Oskar Schindler, page 51
Several interesting things can be learned from this list, particularly when it is tied to Oskar’s discussions with Madritsch and Titsch in October 1944. Schindler’s list was prepared just after he got permission from the Armaments Inspectorate and the SS to move his armaments operations to Brünnlitz. We know from Oskar’s comments that this matter was uncertain until the last minute. And from the time Oskar received his orders to shut down his armaments production at Emalia, Göth and his successor, Büscher, were emptying Płaszów of its Jewish prisoners. With the transport of 4,000 prisoners to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany in late July 1944, there were still about 20,000 prisoners in Płaszów. On August 6, Göth shipped 7,500 Jewish women to Auschwitz and four days later 4,589 Jewish men to Mauthausen, which reduced the camp’s population by almost half. On August 10, another 1,446 Jewish women were sent from Płaszów to Auschwitz; and in September, the SS closed the Polish section of the camp. Only about 7,000 Jews now remained in Płaszów.25
They would be shipped out of Płaszów in October in two major transports; when they were gone, all that remained of the former camp population were six or seven hundred prisoners and a skeleton staff of forty to complete the final liquidation of the camp. On October 15, 4,500 men were sent to Groß Rosen; a week later, Büscher sent 2,000 women to Auschwitz. The transports of October 15 and October 22 included the seven hundred men and three hundred women, who were to be sent ultimately to Brünnlitz.26 Schindler’s seemingly last-minute request to Madritsch for three hundred names, principally women, is revealing because he appeared desperate to find names to fill the women’s list. One would have presumed that when Oskar told Franz Müller that his first priority was “my people,” he meant the men and women who had worked for him at Emalia. We have no idea how many women worked for Oskar at Emalia, but given the 700:300 ration of his 1944 list, one would presume that this was about how many women worked for him in his Kraków factory. But if Oskar was asking Madritsch to fill his female quota almost completely, then little must have been done to protect his former female workers. This probably had less to do with Oskar’s concern over the fate of his Emalia workers than his inability to win approval for his move to Brünnlitz until the eve of the next to last liquidation stage for Płaszów. If that was so, there was probably little he could do to keep his individual workers off the ongoing transports out of Płaszów. A case in point, of course, was the Mauthausen transport of August 10. All that Oskar could do in that situation was help make the trip to Austria a little more comfortable for his former Jewish workers. Because Madritsch and Titsch were able to come up with only sixty names at the last minute, Marcel Goldberg had to fill the remaining places for women bound for Brünnlitz. Complicating the matter further, Mietek Pemper told me that the three hundred women on the female Płaszów-Auschwitz-Brünnlitz list “were mainly women who had worked for Oskar Schindler in Emalia.” Goldberg, of course, was on the October 15 transport to Groß Rosen, so there is no way to tell whether changes were made on the female list during the next week.27
After the war, Madritsch explained what seemed to be his hesitancy to join Schindler in Brünnlitz. He had planned for some time to move his operations to Lower Austria and reopen his factory in Drosendorf. These plans fell through, he explained, because the fields where he wanted to build his barracks for his Jewish workers had not been harvested. Local officials then rejected his application for the move. One wonders whether the real reason for local Austrian disapproval was similar to the one Schindler encountered when he tried to move his armaments factory to the Sudetenland. At this juncture, Madritsch wrote, he accepted Oskar Schindler’s offer to move his sewing factory to Brünnlitz. He was given the permission of economic officials in the General Government and the HSSPF Ost for the move but failed to get approval from Maurer’s D2 Office. Madritsch made several trips to Berlin to argue his case but was finally told that “uniforms are not an essential production item for the war effort. Fighting is possible in civilian clothes, too. Jewish work forces are to be used in the production of ammunition only!”28
Actually, Madritsch should not have been surprised by D2’s rejection of his application for the move. He had difficulty getting approval to keep his factory open earlier in the year and only received a six-month contract from Maurer’s office in February 1944 to keep his sewing factory open in Płaszów. Consequently, D2’s rejection of his application to move with Schindler to Brünnlitz was in line with its earlier decisions.29 But Madritsch did not know that a good part of the vast factory complex where Schindler would open his small armaments factory in Brünnlitz already housed a large SS uniform factory. Mietek Pemper shared this information with me when I interviewed him for a second time in early 2000. I had excitedly brought with me a factory plan that the archives of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., identified as Brünnlitz. Mr. Pemper explained that this was a plan for the SS uniform factory in the larger factory complex where Schindler had his factory. But it was not a plan for Oskar’s factory.30 Maurer’s D2 office knew this, which was probably one of the reasons it rejected Madritsch’s application. Moreover, given the difficulties Oskar encountered in persuading local officials in the Sudetenland to support his move there, Madritsch’s efforts to join Schindler with his large Jewish workforce there could easily have torpedoed Schindler’s planned move.
