Oskar Schindler, page 67
In light of all this, it is not surprising that Dr. Wehle took the position he did on Schindler’s claim. The ultimate problem with it, of course, was that Schindler had absolutely no documentation to back up his demand for compensation; Dr. Wehle saw Schindler only as a German and Nazi Party member. This is in direct contrast with Schindler’s later Lastenaus-gleich claim in West Germany, where, at the insistence of very particular German bureaucrats, Oskar was able to come up with an impressive collection of documents.
Schindler’s claim for compensation centered around the bribes he had paid various officials, the daily fees he had paid the SS for his Jewish workers, extra food costs, and relocation expenses when he moved from Kraków to Brünnlitz. Bribery was so commonplace in the General Government that it was considered a normal part of doing business. Whether one did or did not use Jewish workers made no difference. It is a bit shocking to learn that Schindler insisted on including the fees he paid the SS for his “slave” laborers in his list of wartime costs. Schindler began to use Jewish workers early in the war because he needed the expertise of men such as Abraham Bankier or because they were cheaper than Polish workers. This was the standard practice followed by factory owners throughout the General Government, particularly later in the war when authorities encouraged this because of growing labor shortages. Many factories in Kraków used Jewish workers, and some of the factory owners treated them quite well. In other words, Schindler would have paid these fees to the SS whether he helped his workers or not. These fees went beyond normal labor expenses when he hired “useless” workers simply at their families’ request.
The extra funds that Oskar spent for food for his Jewish and Polish workers was another matter, though, because he sacrificed a lot to insure that his workers were adequately fed. But his well-nourished workers were also more productive and the reason he made the kind of money he did during his years in Kraków. He also spent a lot of money relocating his factory to the Sudentenland, though part of the reason he did this was to insure himself a future in postwar Europe. He never dreamed that he would be driven out of Czechoslovakia, never to return. And though he did spend most of the money he made in Kraków keeping his Jewish workers alive in Brünnlitz, the fact remains that both the factories he acquired during the war had once been Jewish-owned. He came to Poland in 1939 essentially as a German carpetbagger, and took advantage, both there and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, of Nazi Germany’s Aryanization policies. Moreover, he used Jewish slave labor in each of them partially to keep production costs low and profits high. When he left Brünnlitz, he still had some of the profits he had made during the war in his two factories, but they were lost within days after his flight began. Given all this, no reasonable Jewish organization involved deeply in the rebuilding of post-Holocaust Jewish lives could overlook Oskar Schindler’s wartime membership in the German Nazi Party; neither could it ignore the vast amounts of money Schindler made by using Jewish slave laborers and the advantage Schindler took of German Aryanization policies to acquire property formerly owned by Jews.
Yet given all this and the questionable nature of some of Schindler’s compensation claims, the Joint finally decided to award him a grant of $15,000, a substantial sum in postwar Germany. Dr. Schwartz suggested this amount to the Joint’s Organization Committee in Paris in January 1949, and the grant was readily approved. Needless to say, Oskar was quite disappointed with the amount of the award. But once he learned of the grant, he quickly revealed plans to move to Argentina. He asked the Joint to give him $5,000 immediately and to pay him the rest when he reached Argentina.81
On January 29, 1949, Moses Beckelman, the vice chair of Joint operations in Paris, wrote a detailed letter of introduction for Schindler to Jacob Lightman, the head of the Joint office in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital. Though Oskar would not arrive in Argentina until November 1949, the Joint offered to do everything it could to help the man who at “the constant risk of his own life and that of his wife . . . carried out his humanitarian work at considerable financial and material sacrifice.” Beckelman went into details about Oskar’s efforts to save Jews in Kraków and Brünnlitz and told Lightman, with whom he had once worked in South America, that now Schindler was about to begin life anew, they should help him, “as once he helped our brethren.”82
