Oskar Schindler, page 50
9.
THE CREATION OF “SCHINDLER’S LIST”
MARCEL GOLDBERG IS CERTAINLY ONE OF THE MOST MYSTERIOUS yet important figures in the Schindler story. When I began my research for this book, I had a sense of his importance but could find few people who knew anything about him. Thomas Keneally seemed aware of Goldberg’s significance to the creation of the “list,” but could only conclude that he “had the power to tinker with its edges.”1 From Keneally’s perspective, Oskar Schindler was the principal author of his famous “list.” He claimed that Schindler brought a “preparatory list” with more than a thousand names on it to Płaszów and that Goldberg and Raimund Titsch, the manager of Julius Madritsch’s sewing factory, made slight changes before it was submitted to the SS for final approval. But Keneally also said that there was a “haziness suitable to a legend about the precise chronology of Oskar’s list.” He added that this haziness didn’t “attach to the existence of the list” because there was a copy of it in Yad Vashem’s archives.2
In reality, Oskar Schindler had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of his famous transport list. He admitted as much to Dr. Stanley Robbin after the war. Dr. Robbin, a Jewish physician at Emalia, was one of those Schindlerjuden taken directly from Emalia during the first week of August 1944 and put on the transport for Mauthausen. Dr. Robbin met Oskar in Germany several years later and asked him why so many longtime Emalia workers did not make it onto the list: “He told me he was not responsible for it. He never arranged this, and he apologized.”3
Moreover, the supposed original list at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and in the Schindler “Koffer” collection in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz is dated April 18, 1945. This is the list that Marcel Goldberg is carrying in one scene in Schindler’s List. The original lists (one for men and one for women), which I discovered during my research, are dated October 21, 1944 (seven hundred men) and November 12, 1944 (three hundred women). The reason it is important to differentiate between the lists created in the spring of 1945 (there were several) is that the names were changing constantly from the time Goldberg created the list in the fall of 1944 to the date of the liberation of Brünnlitz on May 8, 1945, the date of the final “Schindler’s List.” To speak of one “Schindler’s List” is inaccurate and misleading because it clouds the issues surrounding the constantly changing nature of the list. The final lists that were written on May 8, 1945, were different from those created by Goldberg in Płaszów. Some names that had appeared on the list in the fall were unceremoniously removed and replaced by others during the transit to Brünnlitz via Groß Rosen and Auschwitz. At Brünnlitz, new names were added to the male and female lists as small transports from other camps made their way to Schindler’s sub-camp in the Sudetenland. As we have each of these transit lists, we can also consider them part of the collection of “Schindler’s Lists.”
Finally, though Marcel Goldberg was certainly the most important figure in the creation of the male and female lists in Płaszów and played a decisive role in the removal and replacement of certain Schindler men during the transit to Brünnlitz, he lost his authority when he arrived at Schindler’s new factory in the Sudetenland. The difference here is that when Goldberg was in charge of the lists in Płaszów, and had at least some influence over the male list in Groß Rosen, greed and personal contacts played a role in who was put on and who was taken off. When the seven hundred men and three hundred women arrived at Brünnlitz, Mietek Pemper and Itzhak Stern were put in charge and things changed. Moreover, Oskar and Emilie Schindler would now play a more direct role in the lives of their Jewish workers. And because Marcel Goldberg had lost his influence and credibility, Jews added to Oskar Schindler’s list were on there purely for humanitarian reasons.
But who was Marcel Goldberg and why was he so important to the creation of the original “Schindler’s List?” Keneally and Spielberg both seemed to have some sense of his importance to the creation of the famous list. Keneally described him as a “personnel clerk” who took advantage of the fact that Płaszów’s new commandant, Büscher, “could not have cared, within certain numerical limits, who went on the list.”4 But Keneally still saw Schindler, and to a lesser degree, Raimund Titsch, as the principal authors of the list. Spielberg picked up on this and dropped Titsch and Madritsch from the story. Why? Madritsch and Titsch were both considered good Germans (or, more accurately, good Austrians), so it is possible that he thought it would be simpler to identify with one hero instead of several. This is the reason he chose to make Itzhak Stern a composite of Stern, Pemper, and Bankier. It is also possible that no one had investigated Madritsch and Titsch’s stories. The Schindler story was promoted by Leopold Page and a small group of extremely dedicated Schindlerjuden. Though many of them knew extensively about Madritsch and Titsch, they did not consider either of them in Schindler’s league.