Madritsch said that by August 6, 1944, he had given up hope of ever moving his factory. Gradually, many of Madritsch’s 2,000 workers were sent to Auschwitz and Mauthausen. He was initially allowed to keep about three hundred men and two hundred women for cleanup work. They would be placed on the final October transports to Groß Rosen and Auschwitz in October. He said he provided Oskar with a hundred names for his list and also gave him “several hundred meters of textiles from his Krakow stock piles.”31
But Madritsch’s story did not end there. In early September, he visited his family in Vienna, where he and his wife “were buried alive in my mother’s house after an air raid on Vienna.” But his troubles were only beginning. On November 3, 1944, the SD arrested him in Kraków and put him in the city’s infamous Montelupich prison. Three days later, he was transferred to a prison in Berlin. The SD explained that his name had been found on a list of the resistance movement in Poland: “I was supposed to have spread gruesome stories about Plaszow. That’s all?” The SD released him after twelve days.32
Given all this, why did Oskar feel so betrayed by Madritsch? There is no reason to doubt Madritsch’s version of the story. The Jews who worked for him considered him Schindler’s equal when it came to the treatment of his Jewish workers. Just after the war, Irvin (Izak) and Phyllis (Feiga Wittenberg) Karp, both Schindler Jews, went to Vienna to testify in support of Madritsch and Titsch’s efforts during the Holocaust. Madritsch had taken over their business, Hogo, and Irvin helped run the business for Madritsch. Celina Karp Biniaz, Irvin and Phyllis’s daughter, described Madritsch as “more elegant and classy than Schindler.” He was, she added, “a good human being with a heart.” She was equally complimentary of Titsch, whom she considered “a wonderful man who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.” During the war, Jakub Feigenbaum gave Titsch some diamonds to keep for him. When the war ended, he went to Vienna to find Titsch, who returned the diamonds.33
Julius Madritsch and Oskar Schindler were very different people. Madritsch had a good working relationship with Amon Göth, yet he never felt the need to cross the line when it came to sharing Göth’s passion for wild parties and drinking. Helen Sternlicht-Rosenzweig, one of Amon Göth’s two Jewish maids, said that, unlike Oskar, Madritsch was not a womanizer.34 Madritsch’s virtuous ways and kind treatment of his Jewish workers made him, along with Titsch, a prime candidate for nomination as a Righteous Among the Nations in Israel after the war. It is quite possible that Oskar was jealous of Madritsch, who prospered after the war, though this would not explain why he criticized Madritsch just after the war ended. After their escape to Germany, Oskar and Emilie became very close to some of the Jews they had cared for and protected during the Shoah. In this unguarded environment, questions must have been asked about why certain people made the list and others did not. Given Madritsch’s reputation as someone friendly and helpful to Jews, some Schindlerjuden must have wondered why some of their friends and relatives who worked for Madritsch were not on the list. Given the inconsistencies, favoritism, luck, bribery, and other factors that went into the creation of the list by Goldberg, it would have been easier to blame questions about the “missing” on Madritsch rather than Oskar Schindler, who was gradually emerging as a saint to many of his former Jewish workers.
