Oskar Schindler, page 59
But even this does not fully clarify questions surrounding the number of Jews who died on the two transports because other Jews also died in Brünnlitz. In addition to Janka Feigenbaum, Keneally mentioned a Mrs. Hofstatter. Unfortunately, there is no Hofstatter on the two female lists from the fall of 1944. When the Polish historian Aleksandra Kobielec looked at the October 22, 1944, female list, she compared it to the April 18, 1945, list and noted that three women were missing from the latter list. Her conclusion was that the three Schindler women who died in Brünnlitz were Janina (Janka) Feigenbaum, Elisabeth Chotimer, and Anna Laufer. We do know that Elisabeth Chotimer and Anna Laufer died either in Brünnlitz or while in transit from Auschwitz because they are listed as verstorben (deceased) on the November 12, 1944, female list.65 I have already mentioned the death of Janka Feigenbaum and her family’s burial of her body. But we do not know what happened to the bodies of the other two women. Oskar did not acquire his burial plot until February 1945. Thomas Keneally said that Josef Leipold insisted initially that the bodies of the dead be cremated in the camp’s furnace, so this is possible, though Keneally also makes the point that from the outset of the first deaths in Brünnlitz, Oskar insisted on ritual burials for his Schindlerjuden.66
Food and the Struggle for Survival
Oskar returned to Brünnlitz soon after the arrival of the Golleschau transport and ordered emergency hospital facilities to be set up in the factory to care for the Jews who were still alive. The dramatic efforts of Oskar, Emilie, and the camp’s physicians to save the survivors of the Golleschau and Landskron transports is nothing short of miraculous. And though the Golleschau and Landskron Jews suffered from a variety of ailments, their greatest problem was malnutrition. Lack of food, unfortunately, was becoming a problem for the entire camp.
Emilie was in charge of caring for the transports’ survivors and she did a remarkable job. A special clinic was set up in a large storage space on the main factory building’s second floor. Dr. Chaim Hilfstein, Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein, and Dr. Szaja Händler were assigned to help Emilie care for the patients, each of whom required specialized care. The physicians needed certain medicines as well as frost cream and vitamins to restore them to good health. Brünnlitz had few medical supplies, so Oskar sent Emilie on a dangerous winter trip to Mährisch Ostrau (formerly Moravská Ostrava, Moravian Ostrava; today Ostrava) with suitcases full of vodka to trade for medical supplies. Emilie said that she obtained these goods from the Czechs, Poles, and Germans who arrived daily on the morning train in Mährisch Ostrau, “desperately trying to escape and not knowing where to go.”67 Emilie added that all the Golleschau and Landskron Jews “required extremely special attention and even had to be spoon-fed to prevent their choking to death. After not eating for so long, they had forgotten how.” Emilie prepared them a special porridge and helped feed them this special diet until they were able to feed themselves. She used up the camp’s reserves of grits, butter, milk, and other foodstuffs for this purpose.68
Emilie’s need to use up the camp’s small food surplus to feed the Golleschau and Landskron Jews underscored the serious problems that Oskar faced in obtaining food for his Jews, his staff, and the SS contingent. It was the biggest problem Schindler faced at Brünnlitz. Food had been readily available for the right price in Kraków, which was certainly not so in the Sudetenland. Johann Kompan, an old school friend of Oskar’s in Zwittau and later a wholesale grocer there, wrote after the war that severe rationing and the attitude of local officials made it difficult for Schindler even to use the ration cards he had to obtain food for Brünnlitz.69 Dr. Bieberstein said that when Brünnlitz first opened, Oskar was able to supply each worker with about 2,000 calories a day. Oskar had only brought a few wagon loads of food with him from Kraków, and this was not enough to feed his factory workers and staff for more than a week.70
In a much more personal way, Oskar Schindler’s effort to keep his growing Jewish inmate population alive in Brünnlitz was as significant as the creation of the “list of life” that brought them to the Sudetenland. That was one miracle. Now he had to find a way to insure that they would survive until the end of the war. Oskar was well aware of the challenges he faced in finding food for the camp before he made the move to the Sudetenland. Once there, he did everything humanly possible to locate extra food for Brünnlitz. On November 1, 1944, for example, he rented a 3,000-square-meter tract of land from a family for RM 47 ($18.80) a year for “as long as the war lasted.” The idea was to use the land to grow food for the factory.71