But why Argentina? In a letter to Lightman a month later, Beckelman explained that once it had become known publicly that Schindler had helped Jews during the war, there was no chance for him to rebuild his life there. It was now unhealthy for him to remain in Germany. Beckelman wrote that the Joint would give him $5,000 in Germany to buy tools and machinery for an automobile radiator factory that Oskar planned to open in Argentina. The Joint would give him $10,000 more for upstart costs and other expenses when he got to South America.83
But there is nothing to indicate that he ever bought anything substantial with the $5,000 he received in Germany. Emilie was critical of how Oskar handled the Joint funds because, she said, he spent it “on small pleasures and on objects for which [the couple] had not the slightest need.” In fact, she claimed, she never “received a penny of what he received.” After he received the first Joint payment, he took his mistress, Gisa, who would also accompany him to Argentina, on a holiday in the Alps, while Emilie and her niece “had to perform miracles in order to obtain enough food on the black market.” On the other hand, Emilie wrote, though Oskar continued “like a child, to follow his whims,” he also clung to her, his “refuge in times of crisis,” when “it came to important decisions.”84
It soon became apparent to Joint officials in Europe that Oskar planned to take six other people with him to Argentina besides Emilie. In the spring of 1949, he told Moses Beckelman that he intended to divorce Emilie before he left Germany and marry Roma Horowitz. But he also wanted to arrange for Emilie’s emigration to Argentina.85 The question of divorce would come up again and again over the next two decades. Emi-lie said in her memoirs that she had often thought of leaving Oskar and beginning a new life in which she would be free of “his lies . . . his repeated deceits and constant insincere repenting.” But her strong Catholic faith and her postwar impoverishment kept her with Oskar. She had briefly reunited with her brother, Franz, after the war, who disappeared again in 1946. So she decided to stay with Oskar in a loveless marriage. But she later told a German reporter after Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List came out that her “wedding ring was good insurance against the claims of his many mistresses.”86 When Oskar returned to Germany in 1957, he talked occasionally of divorce, though finally decided it might complicate his Lastenausgleich claims and his new business dealings. Needless to say, he never married Roma Horowitz.87
What is peculiar about all of this is that, at least according to Emilie, Oskar’s mistress during this period was not Roma Horowitz but Gisa Schein. All three women, Emilie, Roma, and Gisa, would accompany Oskar to Argentina. And it was Gisa, not Roma, who was Oskar’s mistress during his years in Argentina. Oskar met Gisa in Munich while staying with some of the Schindlerjuden who lived there after the war. Their mutual friends gave them a room in their apartment for the liaison, and Oskar made frequent trips to Munich to see Gisa. Emilie was shocked to learn that Oskar intended to take Gisa with them to Argentina and said she “did not have the energy for futile reproaches anymore.” She continued to hope that once they got to Argentina she would again be Oskar’s “only woman.” But Emilie went on to say that when they reached Argentina, the affair between Oskar and Gisa continued, even though the Schindlers lived in San Vicente, a small town more than an hour away from Buenos Aires. In fact, from what I could gather by talking to several Schindler neighbors in San Vicente, Oskar spent little time there, instead preferring life with Gisa in the Belgrano district of Buenos Aires. Emilie claimed that Gisa “used [her] husband for all he was worth” because he gave her jewelry and an otter-skin coat. Gisa felt abandoned when Oskar left for Germany in 1957 and wrote him some very critical letters, somehow hoping to persuade him to return. Oskar wrote Emilie and asked her to call Gisa and tell her that if she did not stop the insulting letters, he would “never come back to her.”88