Unfortunately, the result of all of this is two mythical stories about the creation of “Schindler’s List.” Keneally did the best he could with the resources at hand; he also did not make the list’s creation the centerpiece of his historical novel. When his original book on Schindler came out in Great Britain in 1982, it was titled Schindler’s Ark. Keneally correctly understood that the significance of what Oskar Schindler did during the Holocaust took place over several years and involved some very special relationships with Jews. Schindler’s Ark, and its American literary twin, Schindler’s List, is about the special relationship that Oskar Schindler developed with some of his Jewish workers and acquaintances over a six-year period. Oskar Schindler’s story is carefully intertwined with the testimonies of the Jews he came to befriend and help, not just in the fall of 1944 but throughout the war. Spielberg chose to take a much more simplistic approach to the Schindler story.
On the other hand, Spielberg, while admitting Goldberg’s corruption, chose to give the audience a more wholesome story that fits with his theme of Oskar Schindler’s moral evolution through the film. And how better to do this than link him in authorship of the list with the film’s moral touchstone, Itzhak Stern. Telling the truth would have paired Schindler, a heavy drinker and womanizer, with a corrupt Jew, Marcel Goldberg. And if Spielberg had taken Schindler completely out of this phase of the film, he would have robbed it of its heart. If he had linked Schindler with Goldberg, he would simply have strengthened the sense that what really drove Oskar Schindler in all of this was money. But Spielberg did not leave Marcel Goldberg completely out of the story; he created a mini-story within a story through which he traced Goldberg’s moral degeneration through the film. So though Spielberg dared not link Goldberg directly to Schindler when it came to the authorship of the list, he at least had enough sense of history to discuss Goldberg’s moral failings elsewhere.
The List
Thomas Keneally was carefully guided in his research and interviews by Leopold Page, who was probably uncomfortable with the Goldberg story because it did not fit with his idealistic image of Oskar. This had more to do, at least from Page’s viewpoint, with protecting the image of someone he deeply cared for than with anything else. And despite his balanced approach to the Schindler story, there is no question that Thomas Keneally, a kind person in his own right, was affected by Page’s adoring attitude. But it is also possible that the Schindler Jews that Keneally interviewed simply did not know much about Goldberg and his role in the creation of the list. Itzhak Stern, who knew everything, was dead, and Keneally had spent only a few hours with Mietek Pemper, these in the Munich airport. Keneally had more time with Dr. Moshe Bejski, by then the acknowledged “dean” of Schindler Jews in Israel. But if I had not spent a lot of time with Bejski and Pemper, and asked specific questions about Goldberg, they probably would not have brought him up.
In the early stages of my research, I asked Dr. Bejski, a retired justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, and Mietek Pemper about Marcel Goldberg. Dr. Bejski simply told me that “Marcel Goldberg prepared the list.” He added that if there were vacancies on the list, then people could bribe Goldberg to get on one of them.5 Mietek Pemper and I talked extensively about Goldberg during my interviews with him in 1999 and 2000. He told me that Goldberg “had a free hand in choosing what people to put on the list.” Goldberg’s superior, Franz Müller, “did not care what he did.”6 The only other direct witness to all this, Itzhak Stern, did not even mention Goldberg in his 1956 report to Yad Vashem. But in his memoirs, Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein attributed the authorship of “Schindler’s List” to Marcel Goldberg.7
In fact, most of the Schindlerjuden I interviewed knew or had heard that Marcel Goldberg was the author of “Schindler’s List,” though many of them were fuzzy about details.