But there is no doubt that jealousy was a factor once the issue of Madritsch and Schindler came to the attention of Yad Vashem in the mid-1950s. By this time, Oskar had failed in his business ventures in Argentina, and his efforts to save Jews during the war became an important part of his identity. To suddenly have to share it with Julius Madritsch, a successful man of seeming impeccable character, was probably a little more than Oskar could handle. From Schindler’s perspective, Madritsch owed his postwar success to the money he made during the war, and this only added to Schindler’s dislike of him. Raimund Titsch, on the other hand, was a different matter. He was not a factory owner and therefore not as threatening to Schindler as Madritsch. Oskar had read Madritsch’s memoirs, Menschen in Not! but said little about it. He never questioned the accuracy of Madritsch’s account, which was filled with countless, daring tales of efforts to help Jews throughout the war. Perhaps Oskar, whose own account of his wartime efforts to save Jews was published in Germany in 1957, was uncomfortable about sharing the limelight with someone whom some Schindlerjuden considered Oskar Schindler’s equal.35
Oskar Schindler (sitting at steering wheel) with family. Svitavy, Czechoslovakia, 1920s. (USHMM)
Schindler home in Svitavy, Czech Republic, and Sudeten German monument to Oskar Schindler. (David M. Crowe)
Kraków Environs, 1942–1944.(USHMM Historical Atlas of the Holocaust)
Official factory plan for Emalia, Kraków.(Ami Staehr Collection, Stuttgart)
Architect’s drawings for Schindler Nebenlager(subcamp) at Emalia in Kraków.(Ami Staehr Collection, Stuttgart)
Front Entrance of Emalia today, Kraków. (David M. Crowe)
Glass Staircase at Emalia today, Kraków. (David M. Crowe)
Oskar Schindler (second from left) with his German office staff and Abraham Bankier (third from right). (USHMM)
Oskar Schindler with his Jewish workers at Emalia. (USHMM)
Oskar Schindler parties with German officers in Kraków. (USHMM)
Płaszów Concentration Camp, January 1944. (USHMM, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust)
Mietek Pemper, Augsburg, Germany. (David M. Crowe)
Płaszów concentration camp, Kraków, 1944. (USHMM)
Płaszów today, Kraków. (David M. Crowe)
Monument to Jewish Dead—Płaszów, Kraków. (David M. Crowe)
Amon Göth on the balcony of his Płaszów villa. (USHMM)
Amon Göth on trial in Kraków, 1946. (USHMM)
Male “Schindler’s List,” AL Groß-Rosen – AL Brünnlitz. October 21, 1944.
(Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau)
Golleschau Transport List, January 29, 1945. (Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau)
Oskar Schindler’s Brünnlitz factory today. BrnZnec, Czech Republic. (David M. Crowe)
Oskar and Emilie after war. (Yad Vashem)
Oskar Schindler and Itzhak Stern, Paris 1949. (USHMM and Tobe Steinhouse)
Leopold Page and Oskar Schindler. (USHMM)
Oskar Schindler plants his tree at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1962. (USHMM)
Oskar and Ami Staehr, Israel, 1973. (Ami Staehr Collection, Stuttgart)
Oskar Schindler’s funeral, Jerusalem 1974. Dr. Moshe Bejski is standing at the far left. (Ami Staehr Collection, Stuttgart)
Ami Staehr (on left), Dr. Moshe Bejski, and Erika Bejski at Oskar’s grave in the Latin Cemetery, Jerusalem, 1975. (Ami Staehr Collection, Stuttgart)
Ami Staehr in front of Oskar’s tree along the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1975. (Ami Staehr Collection, Stuttgart)
Chris and Tina Staehr, Tübingen, Germany, 2000. (David M. Crowe)
Sol Urbach and Emilie Schindler, New York, 1993. (Sol Urbach)
Oskar and Emilie’s home, 102-108 Viamonte, San Vicente, Argentina. (David M. Crowe)
House built for Emilie by B’nai B’rith, 353 San Martin, San Vicente, Argentina— with author. (David M. Crowe)
Emilie with (from left) Ilse Chwat, Francisco Wichter, author, and Ilse Wartenleben, Hogar los Pinos, May, 2001. (David M. Crowe)
Emilie Schindler, Hogar los Pinos, May, 2001. (David M. Crowe)
Emilie Schindler’s grave, Waldkreiburg, Germany, October, 2003. (David M. Crowe)
