Oskar Schindler, page 86
In the end, there was no one, dramatic, transforming moment when Oskar Schindler decided to do everything he could to save his Jewish workers. I think that Keneally and Spielberg found such a moment very useful. I also think they were wrong. One of the most frightening things about the Holocaust is the “ordinariness” of most of the Germans and others in the supporting network of businesses and factories that fed off the SS slave labor pool in the ghettos and concentration camps. In some ways, at least in the Kraków area, Oskar Schindler was not particularly unique in his initial treatment of his Jewish workers. Giving your Jewish workers adequate food and modest protection from SS mistreatment was simply good business and something other factory owners and managers such as Julius Madritsch and Raimund Titsch also did in Kraków.
But Oskar took his care and concern for the well-being of his Jewish workers a step further than Madritsch, Titsch, and others. But the question remains—why? I think that Oskar Schindler was, at heart, a fairly decent human being despite his womanizing and heavy drinking. Over time, I think the growing violence and death that enveloped Kraków’s Jews disgusted him and prompted him to do whatever he could to protect his Jewish workers from the SS. This development probably started as good business but evolved into something more humane as the Holocaust became more deadly. I am fairly certain, based on the information Oskar provided Shmuel Springmann and Reszőe Kasztner in Budapest in November 1943, that Schindler was quite knowledgeable about the most deadly aspects of the Final Solution.
In part, the key to understanding Oskar’s transformation can be found in his Abwehr contacts. Oskar was a part of many German and Nazi circles in Kraków, and I think he was probably most comfortable with his old friends in Abwehr and the Wehrmacht. I also feel that his continual runins with the Gestapo and the SS helped form his own attitudes towards Jews. In other words, helping his Jews became one of the ways Oskar acted out his own disillusionment with the Nazi system.
Dr. Moshe Bejski, a Schindler Jew and one of Oskar’s closest postwar friends, has a pragmatic and unromantic view of Schindler. He told me that, for him, the defining measure of Schindler’s commitment to doing everything possible to save his Jewish workers came in the fall of 1944, when Oskar chose to risk everything to move his armaments factory to Brünnlitz. Oskar could easily have closed his Kraków operations and retreated westward with the profits he had already made. Instead, he chose to risk his life and his money to save as many Jews as he could. Though there is no doubt in my mind that Oskar had vague dreams of transforming his Brünnlitz factory into a postwar economic powerhouse, I do not see that as the prime motive for his move. At this point in the war and in his life, I think Oskar Schindler was absolutely determined to do everything he could to save as many Jews as he could regardless of the cost, either personal or financial. During the last two years of the war, he had undergone a dramatic moral transformation, and, in many ways, he came more and more to associate himself with his Jews than with other Germans.
It could be argued here, and Emilie at one point says this, that Oskar’s growing closeness with his Jews was a self-protective measure adopted to insure his post-war safety. Oskar was well aware that the Allies could possibly prosecute him as a Nazi Party member who used Jewish slave labor during the war. Yet there was something beyond just mere self-protection that motivated Oskar to go to such extremes to save his growing number of Jewish workers. I am hesitant to get into the dangerous realm of pop psychology, but I think that as the war went on, and the Nazi system, wrapped as it was in its self-serving, irrational propaganda and racial ideology, he found moral comfort in his association with his Jewish workers, who clung to their ancient faith and cultural traditions in the midst of absolute horror.
By the end of the war, Oskar became so close to his Jewish workers that it became difficult for outsiders, particularly in Germany, to separate Oskar from his Schindler Jews. In some ways, his efforts to help Jews during the war created a unique symbiosis between himself and his Jewish workers, and in many ways they became one. The only difference is that after the war, the Schindler Jews traded places with Oskar, now himself part of a dispossessed ethnic minority, and collectively became his protector and benefactor. I am not certain, though, that Oskar fully appreciated the richness of these relationships, because he was constantly using his Jewish friends to try to regain his professional footing. I have to admit that I have been dismayed by Schindler’s sense of opportunism, particularly when it came to his efforts to gain economic benefit from his friendships with his Jewish friends after the war. But it should be remembered that whenever he did this, it was with the active encouragement of his numerous Jewish acquaintances, whether they be Schindler Jews or not, remained in awe of what he had done for Jews during the Holocaust. Moreover, I think that had Oskar been able successfully to rebuild his life after the war, he would have developed a more mature, less opportunistic relationship with his Schindler Jews. I think we see a hint of the true Oskar Schindler in the final years of his life, when, with a steady income and more stable life, he was able to give himself fully to something that he came to love most deeply—Israel. His love of Israel was a mere reflection of the close relationship that he had developed after the war with his many Jewish friends throughout the world. These friendships were buffered by equally close ties with many Germans who shared Oskar’s passion for Israel and a closer German-Jewish relationship.
