Oskar Schindler, page 7
There is no criminal case file on Huschka. According to several reports prepared on Schindler after World War II by the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior and the Commission for the Persecution of Nazi War Criminals, the Germans arrested Huschka after Hitler took over the Sudeten-land in the fall of 1938. They imprisoned Huschka in Opava and later executed him. The War Crimes Commission’s report accused Schindler of causing Huschka’s death. There is nothing other than this one report to substantiate the charge.115
Oskar Schindler was in prison from July 18 until October 7, 1938, when he was released and transferred from Brno to Svitavy, which had just become part of the Third Reich because of the Munich Agreement.116 Schindler seldom spoke about his imprisonment and there is disagreement over his sentence. After the war, Oskar told his close friend, Dr. Dieter Trautwein, that the Czechs tortured him during his interrogation by putting a rubber hose down his throat. This, Oskar explained, was the reason for his raspy voice, not his chain smoking. The police also broke into his home just after they arrested him and ransacked it for evidence. The police claimed they found the graphicons under Schindler’s bed, though Emilie said in her memoirs that they were “hidden behind a bedroom mirror.” In her 1981 interview with the British film maker Jon Blair, Emilie claimed that the graphicons were hidden in a bathroom panel. She said the police searched their home several times before they found them. On their last visit, they went right to them.117
No available record exists of a trial or sentencing for Oskar in Brno. The same is true for Leo Pruscha. Emilie says that Oskar received the death penalty, but Robin O’Neil, a retired British police inspector who spent more than a decade investigating Schindler’s life, stated that he got two years imprisonment. Some Czech historians argue that the sentence was fourteen years. After Oskar’s arrest, Emilie contacted Kreuziger to see what he could do for Oskar. He seemed disinterested in Oskar’s fate. In reality, there was little he could do given the developing crisis between Czechoslovakia and Germany over the Sudetenland.118
Hitler’s determination to invade Czechoslovakia created a dangerous international crisis in the late summer and early fall of 1938. It also caused an uproar in the Wehrmacht, where army leaders raised serious questions about Germany’s ability to fight a war in Europe, particularly if Czechoslovakia’s allies decided to fight to stop Hitler’s aggression. Two days before Oskar Schindler’s arrest, General Ludwig Beck, the army Chief of Staff, sent General Walther von Brauchitsch, the army’s commander in chief, a memorandum arguing that an attack on Czechoslovakia would bring England and France into a war that would “be a general catastrophe for Germany, not only a military defeat.” Unfortunately, although some top generals, including Canaris, agreed with Beck, they were not willing to openly challenge Hitler because of the impact such a move would have on their careers and their sense of soldierly duty to the state. When Hitler finally learned of the generals’ concerns, he flew into a rage. On August 15, he told them that he was determined to crush Czechoslovakia in early fall. Three days later, von Brauchitsch accepted Beck’s resignation as Chief of Staff. He was replaced by Franz Halder, who would become the central figure in coup discussions that included several prominent Abwehr officers.119
The Führer’s hunch that Britain and France were unwilling to go to war over Czechoslovakia strengthened his determination to attack Czechoslovakia in the early fall of 1938. For months, London and Paris pursued a policy that tried to pressure the Beneš government to make concessions to Henlein while trying to keep the SdP leader from becoming too aggressive in summer- long talks with Prague. But when Beneš finally did, it shocked the SdP leadership, who now looked for an excuse to derail further discussions.120
In the midst of the crisis, the Beneš government was determined to defend Czechoslovak independence at all costs. Schindler’s arrest was part of a Czechoslovak effort to do everything possible to thwart Germany’s efforts to compromise the country’s defenses. Czech authorities took Schindler’s espionage seriously. The Czechs continued to arrest suspected spies and arms smugglers throughout September and declared martial law in parts of Bohemia after spontaneous antigovernment demonstrations broke out on September 12 and 13. Prague extended martial law throughout Bohemia and Moravia several days later and outlawed the SdP.121