But feelings and attitudes towards Goldberg varied. Like Wilek Chilowicz, Marcel Goldberg had supporters, though most Schindler Jews were extremely critical of him. Some were outraged about his efforts to sell places on the lists; others were bitter because he either did not put them on the lists or at some point took them off. Rena Ferber Finder was one of the Schindler Jews who saw firsthand some of Goldberg’s treachery. Rena’s father, Moniek (Moses) Ferber, had been an OD man in the ghetto and helped Goldberg get a job on the Jewish police force. Rena’s family even shared space with the Goldberg family in a ghetto apartment. On December 31, 1942, Moses Ferber and Marcel Goldberg were arrested together. Later, Marcel Goldberg was released, but Moses Ferber was sent to Auschwitz, where he was killed. Rena did not learn of his death until after the war.8
Rena told me that she thought that Goldberg was jealous of her father and she was, needless to say, suspicious about why one of the two Jewish OD men arrested on New Year’s Eve, 1942, was sent to Auschwitz and death and not the other. Here, she said, we begin to see the real Goldberg. Several months after her father’s arrest and disappearance, Rena went to see Goldberg, who by this time was working in Płaszów for Amon Göth, and asked Goldberg to put her and her mother on a list to Schindler’s factory. Rena said that as early as 1943 she knew of people who were bribing Goldberg to send them to Emalia. Rena ultimately got a job at Emalia working on a lathe.9
Moshe Bejski said that Goldberg was principally interested in diamonds, which he brought with him to Brünnlitz. Sol Urbach said, though, that it was hard for him to imagine anyone having any sort of wealth at this point in the Holocaust. He talked about the strict body searches conducted by the SS before entering Płaszów and explained that the only people he knew who were able to bring valuables into the camp were those who had placed condoms filled with valuables deep inside their rectums.10 But some people had managed to hide valuables when they entered Płaszów. Roman Ferber’s mother, Malia, had two diamonds “drilled into her teeth,” as well as other valuables that enabled the family to survive the Holocaust.11
Chaskel Schlesinger managed to take several gold rings with him to Płaszów and Brünnlitz, and Pola Gerner Yogev’s family spent a fortune in hidden money to keep their elderly grandmother alive. “Everybody tried to save themselves and their families. Some did it by ‘ethical’ means, some by ‘unethical’ means.”12 Lola Feldman Orzech kept a 500 złoty ($156.25) note hidden in her hair bun; Roman Ferber carried a $100 bill with him throughout the Holocaust. Moses Goldberg managed to sneak a 1,000- złoty ($312.50) bill into Płaszów, which he used to bribe a Kapo to keep him off the Kommando 1005 exhumation and burning detail.13 Sam Wertheim turned some valuables into cash just before he was sent to Płaszów, and then Mauthausen, in August 1944. He asked Leopold Page to give the money to his wife, Edith, who in turn was to give it to Sam’s father; Page gave Edith “every single penny,” which she hid in a loaf of bread under straw in Płaszów.14
By the time that Schindlerjude Sam Birenzweig (Zimich Birnzweig) became a prisoner in Płaszów in the early fall of 1944, it was almost empty. The camp, he said, had a vibrant black market fueled by a “Płaszów-area store that still stocked luxury items like vodka and salami.” Sam said the store was for “show” because the Germans still wanted “to maintain the illusion that they were winning the war.” These luxury items “were like diamonds. I didn’t eat good food like this for three or four years! I brought [sic] it inside Płaszów. People there had money. This was terrific!” 15 It is also important to remember Hans Stauber’s comments to Heinrich Himmler at about the same time. Stauber, the chief treasurer of the Army Post Administration in Kraków, had complained to the Reichs-führer SS in early September 1944 about the active black market trading between guards and Jewish prisoners in Płaszów.16 So there were valuables in Płaszów to buy almost anything, even a human life. It is doubtful, though, that more than a handful of the remaining inmates had anything significant to trade. If they did, it was usually used to buy bread or other foodstuffs to supplement their meager diet.
And though some people bribed Marcel Goldberg to get onto “Schindler’s List,” most were on it for other reasons. Many of the places, for example, were already predetermined. Mietek Pemper told me, for example, that although Oskar Schindler had little to do with the actual creation of the list, he gave Franz Müller several general guidelines for who he wanted on the list. He first wanted “my people,” meaning the remaining Emalia Jews, Madritsch’s list of workers, and specially trained metal workers.17 Beyond this, Goldberg had to add to the list the workers who had accompanied Brünnlitz’s new commandant, Josef Leipold, from the aviation factory in Wieliczka. The Jews chosen by Madritsch, or, more precisely, his manager, Raimund Titsch, were the most prominent Jews from his factory. The same was true with the Jews chosen by Leipold.