So how should history judge Oskar Schindler? From my own perspective, I look to the Schindler Jews for guidance, who knew and observed Oskar Schindler with all his virtues, strengths, and flaws. As I researched and wrote this book, I had the opportunity to interview and correspond with many Schindler Jews. With one or two exceptions, their feelings towards Oskar are pragmatically romantic. To a person, they will tell you that if it had not been for Oskar Schindler, they and their families would not be here today. Most of them were well aware of Oskar’s human flaws but put these moral qualms aside when it came to judging him. They felt he deserved all the accolades that the modern world has to offer. The only negative in all this was the guilt that most of them expressed about not having done more to help their beloved Oskar after the war. I have seen many Schindler Jews weep when it came to this issue.
Finally, I go back to a conversation that I had with Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, the head of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem. Other than Dr. Moshe Bejski, there has been no other person in Israel more intimately involved in investigating the thousands of nominations for Righteous Gentile status over the past few decades. From Dr. Paldiel’s perspective, there was no person more deserving of Righteous Gentile status than Oskar Schindler, including Raoul Wallenberg. I agree. I think that Oskar Schindler’s heroism is unique because of the fact that what he did, both in Kraków and Brünnlitz, took place in the midst of the most horrible killing center in modern history. Moreover, while his most dramatic efforts took place during the last year of the war, Oskar Schindler’s efforts to help and later save Jews was a stance that evolved over three or four years.
Yes, Oskar Schindler was a flawed human being. But he also personally risked his fortune and his life to save almost 1,100 people. Beyond this, he provided hundreds of other Jews who worked for him at Emalia with a quality of life that better enabled many of them to survive the Holocaust. Finally, Oskar Schindler should also be remembered for his willingness to supply Jewish aid organizations with information about the Final Solution and life in the General Government and his efforts to help these organizations bring money, food, and medicine into Kraków to help sustain Jewish life in the Płaszów concentration camp. Such unique acts of humanity were rare during the Holocaust.
SS Ranks (Based on US Army Equivalents)
SS-Oberstgruppenführer General
SS-Obergruppenführer Lt. General
SS-Gruppenführer Major General
SS-Brigadeführer Brigadier General
SS-Oberführer Senior Colonel
SS-Standartenführer Colonel
SS-Obersturmbannführer Lt. Colonel
SS-Sturmbannführer Major
SS-Hauptsturmführer Captain
SS-Obersturmführer First Lieutenant
SS-Untersturmführer Second Lieutenant
SS-Sturmscharführer Sergeant Major
SS-Hauptscharführer Master Sergeant
SS-Oberscharführer Technical Sergeant
SS-Scharführer Staff Sergeant
SS-Unterscharführer Sergeant
SS-Rottenführer Corporal
SS-Sturmmann Corporal
SS-Oberschütze Private First Class
SS-Schütze Private
SOURCE: Heinz Hőhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971, 744).
German Army Ranks (Based on U.S. Army Equivalents)
Generaloberst General
General Lt. General
Generalleutnant Major General
Generalmajor Brigadier General
Oberst Colonel
Oberstleutnant Lt. Colonel
Major Major
Hauptmann Captain
Oberleutnant First Lieutenant
Leutnant Second Lieutenant
Stabsfeldwebel Master Sergeant
Oberfeldwebel Technical Sergeant
Feldwebel Staff Sergeant
Unterfeldwebel Sergeant
Unteroffizier Corporal
Gefreiter Private First Class
Obersoldat No U.S. Army equivalent
Soldat Private
SOURCE: U.S. War Department, Handbook on German Military Forces (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University press, 1990), 6-7.
NOTES
Chapter 1
1. Theodore D. (Ted) Feder, interview by the author, New York, April 24, 1997.
2. Österreichisches Patentamt Büro, Vienna, “Report on Oskar Schindler,” December 12, 1991, Yad Vashem, Department of the Righteous, M 31/20, 1–2; Sčitání lidu 1930 Volkszählung 1930 (1930 Census), Zwittau, Odbočka zpravodajské ústrředny prři police-jním rředitelství Praha (Branch Office of the Intelligence Headquarters of the Police Directorate in Prague), S 54/1, 202-48-159, Státní Ústřední Archiv v Praze, 1–2 (hereafter referred to as OZU).
3. Letter from Radoslav Fikejz to David Crowe, March 27, 2000. In the midst of the park is a building that now houses the office of the mayor. It was built by a German industrialist, Robert Langer, in 1892. Emilie Schindler, with Erika Rosenberg, Where Light and Shadow Meet, trans. Dolores M. Koch (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 26.