At the same time, Neville Chamberlain informed Hitler that he was willing to fly to Germany immediately “to find a peaceful solution” to the Sudeten crisis. The Führer agreed to meet with the British prime minister in Obersalzberg in two days. In the interim, Henlein advised Hitler to demand the immediate “cession of regions with more than 50 percent German population,” which the Wehrmacht would occupy within twenty-four hours.” Hitler liked this idea and used it as his core demand when he met Chamberlain on September 15. Two days later, Britain and France acceded to Hitler’s wishes and so informed President Beneš.122
The fate of Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland now rested in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Yet Hitler was not appeased; he wanted all of Czechoslovakia and seemed willing to risk full-scale war to get it. His willingness to risk German defeat to achieve his goals had caused deep consternation in Wehrmacht circles for some time and triggered talk of a coup in the highest echelons of the Wehrmacht. At its center were several Abwehr officers who planned to kidnap and assassinate Adolf Hitler after he gave the order to invade Czechoslovakia in late September. Hitler’s decision to accept a brokered settlement in Munich on September 29 ended this spate of coup discussions.123
At the center of the plot to assassinate Hitler was Canaris’s deputy, Oberst (later Generalleutnant) Hans Oster. Though Canaris remained dutiful to Hitler, he “permitted individual officers to conspire against the regime.” According to Klemens von Klemperer, “under Canaris the Ab-wehr became ‘not only a nest of spies but also a nest of conspirators.’” In many ways, Oster was like Schindler, “dapper, elegant, agile, outgoing and unafraid and, if anything, singularly lacking caution.” Over time, one of the people drawn into this broader circle of Abwehr contacts was Oskar Schindler. These ties would be important to him during the war. Without them, he would never have been able to save the large number of Jews that he did. His continual interaction with anti-Hitler Abwehr officers also served to fortify his own misgivings about Hitler and the Nazi regime, though they would not blossom until later in the war.124
Before Hitler decided to settle the Sudeten crisis at the end of September, Henlein formed, with Hitler’s approval, the Sudeten German Free Corps (FK; Sudetendeutscher Freikorps), which began raids along the German-Czechoslovak border. The Führer wanted to orchestrate a series of incidents that would give him an excuse to invade Czechoslovakia. Ca-naris supplied Henlein’s units with some of the intelligence information that Schindler and other Abwehr agents had gathered during the summer. Abwehr also supplied the FK with arms and money.125
On September 28, representatives from Germany, Britain, France, and Italy met in Munich to resolve the Sudeten crisis. Over the next thirty-six hours, Chamberlain, Mussolini, and France’s prime minister, Edouard Dal-adier, dismembered Czechoslovakia without consulting the Prague government. The result was the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938. According to its terms, the Wehrmacht would begin to occupy Czech territories where over 50 percent of the population was German between October 1 and 10. Population transfers would take six months. Britain and France agreed to guarantee Czechoslovakia’s new frontiers. Italy and Germany would not do so until Prague had worked out the problems of the country’s Polish and Hungarian minorities. Section 8 stipulated that within four weeks the Czechoslovak government would release Sudeten Germans who no longer wanted to serve in the armed forces or the police. During this same time frame, Prague was to release “Sudeten German prisoners who [were] serving terms of imprisonment for political offenses.” Within a week, Oskar Schindler was out of prison and back in Svitavy.126
His imprisonment ended a frightening time for him; yet it also gave him opportunities as Abwehr began to prepare for Hitler’s takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia and, later, Poland. His imprisonment also brought him rewards, a promotion, and important credibility as a German’s German. He had made the next to ultimate sacrifice for the Führer. For the most part, though, this had more to do with Schindler’s greed than a fanatical sense of German nationalism. Oskar was too selfish for that. He was too egocentric to care deeply for anything or anyone other than himself and his own pleasures. Yet he was smart enough to realize that he could parlay his recent heroism into something more exciting than espionage and, when war came, military service. Consequently, he learned to play whatever role was necessary at a given moment to further his own selfish interests. In time, these skills would enhance Schindler’s efforts to save his Jewish workers. But first he had to find his own moral center, and that would be difficult in the Nazi German world that he was about to enter.
2.
