Oskar Schindler, page 55
None of this took place. Oskar Schindler did not go to Auschwitz to save his female workers. He knew they were initially to be sent to Auschwitz before their ultimate transfer to Brünnlitz and did take action when they failed to show up soon after the arrival of his male workers. But what really happened was quite different from the Spielberg version of the story. So what was the basis for the dramatic scene surrounding Schindler’s efforts to save his women in Auschwitz? The information certainly did not come from Schindler, who in his postwar accounts went into little detail about what happened. All he said about his women in Auschwitz in his 1945 report on his wartime activities was that the “men had been in the Groß-Rosen concentration camp for three days, while the women had been in Auschwitz for three weeks. Plundered, almost naked, they finally arrived, wearing old, striped uniforms; we had to adjust to ‘Old Reich’ methods.”113
A decade later, he explained in a report to Yad Vashem that the biggest problem he faced when he tried to move his factory to the Sudetenland was local opposition. “The next great difficulty,” he explained, “concerned my 1,100 Jewish inmates, who meanwhile had been assigned to the KZ [Konzentrationslager] camps Auschwitz and Groß Rosen, as to how to obtain them for my Brünnlitz plant. After several visits to Berlin, and with the support of Ob. Ing. Lange from the OKH military armament office Berlin, I succeeded in obtaining a telegraphed order from the super-intendancy of the concentration camps Amtsgruppe D Oranienburg, the Reich leader SS, to take over my people by name from the KZ GroßRosen and Auschwitz and to transport them to Brünnlitz.”114 At no point in either of these accounts does Oskar discuss anything similar to the accounts found in Spielberg’s film.
So what was the basis of Spielberg’s dramatic scenes involving the saving of the Schindler women? He drew it from Thomas Keneally, who admitted that it was part of the “Schindler mythology.”115 Keneally, who tried to be careful about the facts he used in his historical novel, made a few errors in this part of the book. He claimed, for example, that “according to the Schindler mythology,” Oskar negotiated with Rudolf Höss, who “presided over the entire camp at the time the Schindler women occupied a barracks in Birkenau.”116 SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was Auschwitz’s first commandant. In the aftermath of Dr. Konrad Morgen’s investigations into concentration camp corruption, the highly-decorated, well-thought-of Höss was transferred to WVHA’s Office Group D1 office in Oranienburg, where he served as Deputy Inspector of Concentration Camps under Richard Glücks. He returned to Auschwitz for a few months in 1944 to oversee the murder of Hungarian Jews in operation Aktion Höss but returned to his post in Oranienburg in late summer. So, unless Oskar contacted Höss directly in Oranienburg, it was doubtful that he had any dealings with Auschwitz’s former commandant about the release of three hundred women in the fall of 1944. 117
Keneally, who interviewed Schindlerjuden for his historical novel, carefully discusses the various myths about Schindler and his female workers at Auschwitz. But he gives most credibility to a speech made by Itzhak Stern “years later.”118 Actually, Stern’s remarks were part of a series of spontaneous testimonies given by Schindler Jews at a banquet to honor Oskar, who had recently been nominated as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Tel Aviv on May 2, 1962. Dr. Moshe Bejski told me that the testimonies were not part of the evening’s plans. But as various Schindler Jews stood up to praise Oskar, it occurred to Dr. Bejski that someone should take notes. He began furiously to write down everything that was being said on scraps of paper and napkins. He later organized his scribbled notes into a Hebrew transcript that he gave to Yad Vashem. He graciously shared an English translation with me.119
This is what Stern said:
After tremendous efforts he [Schindler] was able to transfer to Brinlitz only part of the prisoners, as potential workers. The men came to Brinlitz via Groß-Rosen, and the women through Auschwitz. We came to Brinlitz in October 1944. Days passed and the women did not arrive in spite of the confirmed list. I asked Schindler—under pressure of some of my comrades—to try to exert influence in this matter; just then his secretary [Hilde Albrecht] came in. Schindler looked at the pretty young woman, pointed to a big diamond ring on his finger and said, “Do you want this diamond?” The girl was very excited. Schindler told her: “Take the list of the Jewish women, put in your suitcase the best food and beverages, and go to Auschwitz. You know that the commander likes beautiful women. When you come back and the women arrive in camp, you will receive this diamond and more.” The secretary went, and as she did not return within two days, Schindler took Major Polto (?) with him and they traveled to Auschwitz—and after a few days all the women arrived—only my mother (may she rest in peace) was missing. They were the wives, mothers and sisters of the men.120
This is a much more expansive account than the one Stern gave Dr. Ball-Kaduri in his interview with him in 1956.
