberstein to go to the storage area and tell Adolf Elsner, the inmate in charge, to give him a bed. The storage area was filled with all types of furniture. As Bieberstein looked around, he noticed that many of the items were carefully wrapped. These, Elsner said, were owned by Amon Göth.173
The arrest of Amon Göth and his removal as commandant of Płaszów, particularly when combined with the murder of Wilhelm Chilowicz and his top OD aides, set the stage for one of the most dramatic moments in the Schindler story, the creation of the famous “Schindler’s List.” Göth’s replacement, SS-Obersturmführer Arnold Büscher, had his hands full evacuating the large number of Jews and Poles at Płaszów, helping the Kommando 1005 unit disinter and burn bodies, and breaking up the camp. Consequently, Büscher had little time to worry about names on transport lists. This task was left to Franz Müller, the overseer of the Jewish labor details. Müller was not particularly interested in what names went on a particular list, and the most important figure in all this, Oskar Schindler, was struggling to overcome resistance to his move to the Sude-tenland from local Party figures and business interests. Schindler, too, had more on his mind than the names that went on his famous “list of life” and he had no contact with Müller about it. The only person privy to Oskar Schindler’s general wishes about the list was an undistinguished, greedy OD man who would become the author of a list of 1,000 names made famous by Thomas Keneally and Steven Spielberg. This was Marcel Goldberg, Franz Müller’s Jewish assistant.