But the leasing of the farm plot was only one aspect of Oskar’s efforts to supply his camp with food. More often than not, Oskar could be found traveling with illegal truckloads of goods that he traded for bread and other foodstuffs, tobacco, and other necessities. Tobacco was a highly prized trade commodity since cigarettes were simply unavailable in the Sudetenland. He estimated that he was able to obtain 12,000 tobacco packets for his workers, which they, in turn, could trade for food. By the end of the war, he estimated that he still had a month’s supply of food as well as twenty animals for slaughter.72
But he did more than trade for food and other necessities. Sometimes he had to pay cash for it. Soon after the war ended, Oskar estimated that he had spent RM 80,000 ($32,000) on food and medicine for the camp. But sometimes he had to travel as far as 150 miles to find it. He often carried with him illegal papers with official-looking stamps made by Moshe Bejski, later a judge on the Israeli Supreme Court. The most useful stamp was the one that read Der Höhere SS und Polizei Führer für Böhmen und Mähren (Higher SS and Police Leader of Bohemia and Moravia), which permitted his trucks to pass through roadblocks without inspection. Dr. Bejski told me that he began his work as a forger during the war while still in Kraków, where he prepared illegal identity cards for Jewish girls who were to be sent to Germany. He began to make illegal documents for Oskar after Itzhak Stern told him that Schindler was going to Poland to buy food on the black market but needed forged documents to show that the food was bought legally from the Poles.73
If Oskar had a local benefactor, it was J. F. Daubek, the owner of the grain mill that was next to Oskar’s factory. Oskar and Emilie quickly established good relations with Daubek and his wife. One afternoon, Emi-lie went to talk to the mill’s manager to see if he could set up an interview with Frau Daubek. She soon received an invitation for tea, but she wondered how she could make a case for extra food for her workers given the serious food shortages in the region. In the end, she simply told Frau Daubek the truth. There was not enough food for Brünnlitz’s Jewish workers and she “could not stand seeing our workers getting weaker by the day because of hunger.” Emilie found Mrs. Daubek extremely warm and gracious. Over tea and a tray of delicacies, Emile told Mrs. Daubek that she urgently needed grain from her mill. Mrs. Daubek then asked her the reason for her request. Emilie replied, “I only want to help our Jews and the rest of the workers, so that they will not starve to death.” Mrs. Daubek thought for a few moments and then said, “I understand your situation perfectly and realize we are going through unfortunate and difficult times. Anyway, I would like to help if I can. Please go to the mill and speak to the manager. Tell him from me that he is to give you whatever you need for your people.” Later that afternoon, Emilie returned to the factory “with a veritable treasure in grains and semolina flour.”74
There is no reason to doubt Emilie’s story, though it is interesting that Oskar did not mention Daubek as a benefactor after the war. All he ever said about him was that he and Emilie had acquired the villa of this particular “local baron.” The one specific thing we know about the relationship between Schindler and Daubek is that the mill owner allowed Schindler’s Jews to steal grain quite freely from the mill. Sol Urbach and a friend, Max (Henryk) Blasenstein, worked as carpenters in the Daubek villa that Oskar was having renovated. Whenever he could, Sol would sneak into the Daubek mill and steal grain. He would fill his tool box and pockets with grain and then bring it back to the camp to share with others. Victor Lewis did the same thing. He worked as an electrician on the villa’s renovations. “I was putting oatmeal in my toolbox and my tool belt, and bringing it [to the Brinnlitz camp]. My friends were cooking it. That is how Schindler saved my life.”75
But Daubek must have done more than simply allow Brünnlitz’s Jews to steal grain. After the war, many of them felt they owed Daubek a special thanks for the grain he had given them. About ten days after Oskar and Emilie had fled the camp in 1945, Alfred Rozenfryd (Alfred Rosen-fried) wrote J. F. Daubek a letter in the name of all of Brünnlitz’s Jews thanking him for providing them with flour, oatmeal, and semolina, which he said often saved them from hunger. Aleksander Bieberstein was equally complimentary of the mill owner, particularly his willingness to allow Jews to steal grain from the mill.76
Oskar also had another benefactor in the area, Johann Kompan, a wholesale grocer in Zwittau and a representative of the J. F. Daubek mill. He had been a schoolfriend of Oskar’s before the war and they renewed their friendship after they met at the mill. According to Kompan, he did everything that he could to supply Oskar with more food, particularly bread, than Oskar’s ration cards allowed. He said in a letter to the “Re-ligo” Comité pour la assistance la Populaston juife papée per la guerre (RELICO-Relief Committee for the War-Stricken Jewish Population) in Geneva that Leib Salpeter, who was in charge of food storage in the camp, and picked up the food from Kompan’s warehouse, could attest to this. Kompan estimated that he supplied Brünnlitz with extra weekly deliveries of 1,000 to 1,500 kilograms (2,200 to 3,300 pounds) of bread as well as 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of grits, oats, and groats. He also supplied extra rations of vegetables, carrots, flour, and cheese. He also mentioned that he delivered 2,000 Weizenmehlstriezel wheat loaves for Christmas 1944. 77