After one week we realized that only the men had arrived, the women were missing. There was a great deal of anxiety, since many families had been separated. I consulted Schindler. The transport of the women had gone to Auschwitz. He showed a ring to his secretary and said: “This is my ring. Go to Auschwitz and get the women out of there and to Bruennlitz. Whatever it takes to do that, do it. If you are successful, you’ll get this ring.”
He accompanied her during that night. She traveled to Auschwitz in October 1944, and she made daily phone calls to Schindler. She was successful in getting the 300 women to Bruennlitz. Only two women were missing (among them my mother). When she came back, Schindler gave her the ring.121
Stern added that Schindler spoke to his secretary in even more drastic words: “Bring these women to Bruennlitz, use all possible means to do that, even if you have to sleep with the Nazi big shots.”122
Stern then referred to a letter that Oskar had sent to Dr. Ball-Kaduri on September 9, 1956, to underscore his willingness to urge his secretary to use sex, if necessary, to help free the Schindler women in Auschwitz.123 In the letter, Oskar said this:
Who can feel my inner conflict, which I encountered when I sacrificed a dozen women to the orgies of the SS-Uebermenschen (superior human beings), where alcohol and gifts had already lost attraction. Women, of which half of them must have known of the task awaiting them, if they were aware of only parts of my objective. This pain that I felt, was certainly not jealousy, but self-disgust of my actions. I was “throwing pearls to the swine.” The saying that the end justifies the means was often only a shabby comfort.124
In reality, Oskar’s statement of guilt about his misuse of women does little to back up Stern’s account. But over time, Stern’s explanation became an integral part of the Schindler mythology. Dr. Aleksander Bieber-stein accepted it and added his own twist in his memoirs. According to his account, it took Schindler’s secretary only two days to get the women out of Auschwitz and into Brünnlitz.125
Emilie Schindler had a different version of the story about the Auschwitz women. The problem with Emilie’s story, though, is that she gets some of her basic facts wrong about events surrounding the Auschwitz controversy. She said that the Schindler women arrived in Brünnlitz in the spring of 1944 and that Oskar had “paid Goeth [Göth] a huge amount of money so he would let the thirteen hundred people named in the famous list leave without any problems.”126 The transfer of the Schindler Jews involved 1,000 workers and took place in the fall of 1944. Göth, of course, was in jail during this period, though it is possible that Oskar initially bribed him during the early negotiations for the transfer. Emilie went on to say that when Oskar learned “the transport with the women had been diverted to Auschwitz,” he was “confused and nervous.” Regardless, Emilie explained, “he decided not to be cowed and to try to do something, whatever that might be. As ever, I was ready to help him.”127
Oskar and Emilie then went to the office, where Oskar telephoned Willi Schöneborn, the chief technical engineer at Brünnlitz, a position he had also held at Emalia. Oskar told Schöneborn to come to the office; he then took a “small bag out of his pocket, the contents of which were very familiar” and said,
I must entrust you with an important mission. Without the women we cannot go on with the factory. We need their labor, and besides, the men are getting very restless asking why their wives have not come yet. They fear something has gone seriously wrong. You are to go to Auschwitz immediately, speak to whomever you have to, pay whatever the price may be, but I want you to get those women here. I have full confidence in you; I know you are an honorable gentleman who can be trusted and will make good on your word.128
Schöneborn dutifully replied, “It will be done as you say, Herr Direk-tor,” and walked out of the office.129
It is unclear what happened next. Emilie says that though she was sure Schöneborn gave the SS the “precious stones,” there was still no sign of the women. So a few days later, Oskar went to Zwittau (Svitavy), and asked an old friend, Hilde, to go to Auschwitz “and personally take care of the release of the women.” Hilde, at least according to Emilie, “was strikingly beautiful, slender, and graceful.” The daughter of a “wealthy German industrialist,” her parents had been friends of Oskar’s family before the war. During the war, Hilde worked for the Wehrmacht and had contacts with the “upper echelons of the Nazi bureaucracy.” A few days after she left for Auschwitz, “the train with the three hundred female prisoners arrived at the esplanade.” Emilie said that Hilde would never tell her what she did to free to the women, though Emilie suspected that “her great beauty played a decisive part.”130