Finally, there is the matter of how many Jews were on the Madritsch- Titsch list. Madritsch said in Menschen in Not! that he gave Oskar 100 names while the list that Titsch sent to Goldberg only had sixty names on it. Moreover, only fifty-three of the Madritsch Jews on the Titsch-Goldberg list made it to Brünnlitz. The shifting numbers can only be explained by the whims of Marcel Goldberg. People were desperate to get on the list at the last minute. One of the remarkable things about the two “Schindler’s Lists” is the many family groupings. If you had no connections, money, or significant family ties, it was possible you could be replaced by someone who had the money to bribe Goldberg. As Schindler, Madritsch, and Titsch had little say over the actual creation of the two lists, there was no guarantee you would get on it just because one of them suggested your name. Goldberg was smart enough to know that he had to put the important Schindler and Madritsch people on his lists. Margot Schlesinger said that Goldberg was afraid of Titsch, though this was probably not enough to insure that one would finally be put on Goldberg’s lists for Płaszów-Groß Rosen-Brünnlitz and Płaszów-Auschwitz-Brünnlitz.36
This was probably because Titsch, like Schindler and Madritsch, had developed a special relationship with Göth. Płaszów’s commandant was an avid chess player, as was Titsch. One day, Göth asked Titsch to play a game with him, which Titsch won handily. Göth flew into a rage, turned the chess table over, and “stormed out of his office, with his guns on him, and was ready,” according to Titsch, “to kill any Jew in sight.” After this outburst, Titsch decided to lose to Göth to prevent similar incidents. But he decided to do it very carefully and slowly. Over time, he was able to convince Göth, after losing to him many times, that the commandant was the superior chess player. Titsch made certain that each losing game lasted from three to four hours so that “the camp, and the Jewish people in the camp could breathe easily” during the hours they were playing. And though Titsch and Göth did not play every day, Titsch tried “to engage Goeth in a game of chess whenever possible, because it was in a way his kind of Christian duty [Titsch was a Roman Catholic] to contribute to the welfare of his brother fellow men.”37 Goldberg knew of Titsch’s “chess” relationship with Göth as well as their Viennese ties, which is probably the reason he feared Titsch.
Regardless, Goldberg had his own favorites when it came to whom he wanted on his lists and he could be quite bold when he made his choices. He removed Noah Stockman, the top Jewish leader among the “Budzyner” Jews favored by Brünnlitz’s new commandant, SS-Obersturmführer Josef Leipold, while the men were in Groß Rosen. Leipold, who had been commandant of the Heinkel aircraft factory camps at Budzyvń and Wieliczka (Wilhelmsburg), trusted Stockman and wanted him to play the same role in Brünnlitz that he had at Budzyvń and Wieliczka. The group of about fifty to sixty “Budzyners” saw themselves as something special, though they were not powerful enough to prevent Goldberg from removing Stockman from the list in Groß Rosen. This insured continued friction between the Kraków Jewish leadership and the “Budzyners” throughout the rest of the war.38
The Budzyvń concentration camp was built on the site of a former Polish military industrial complex that included an aircraft factory. The Budzyvń military factories were located just north of Kraśsnik, which was thirty-five miles southwest of Lublin. After the Germans conquered Poland, the military factories at Budzyvń became part of the Hermann Göring Works (Reichswerke Hermann Göring) and the Ernst Heinkel Aircraft Company (Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke A.G.) took over the Polish aircraft factory. Heinkel had begun to use slave laborers at its new aircraft factory in Oranienburg in 1941. During the next four years, Heinkel- Oranienburg became one of the principal employers of concentration camp labor and a “model for slave labor,” complete with a satellite camp of its own in Oranienburg. It also used slave labor in aircraft factories elsewhere. In early 1944, Heinkel reported that it was employing 2,065 prisoners in its factory in Mauthausen-Schwechat and 5,939 in Sachsen-hausen. The Germans set up a forced labor camp at Budzyvń in 1942 and initially used 500 Jews as slave laborers there. Within a year, 3,000 Jews were working at the various factories at Budzyvń. About 10 percent of them were women and children. On October 22, 1942, the SS declared Budzyvń a concentration camp and made it a part of the Majdanek network of camps.39