His greatest effort, he told the Swiss committee, was to help Schindler’s Jews in the weeks after Oskar and Emilie had fled to the West. Some of Brünnlitz’s Jews remained in the camp and Kompan continued to supply them with food. He said that he did this because no one seemed to care for “these forced laborers” and “they had to eat.” This all proved quite costly to Mr. Kompan, particularly as Oskar did not pay him for the last five weeks of food at the end of the war “because Schindler could not be reached in the then upheaval.” Stefan Pemper, Mietek Pemper’s brother, verified Kompan’s account in the summer of 1945. In a statement prepared in Brněnec on July 14, he said that Kompan “supported us all during the entire time of our stay in Brněnec (Brünnlitz) by delivery of groceries in larger volume than our ration.” He went on to explain how this was done. Kompan established a separate warehouse in Zwittau for delivery of these goods for Brünnlitz. All the foodstuffs that Kompan supplied Schindler were paid for except the last deliveries, including one on May 8, 1945, the last day of the camp’s operation. The cost of the unpaid goods was RM 12,800 ($5,120). Pemper explained that he was sent to help pick up the food during this period, which included bread, flour, vegetables, asparagus, and carrots. His brother, Mietek, was then responsible for distributing the food. He concluded by stating that Johann Kompan “rendered us a great service and it is known to all of us that he put himself in great danger by making these deliveries.”78
Kompan also had letters of support from other Schindler Jews. At the same time he prepared a thank-you letter for J. F. Daubek, Alfred Rosen-fryd prepared a similar letter for Kompan that he later had translated into English and certified by a notary in Vienna. It stated that “H. Johann Kompan, resident of Zwickau, has given aid to the inmates of the concentration camp, Groß-Rosen, section Brünnlitz, materially by delivery of provisions outside the prescribed contingents.”79
The following year, Kompan and his wife, Aloisia, who by this time were in Vienna, received two statements of support from another Schindler Jew, Alexander Goldwasser, and, in turn, the Jewish Committee (Jüdisches Komitee) in Vienna. Goldwasser befriended the Kompans after the war and was the one that suggested that they contact RELICO, an aid organization that had been created in the fall of 1939 by the World Jewish Congress to help Jews in Europe. Goldwasser assured the Kompans that once they identified themselves properly to the Geneva-based committee, they would receive the “most extensive support” because it was headed by Dr. Adolf Silberschein, a former member of the Polish Diet from Lemberg. Goldwasser wrote a statement in which he said that he saw with his “own eyes how Mr. Johann Kompan from Zwitau unselfishly and with the greatest danger to his life delivered to the KZ camp Brünnlitz in most ample measure amidst the greatest food difficulties, and we are therefore obliged to give him thanks for his efforts.” The letter from the Jewish Committee in Vienna was addressed to the Jewish Committee in Innsbruck and was meant as part of the Kompans’ request for food prompted by Mrs. Kompan’s serious health problems. The letter said that the Kompans were to be regarded as “helpers of Jews.”80
Oskar was equally grateful to Kompan for all he had done for the camp; before he left Brünnlitz, Kompan told Oskar that “the entire concentration camp feels obliged to thank me [Kompan] because of my steady, dangerous deliveries.” Oskar added that when the war ended, Kompan’s deeds would be “registered at the Jewish-American division of the International Red Cross [ICRC/IRC-International Committee for the Red Cross] in Geneva” under his full name. This would be done by “confidential Cracow people.” Kompan would also have a special number, KZ 24, and if he needed help, he should “introduce himself at this location of the I.R.T. [I.R.C.] with this stated number.”81 It is unclear whether Oskar meant American Red Cross representatives in Geneva or the Joint, the principal source of ICRC funding for efforts to aid Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.82
While Oskar’s instructions to Kompan sound a little far-fetched, it should be remembered that Oskar still had the mind of an Abwehr agent and, based on his immediate postwar efforts to seek aid from various Jewish groups, he probably thought that Kompan should do the same thing. And Oskar, who seemed to have planned his escape for some time, initially headed for Switzerland. So there was some logic, therefore, to his thoughts about registering Kompan with the ICRC there.