Mietek Pemper told me a different story. He said the idea that Oskar went personally to Auschwitz to save the women was simply not true. What really happened was much simpler. Oskar, of course, knew that the women had been sent to Auschwitz for quarantine. But when they did not show up, he called the Army Procurement Office (APO; Heeresbeschaf-fungsamt) in Berlin, which established production quotas and labor needs in Brünnlitz. The APO told Schindler to call Gerhard Maurer’s Office Group D2 office in Oranienburg. Oskar did this and told them that the female workers in Auschwitz were essential to his armaments production. The women were soon on their way to Brünnlitz. Pemper’s explanation fits closely with what Oskar said. He worked with his military contacts in Berlin to get Maurer’s D2 office to issue the release for the women.131
So which account is true? In 1963, Oskar Schindler was interviewed by the West German criminal police who were investigating war crimes charges against Johannes Hassebroek. He was questioned about Hassebroek’s corruption, random killings, and executions at Groß Rosen and Brünnlitz as well as Schindler’s efforts to move his female prisoners out of Auschwitz. Oskar told the police that though he had never been to Groß Rosen, Hasse-broek had visited Brünnlitz two or three times to collect various “gifts” that were supposed to be used “for charitable purposes.” During the early part of the interview, Oskar told the investigators, who seemed to know about his efforts to rescue his female workers in Auschwitz, the specifics of his efforts:
It is true that I sent my secretary Hilde Albrecht (fate unknown) to Auschwitz with gifts (jewelry and alcohol) in order to obtain the release of my female workers from the responsible labor supervisor Schwarz [SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich]. Additionally, I asked Major Plate [Plathe] of the Abwehr office in Kattowitz and other people to push for a transfer of these women to Brünnlitz. I also approached the WVHA and the RSHA respectively to get them to send a telegram to Auschwitz, demanding the release of the workers (this telegram allegedly had been stored unopened in Schwarz’s dispatch case for about a week).
From these statements it becomes apparent that I consistently contacted the WVHA or the RSHA for the release of my workers after the evacuation of my Krakow factory. Whether the release of the workers would have been possible without contacting these Berlin institutions, therefore by just dealing with the camp commandants of Groß Rosen and Auschwitz, it is beyond my capacity to answer.132
It is hard to imagine that Schindler, who would testify or give evidence in various West German war crimes investigations and trials from 1962 to 1972, would have exaggerated under oath to criminal police investigators. At the same time, he made a point of underscoring his efforts to help save his Jewish workers in Kraków and Brünnlitz. He did err, though, when he told the investigators that he had 1,200 Jews working for him by the time he relocated his armaments factory to the Sudetenland in the fall of 1944. And unlike his 1955 report to Yad Vashem, in which he specifically mentioned the help of Erich Lange, this time Oskar mentioned the help of Lt. Colonel Plathe. More than likely, Schindler used his important contacts in the Wehrmacht to help free his female workers.133
The idea that Oskar sent Hilde Albrecht to see Heinrich Schwarz is not that far-fetched, though by the fall of 1944, Schwarz was no longer head (Arbeitseinsatzführer; employment supervisor) of Auschwitz’s employment section (Arbeitseinsatz-IIIa). A year earlier, he had been promoted to commandant of Auschwitz III-Monowitz, where he was responsible for all Auschwitz’s sub-camps except for those engaged in forestry and agriculture. Schwarz remained in this position until the liquidation of Auschwitz in early 1945 and then became commandant of what remained of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp satellite network near Strasbourg. As American forces advanced on these remnant camps in the spring of 1945, Schwarz was ordered to retreat with what remained of his prisoners to Dachau. He was tried and executed for war crimes in 1947. 134