So why did Oskar tell Joint officials that he planned to marry Roma Horowitz? In two letters to Joint officials in early 1949, Herbert Stein-house, a Canadian journalist who befriended Oskar at this time, wrote Joint officials in Paris about Edmund and Roma Horowitz, who hoped to accompany Oskar and Emilie to Argentina. Steinhouse had received several letters from Alex Madanes, the Paris correspondent for the Jewish Chronicle in London, who was a cousin of Roma and Edmund Horowitz. The Horowitzs, who lived in Munich, seemed desperate to join the Schindler party, but were uncertain of Joint support. Steinhouse told Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz that he had visited the Horowitzs in Munich and found them in a “fearful state of mind.” Several weeks later, Oskar told Moses Beckelman that he intended to marry Roma Horowitz and divorce Emilie. Did Oskar tell Beckelman this to insure that Roma and Edmund would have a place on the new Argentine “Schindler’s List,” or was he also having an affair with Roma? We will never know. But what is interesting is that Moses Beckelman thought that Emilie was Jewish and that at least some of the people who traveled with her and Oskar to Argentina were members of her family.89
The Joint agreed to arrange Oskar’s travel plans for the party of eight that planned to travel to Argentina with him and to deduct the costs of the trip from his $15,000 grant, though ultimately only Oskar and Emi-lie’s fares and related expenses were paid from Joint funds. Once it was determined that everyone except the Schindlers were war refugees, the costs of the others were paid for by the United Nations International Refugee Organization. There seems to be some confusion about who actually joined Oskar and Emilie on the voyage. We know that the group initially consisted of Oskar, Emilie, Roma Horowitz and her brother, Edmund Horowitz, Gisa Schein, Jakob Goldfarb and his wife, Fanny Gold-farb, and Isaak Korczyn. At the last minute, Jakob Goldfarb became ill and could not make the trip. When the Schindler party arrived in Buenos Aires, Joint officials informed its offices in New York that an additional person had traveled with the Schindlers, Alois Tutsch, a Sudeten German. Presumably he replaced Jakob Goldfarb. Later, though, Oskar told Joint officials in Buenos Aires that there had been more last-minute changes before his party left Genoa, and did not list Tutsch as one of the group. None of the Jews in Oskar’s party was a Schindler Jew.90
If it is true that Oskar was partially driven to emigrate to Argentina because of his growing fame as a “savior” of Jews during the war, there is certainly evidence to support this. In early 1948, Oskar contacted Jacob Levy, a Jewish wine merchant in Manchester, England, about helping him out of his dire straits and advising on the possibility of emigrating to England. Levy sent Schindler a Lebensmittelpackete (food packet) and later offered to send Oskar £50 ($12.50) when he learned that he planned to emigrate to Argentina.91
What followed was a fascinating exchange of letters between Levy and Schindler that, at least on Oskar’s part, were remarkable for their blunt, bitter tone. Oskar wrote the most interesting one to Levy on November 16, 1948. He thanked Levy for his “copious food package” of September 7. He told Levy that his letters were very important to him and had “strengthened [his] optimism and chased away [his] apocalyptic mood.” In one of his letters, Levy had mentioned how difficult it must be for someone like Oskar to live in Germany. Schindler agreed, and decried the neo-Nazism developing in Germany that was taking the form of a “Nazi-Communism trickling through from the Eastern [Soviet] zone.” In addition, Oskar wrote Levy, anti-Semitism was now stronger in Germany than during the war. He attributed this to the same “superman spirit” that was spreading quite openly in government circles and universities by unemployed war veterans and others. This spirit, Oskar argued, was leading to a sense of “collective innocence” among the German people.”92
Oskar was particularly bitter over the fate of the millions of ethnic German refugees who were now forced to undergo denazification while more prominent Nazis “were hardly being reached by the law” or were only being modestly punished. When questions of “guilt, compensation, and penitence” arose, no one took responsibility. So where were the real Nazis, the real criminals? They were, Oskar told Levy, continuing to hold “influential positions” as they prepared Germany to “destroy Europe” in the next [international] dispute. And once again, the German people seemed ready to “run after the infallible supermen as cannon fodder.” The current political strife between the East and the West helped protect the actual “guilty ones.”93