The foodstuffs and other goods that Oskar got from Daubek, Kompan, and others was meant for the camp’s kitchen. Initially, the inmates were given three meals a day, though by the spring of 1945 they were reduced to two meals a day. The camp schedule was built around work and meals. Each prisoner received 25 dkg (1 dekagram = 0.353 ounces) of bread and coffee, and lunch consisted of a liter of “not very nourishing soup.” For dinner, each inmate was given more bread and soup.83 This was not sufficient for adults working nine-hour shifts and the workers were constantly scrounging for extra food. Cantor Moshe Taubé remembered thinking constantly about food. He and another bunk mate, Jerzy Sternberg, “dreamed about it: challah, cake, and fish, and pieces of wonderful meat, and roasted ducks, and goose livers! There was a sensual satisfaction just speaking about it.”84
Oskar took particular pity on “Little” Leon Leyson and ordered extra rations for him. On another occasion, Oskar gave Leon a “hunk of bread,” which Leyson described as “the most exciting thing” he had been given “in a long time.” Leon immediately hid it and later shared it with his father and brother. The Budzyners controlled the inmate kitchen and they allowed Leon to take whatever scraps of food he could find after they had “swished water around” in the large soup kettles. He took the water that remained in the kettles, boiled it, and then ate what scraps were left after evaporation. When Oskar learned that several inmates had tuberculosis and that a few of the younger boys were losing weight, he ordered that they be given portions of Emilie’s “magic” porridge.85
Stella Müller-Madej remembered Mietek Pemper sharing some baked beets with her family, “which were wonderful”; other men who worked outside the factory were occasionally able to find potatoes and extra grain in the Daubek mill. The inmates would grind the grain between two bricks and mix it with grain husks and water. This mixture was then baked into little cakes that “took a long time to chew and swallow. They looked like sawdust.”86 Polda Hirschfeld got a job in the kitchen that prepared food for the German staff. Whenever possible, she would take food scraps such as the heads of carp for her family. Igor Kling worked putting up the high SS-regulation fences around the perimeter of the camp. He and other Schindler Jews would steal potatoes from the fields surrounding the camp and bury them in a small hole under the fire they had built for their SS guards. They would cover the potatoes with a small sheet of tin and later enjoy a “feast” of baked potatoes.87
Iser Mintz was assigned to the Punishment Squad (Strafkommando) for four weeks, where he broke up rocks because he had stolen a turnip. And though the workers on the SS punishment squad were supposed to receive half rations only, Mintz ate well because he always managed to find potatoes hidden in the fields outside the camp. In time, Mintz learned to spot the ditches the Czech farmers had filled with potatoes and covered with straw. One day Iser decided to ask his SS guard, a sergeant, why they could not take some potatoes from the ditch. The sergeant said, “I can’t. I’m afraid. It’s against the order.” But Iser sensed that the guard was a good man and in desperation decided to steal some of the potatoes. The next time they walked past the hidden potatoes, Iser told members of his squad to grab all they could while he held onto the guard with a big “bear hug.” When the Strafkommando unit reached the hills overlooking Brünnlitz, they sat down and baked the potatoes. “This sergeant ate more than anyone, because he was hungry, too.” And each day, Iser brought his brother, Jack Mintz, a baked potato.88