Schwarz was a very influential person at Auschwitz and had good contacts with Maurer’s Office Group D2 in Oranienburg. According to Rudolph Höss, Schwarz had been Maurer’s subordinate during the time he served as Auschwitz’s employment supervisor. The only problem with these ties, though, was that Maurer did not seem to think very highly of Schwarz because “Maurer truly gave him a hard time.” Höss, though, considered Schwarz “very conscientious and dependable.” He wrote in his memoirs that “even during the extermination of the Jews, I could relax when Schwarz was on duty.” But if Oskar Schindler did send Hilde Albrecht to Auschwitz III-Monowitz to try to convince Schwarz to release the three hundred Schindler women to Oskar’s care in the Sudetenland, she probably had a hard time convincing Schwarz of the need for the transfer. Höss said that Schwarz’s “particular frustration” was prisoners who were “transferred to other camps.” From Schwarz’s perspective, such transfers always caused headaches and incessant complaints from the receiving camps about the quality of the workers. These reports, which criticized Schwarz for being “undependable and incompetent,” were then sent by Maurer to Schwarz “to liven up the Kommando leader.”135 The dedicated, serious-minded Schwarz was going to be suspicious of any request to send so many women out of Auschwitz to another camp not under his control. Why risk further criticism from Maurer? On the other hand, if he was pressured by Maurer’s office to help with the transfer of the Schindler women, there was little he could do but obey.
So how did Oskar Schindler get the women out of Auschwitz? In reality, it probably took all these efforts to get them released. Oskar probably did first call the Army Procurement Office to prod them to contact Mau-rer’s office because Schindler had a better relationship with the Wehr-macht than with the SS. It is evident from the information that Oskar earlier gave Jewish Agency representatives in Budapest that he was quite knowledgeable about SS operations in the concentration camps. Given all that he had gone through to win approval for his move to Sudetenland, he was well aware that Auschwitz was slowly closing down its operations and sending many inmates westward as slave laborers. The greatest danger to the Schindler women, who were housed first in a female transit camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau and later moved to its women’s camp, came from the changes Goldberg had made to the ages of the younger and older women on the list to make them more acceptable to the SS as “essential workers.” Several times the SS spotted such discrepancies, particularly those involving older Schindler women, and tried to send those women to their deaths. As gassing at Auschwitz had ended in early November, they would have been shot. Evidence shows that at least five Schindler women originally on the Płaszów-Auschwitz list were taken off while in Birkenau and replaced by other women.136
But for the most part, the SS accepted the Schindler women’s transfer to the Sudetenland. The Auschwitz Labor Deployment List, for example, noted on November 3, 1944, that there were 1,156 “so-called transit Jews” in Auschwitz-Birkenau B-IIc, where the Schindler women were initially housed. Of this number, 320 were awaiting “transport to another camp,” and another 696 remained in the camp “until further notice.”137 More than likely, most of the 320 women awaiting transport were part of the Schindler group. The following day, Birkenau B-IIc was liquidated and the women there were moved across the railroad tracks to Birkenau Ia, the Women’s Camp.138 Auschwitz records for this period show that far more prisoners were being sent westward as slave laborers than were being murdered. Between August 1944 and January 1945, the SS moved 65,000 prisoners westward to other slave labor camps and an additional 67,000 prisoners remained in Auschwitz until the final days of liquidation. The biggest problem for the SS, though, was transportation, which was increasingly tied up to meet military needs. The delay in shipping the Schindler women to Brünnlitz was probably more of a transportation issue than secret SS designs to murder them. But this in no way reduced the threat to them as long as they remained there, and Oskar Schindler knew this. They were at least fortunate that they got there by train when they did. Many Auschwitz prisoners were evacuated westward on deadly forced marches, and many others died on frozen transports during the winter of 1944–1945. 139