SCHINDLER THE SPY
OSKAR SCHINDLER RETURNED TO SVITAVY IN EARLY OCTOBER 1938 as a hero. After the war, several of his acquaintances told Czechoslovak investigators that Hitler had rewarded him with an automobile and other valuables. In the opening of his historical novel Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally wrote that Oskar wore “a large ornamental gold-on-black enamel Hakenkreuz (swastika).” Steven Spielberg made great visual use of this Nazi badge in his film Schindler’s List. By using this important Nazi symbol, both artists were trying to imply that Oskar Schindler was a highly decorated Nazi Party member who later used this honor to help save “his Jews.” Yet which badge, if any, did he wear? Was it the standard party badge with the black swastika on a white background circled in red with National-sozialistische-D.A.P. (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; German Workers’ Party) in gold lettering, or was it one of the two forms of the distinctive Golden Party Badge (Goldenes Parteiabzeichen) and the Golden Honor Award of the NSDAP (Goldenes Ehrenzeichen der NSDAP)? Though none of the scores of survivors interviewed for this book remembers a Nazi badge on Oskar’s coat lapels, one Jewish survivor who knew Schindler during the war and later accused him of mistreatment claimed that Oskar always wore the Blood Order (Blutorden) medal, Nazism’s highest award. It is doubtful that Oskar received the Blood Order; this honor was reserved for the 2,000 Nazi “Old Fighters” who took part in Adolf Hitler’s abortive Beer Hall Putsch on November 9, 1923. Over the years, the Blood Order was also given to other Nazi heroes, particularly if they had served long prison terms or had been injured for the cause. The Golden Party Badge was Nazism’s next highest honor, though it had two forms. The standard, individually numbered Golden Party Badge was initially reserved for the party’s first 100,000 members, though later it was also given to party favorites or heroes. The Golden Party Badge bore a distinctive gold cluster surrounding the traditional party badge. According to John Weitz, who used Spielberg’s image of Oskar as an example of the power of this award, the wearer of the Golden Party Badge could expect special treatment at theaters and restaurants.1
The much more prestigious Golden Honor Award of the NSDAP was awarded specifically by Adolf Hitler to individuals who had offered distinguished service to the Party and state. The Nazis’ semi-official newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter (People’s Observer), called it “the supreme badge of honor of the Party.” Though both gold party badges were quite similar in appearance, the Golden Honor Award had Adolf Hitler’s initials stamped on the back as well as the date of the award. Hitler awarded only 650 of the Golden Honor Awards during his time as Germany’s dictator.2
If Oskar was a highly decorated hero, he said little about it. We do not know much about his life after his release from prison in the fall of 1938. He did consider himself a martyr and blamed his arrest and confinement on his own carelessness (Leitsinn, Leichtsinn). He claimed he was now unemployed because his old firm was in Brno, which was in what remained of Czechoslovakia after the Munich accord. On November 1, 1938, Oskar applied for Nazi Party (NSDAP; National-sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-partei; National Socialist German Workers Party) membership. Sudeten Germans who had belonged to Konrad Henlein’s SdP were eligible for membership if they had been SdP continuous members since 1935. Though the Nazi Party accepted Oskar for provisional membership on February 2, 1939, the party’s district court raised questions about his numerous arrests in the 1930s, which Oskar had listed on his membership application. Using guidelines drawn up by Rudolf Hess in 1937, local party officials were to investigate each applicant to insure that their political attitudes were in line with those of the party. They also applied the 1935 Nuremberg Laws to each application, the Law to Protect German Blood and German Honor and the Reich Citizenship Law; this was to insure that the potential member had neither Jewish blood nor a Jewish spouse. Party functionaries also examined an applicant’s moral character. If an applicant’s qualifications for membership were in doubt, the matter was turned over to the local or district party courts (Parteigerichte), which would rule on the matter.3
Eight months after Oskar applied to Nazi Party membership, Dr. Ger-lich, a Nazi Party official in the Reichsgau Sudetenland headquarters in Reichenberg, forwarded Oskar’s application to the party’s district court (Kreisgericht) in Zwittau (formerly Svitavy) for further investigation. Dr. Gerlich said that the court should examine two matters: Oskar’s claim that he had been a continuous member of the SdP since 1935, and his police record. Dr. Gerlich said that the party district court should obtain a copy of Oskar’s criminal files from the district attorney’s office in Zwittau. He added that if they found only the convictions that Schindler had listed on his party application, these would not be enough to keep him from becoming a party member in good standing “if he is otherwise of good character and politically acceptable.”4