Now, with a new threat of war hanging over Europe, Oskar thought it was important “to get out of Germany as quickly as possible.” He would prefer going to Israel because he had so many friends there and thought that Israel would soon become a very prosperous country. But as Israel was “in the strategic line of attack of the Russians,” he could not risk once again losing his “life’s work and family assets to the red Czars.” He ended his letter by asking Levy to help him with his compensation claim with the Joint. Once again, Oskar claimed that everything he spent during the war was approved by the Joint. Such a repayment would give him “an assured livelihood overseas.” Finally, he thanked Levy for all his sacrifices as Oskar’s advocate.94
A more significant relationship developed with Herbert Steinhouse, a Canadian journalist who became chief of the Paris bureau of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1949. Before he assumed his post in Paris, Steinhouse met Itzhak Stern, who began to tell him about Schindler. Steinhouse, who had worked for UNRRA before he joined CBC, was initially skeptical of any stories about a “good German,” but was intrigued by Stern’s tales. After six sessions with Stern, he finally met Oskar and Emilie at their modest apartment in Regensburg in late 1948, though according to Tobe Steinhouse, Oskar had an apartment in Munich as well. Their wives “hit it off” and over several weeks, Steinhouse recorded Schindler’s account of his wartime efforts to save “his” Jews. Tobe Stein-house told me that she remembered Oskar as an extremely charming though manipulative person. On one occasion, he insisted on taking her to a local factory to buy her a special tea set, which she was hesitant to accept. Herbert Steinhouse returned to Paris and wrote an article about Oskar that he tried to get published. But his agent told him that magazines were no longer interested in stories about “good Germans” and that readers were tired of articles about the Holocaust. Steinhouse did not publish his account of his meetings with Schindler until 1994. 95
After Schindler’s List came out in 1993, Steinhouse wrote Steven Spielberg and Thomas Keneally a letter describing his relationship and views on Oskar Schindler in the late 1940s. Schindler’s “Jewish bodyguard” deliberately tried to befriend Steinhouse because they thought he, as a journalist, could “help get Oskar and Emilie and perhaps themselves to Canada or the USA, where ex-Party member Oskar was automatically denied entry, by publicizing their story in America.” Over the course of many months, Steinhouse and his wife Tobe became quite close to Oskar and Emilie and spent a great deal of time with them. In fact, it was Herbert Steinhouse who arranged a banquet in Paris for Oskar and a number of Schindler Jews in early 1949. Since Oskar could not legally enter France, Steinhouse smuggled him into Paris for the banquet. The banquet, which was attended by more than thirty-five Schindler Jews, was held in the Aux Armes de Colmar, an Alsatian restaurant in Paris. The Jewish Chronicle likened the gathering to that “of an English school speech day with Herr Schindler as the headmaster greeting former pupils.” Schindler, the article continued, was quite interested in the “welfare of his protégés” even though they were now scattered around the globe. In turn, the Schindlerjuden “are deeply conscious that only his efforts saved them from the gas-chambers.”96
The banquet was a very festive occasion. Steinhouse wrote that Oskar was toasted again and again for his efforts during the war. As they raised glasses of white wine, the gathered survivors sang “Sto Lat” (May you live a hundred years), a song that they had once sung for Oskar in Brünnlitz. The toasts and singing were followed by tributes to Schindler. One Schindler Jew proclaimed that “it was known throughout Poland that whoever went to Schindler’s factory was safe.” Another said they were sneered at as Schindlerjuden in Brünnlitz; but today, he boasted, they were “proud of that name.” Oskar had tears in his eyes when it came time for him to speak. “Germans today seem to share a collective innocence,” he said, “not the collective guilt they should.” When he finished, Oskar went from table to table, hugging each of his beloved Schindler Jews.97
At the end of August 1949, Oskar, Emilie, and the six other members of their party left Munich for Genoa, where they made final preparations for their voyage to Argentina. On October 5, everyone except Edmund Horowitz, who had become ill, set sail on the SS Genoa for what became an “infernal” twenty-eight day voyage to Argentina. The ship docked in Buenos Aires on November 3, 1950. The trip across the Atlantic had been dreadful and everyone had suffered from sea-sickness. Though it was fall in Genoa, it was spring in Argentina. Hopefully Oskar and Emilie would now have a chance to begin life anew without the stigmas of the past haunting them. Perhaps they would be able to re-create the idyllic life that they had so hoped for in Germany.