After the war, Oskar was bitter about what he saw as Julius Madritsch’s failure to do more to put a substantial number of his Jewish workers on the list. Oskar first alluded to this in his 1945 financial report. He mentioned as part of his discussion about the transfer of his armaments operations from Emalia to Brünnlitz that Raimund Titsch had been able to rescue “at least part of his Jews to my relocated factory in Bruennlitz. This was a task that in my opinion should have been Mr. Madritsch’s obligation.” He added that Titsch visited Brünnlitz several times to make sure that his Jews were “not living in danger and also to give them the support and mail of foreign friends.”18
Oskar was more pointed in his criticism of Madritsch in several letters he wrote to Dr. K. J. Ball-Kaduri, who was investigating the Schindler story in the summer and fall of 1956. On August 24, 1956, Dr. Ball-Kaduri had written Itzhak Stern in Israel and asked him to talk about his experiences in Poland during the Holocaust. Stern let Oskar read the letter and suggested that he also share his experiences with Dr. Ball-Kaduri. Over the next few months, Oskar and Dr. Ball-Kaduri corresponded about Oskar’s wartime experiences. In one of his letters, Dr. Ball-Kaduri asked Oskar whether he had a copy of Madritsch’s wartime memoirs, Menschen in Not! (People in Distress). Oskar had already told Dr. Ball-Kaduri of his frustration with Madritsch, though he did not initially mention him by name. In his letter to the Yad Vashem researcher on September 9, 1956, Oskar talked of being urged during his last months in Emalia “to emigrate to Switzerland in order to save myself and my financial possessions.” This would have meant, Oskar explained, “to leave everything to its predestined fate (extermination).” Oskar also admitted that “it took quite a bit of moral strength to say ‘no.’” Yet, he wondered, “who would have dared condemn me, if I had left for Switzerland after being imprisoned by the dangerous Gestapo?”19
Five and a half weeks later, Oskar sent Dr. Ball-Kaduri a copy of Madritsch’s wartime memoirs and told him that he felt “somewhat biased regarding the case of Madritsch, since the greed of this man prevented me from the certain rescue of 300 people, mainly women, from the Madritsch factory.” Schindler added that all Madritsch seemed interested in was five wagons of “rickety and rusty sewing machines and questionable textiles,” which had already been transferred to Bregenz, Austria, on Lake Constance (or Bodensee, which rests on the Swiss, German, and Austrian borders). Oskar said that Madritsch’s machinery and textiles seemed more important to him than “the fate of the people entrusted to him.” Titsch was more pointed in his criticism of Madritsch, who, he said, “was content in his safe, secure position, and had no intention of endangering himself, the amount of money that he had made, his position, and his security in general by taking this dangerous step.”20
For Oskar, the real hero in this story was Titsch who, he thought, deserved “an Iron Cross for humaneness.” He said that “Titsch alone was the motor and it was because of his selfless, undaunted actions when Jewish people were helped at the Madritsch factory.”21 Titsch felt the same way about Schindler. After the war, he said, “I look upon Schindler as the greatest adventurer I have ever known; the bravest man I have ever known.”22 Oskar told Dr. Ball-Kaduri that he had discussed the three hundred or so Jewish workers with Madritsch one evening at a party at Büscher’s villa. According to Schindler, when he asked Madritsch about putting some of his Jews on the list, Madritsch seemed uninterested. Oskar continued to press him on the matter until Madritsch said, “Dear Oskar, spare yourself your words; it is a lost cause. I am not investing another dime in it.” Titsch, who was also at the party, spoke with Oskar later that evening and hastily put together a list with sixty-two names on it. Titsch later admitted that it was difficult to come up with so many names at a loud, drunken party. Oskar said that he was then able to persuade Büscher, who was in a good mood, to sign it. He explained that the Jews on the list would be “factory tailors.”23
But the hand-written note that Titsch gave to Oskar that night was not the final Madritsch list. I found it in Schindler’s “Koffer” files, which Chris Staehr discovered in the attic of his father’s home in Hildesheim in 1997 and later gave to Yad Vashem. At Chris’s insistence, the Bundes-archiv was permitted to make a copy of this large collection before it was sent to Israel. The carefully typed Madritsch list had the names of forty men and twenty women with their camp identification numbers and is dated October 1944. Titsch wrote by hand the following: “Verzeichnis der von den to Schindler über unser besuchen über nommenen Leute un-serer Betriebes.” This is really poor German which indicates it was written in haste. Essentially it says that “this is the list for Schindler based on our discussion about the people from our closed factories.” The typed list was on an outdated letterhead that read Julius Madritsch, Krakauer Kon-fektion, Krakau-Podgorze, Ringplatz 3. Marcel Goldberg signed his name at the bottom of the Madritsch list. According to Martin Gosch and Howard Koch, who interviewed Titsch for a film project they were working on in 1964, “Julius Madritsch, who now lives in Vienna, carries the original copy of this list in his pocket always.”24