Several days before the Czechoslovakians released Oskar from prison, German forces began to move into the Sudetenland. Initially, Svitavy was not included in the territory ceded to Nazi Germany, but that would change. The Munich Agreement stated that an international commission made up of Germany, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, Italy, and France would decide on border disputes between Prague and Germany, Poland, and Hungary. One area of particular interest to Hitler was the Svitavy region, Schindler’s home district. An ethnic German island on the Bohemian-Moravian border, Svitavy rested at the center of the main rail links between eastern and western Czechoslovakia. Three days after the signing of the Munich accord, Hitler personally told the German negotiators to insist on this piece of territory in their border talks with Czechoslovak officials. By the time Oskar Schindler returned to Svitavy, it was about to become part of Germany.5
Hitler Moves to Dismember Rump Czechoslovakia(October 1938–March 1939)
As Oskar recovered physically and psychologically from his jail term, Germany began its integration of the Sudetenland into the Third Reich. Konrad Henlein became Reichskommissar for the newly created Sudeten German territory (Reichskommissar für die sudetendeutschen Gebiete) and Karl Hermann Frank his deputy Kommissar. Reich officials began an immediate campaign of Gleichschaltung (reordering) to Nazify the Sude-tenland. Almost 99 percent of the Sudeten German population approved this move during Reichstag elections on December 4, when they voted to support the Führer and the grossdeutsche Reich. An active policy to force non-Germans to leave the Sudetenland was connected with the campaign of Nazification. The SdP, which was integrated into the NSDAP on December 11, 1938, began a policy of intimidation against Czech and Jewish businesses. SdP members put signs reading Tschechisches Geschäft (Czech business or shop) and Jüdisches Geschäft on all Czech and Jewish stores and businesses in the Sudetenland. During the November 9–10, 1938, anti-Jewish Kristallnacht riots, the SdP led anti-Jewish demonstrations. The intimidation campaign worked. About 140,000 Czechs, including 12,000 Germans, fled the Sudetenland for Czechoslovakia in the months after the German takeover of this region.6
If the Sudeten Germans thought that Hitler would bring them a better life, they were sorely misled. Though Germany was able to deal firmly with the region’s unemployment, it did so with a heavy hand. Nazi Germany was a dictatorship; Czechoslovakia a democracy. These differences became readily apparent to most Sudeten Germans over time. Many Sude-ten Germans came to resent the arrival of the Reich German carpetbaggers, who dominated government and business. At the instigation of Karl Hermann Frank, the Germans purged many of Konrad Henlein’s old SdP associates, including his closest ally, Walter Brand, who spent some time in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin. After Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the Sudeten Germans began to resent what they felt was Reich German favoritism towards Czechs in the new Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, whom they wanted expelled from the region. Certainly Oskar Schindler was affected by Sudeten German resentment towards Reich officialdom during and after World War II.7
In the midst of the Reich German effort to Nazify the Sudetenland, Ab-wehr officials debriefed Oskar Schindler and gave him some leave to recover from his imprisonment. They soon promoted Oskar and made him second in command of a team of Abwehr agents in Mährisch Ostrau (formerly Moravská Ostrava, Moravian Ostrava; today Ostrava) on the Sudeten-Polish border. One Czech investigation of Oskar’s activities in Märisch Ostrau suggests, though, that his position was so high in the local Abwehr organization that some of its agents considered him the practical head of its operations in the former Czech city.8
During this interim, Hitler began to plan for the takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia. According to Gerhard Weinberg, Wehrmacht officers in the Sudetenland heard of these plans as early as October 3, 1938. Within a week, military planning for the invasion of the remainder of Czechoslo- vakia was well under way in Berlin. On October 21, Hitler issued his directive to the Wehrmacht for the takeover of the rest of Czechoslovakia. It is now apparent that Schindler was involved in these efforts and was sent by Abwehr to Moravská Ostrava in early 1939 to help plan Germany’s takeover of the rest of Bohemia and Moravia. Schindler’s efforts, though, would be less significant than his later work in helping plan the invasion of Poland; Hitler was still suspicious of Admiral Canaris and Ab-wehr because they had not supplied the Wehrmacht with accurate information about Czechoslovakia in 1938. Instead, Hitler decided to force a political separation of Slovakia from the rest of Czechoslovakia by using SD terrorists in preparation for his takeover of the Czech lands.9