4. “Oskar Schindler, Retter und Lebemann.” ZDF Film (1994); Ackermann Gemeinde Hessen, Zur Erinnerung an Oskar Schindler dem unvergeßlichen Lebensretter 1200 verfolg-ter Juden: Dokumentation der Gedenkstunde zum 10. Todestag am 14. Oktober 1984 in Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main: Ackermann-Gemeinde, 1985), 18; Thomas Ke-neally, Schindler’s List (New York: Touchstone Books, 1992), 32–33.
5. Radoslav Fikejz, Oskar Schindler (1908–1974) (Svitavy: Městské muzeum a galerie Svitavy, 1998), 18; Jana Šmídová, “Oskar Schindler—anděl nebo gauner? (Oskar Schindler: Angel or Crook?), Lidové noviny, February 8, 1994, 9; Oskar Schindler, Daten meines Lebensweges, July 13, 1966, 1, Bundesarchiv (Koblenz), Nachlaß Oskar Schindler, 1908–1974, Bestand N 1493, No. 1, Band 1 (hereafter referred to as Oskar Schindler, BA(K)).
6. Schindler, Light and Shadow, 129.
7. Ibid., 7, 10–11; Fikejz, Oskar Schindler, 19.
8. Schindler, Light and Shadow, 3–7.
9. Ibid., 8–9.
10. Ibid., 9.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 23–26; Christoph Stopka, “Ich bin Frau Schindler,” Bunte (1994):24.
13. Schindler, Light and Shadow, 26–27; Stopka, “Frau Schindler,” 24.
14. Ernst Tragatsch, “Eine Erinnerung: Oskar Schindler,” Motorrad, no. 12 (1964):1; Fikejz, Oskar Schindler, 19.
15. Tragatsch, “Eine Erinnerung,” 1.
16. “Schindler Protokol,” 23 July, 1938, Zpravodajská ústředna při policejním ředitel-ství Praha, 200-299-50, Státní Ústřední Archiv v Praze, 1 (hereafter referred to as “Schindler Protokol,” ZUP 200). This thirteen-page document is Oskar Schindler’s official interrogation statement (in German and Czech) to the Czech secret police about his life and Abwehr activities. The page numbers cited are those used in this archival collection, which also includes the secret police report on Leo Pruscha and Dr. Sobotka’s report on Schindler and Pruscha. I have chosen to use these handwritten archival numbers so that future researchers can easily locate them. Each report also contains separate typed numbers that are referenced only to the individual reports. “Dr. Sobotka Report: Schindler Oskar and Pruscha Leo—Suspected Crime Against Paragraph 6, No. 2, of the Law for the Protection of the Republic,” ZUP 200, Policajní ředitelství v BrnZ (Police Directorate in Brno), No. 3382/2/38, 28 July, 1938, Státní Ústřední Archiv v Praze, 40–41 (hereafter referred to as “Sobotka Report,” ZUP 200). The handwritten numbers of pages 29–41 correspond to the typed page numbers of 1 through 13; “Oskar Schindler to Fritz Lang,” July 20, 1951, BA (K), N 1493, 5/28, 4 (hereafter referred to as “Schindler to Lang,” July 20, 1952, BA(K)).
17. “Schindler Protokol,” ZUP 200, 1; Schindler, Light and Shadow, 27; in the notes of their interview with Schindler in Paris in 1964, Martin Gosch and Howard Koch stated that Schindler told them that he received a DM 100,000 dowry from Emilie’s father. Given that they were still living in Czechoslovakia at the time, it was probably 100,000 Czech crowns, as Emilie stated in her memoirs. Martin A. Gosch and Howard Koch, “Interview with Oskar Schindler,” November 18, 1964, Paris, France, in the Delbert Mann Papers, Special Collections Library, Vanderbilt University, 7-A, 11.
18. “Schindler to Lang,” July 20, 1951, BA(K), 3.
19. MVP, M, 193/66-K, March 9, 1966, 1; Dr. MeOislav Borak, “Zatykac na Oskara Schindlera,” Meska televize Ostrava, 1999; Fikejz, Oskar Schindler, 20, 27.
20. Jitka Gruntová, Oskar Schindler: Legenda a Fakta (Brno: Barrister & Principle, 1997), 14 n. 13.
21. “Schindler Protokol,” ZUP 200, 1.
22. Schindler, Light and Shadow, 27–28.
23. “Edith Schlegl to David M. Crowe,” November 17, 1999; “Edith Schlegl to David M. Crowe,” September 26, 2000. See the Czech secret police comments on Oskar’s affair and its impact on his relationship with Emilie in “Sobotka Report,” ZUP 200, 34; Matthias Kessler, Ich muß doch meinen Vater lieben, oder?: Die Lebensgeschichte von Monika Göth, Tochter des KZ-Kommandanten aus ‘Schindlers Liste’ (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2002), 224.
24. “Tina Staehr to David Crowe (report of a conversation with Edith Schlegl),” October 23, 2000; Gerhard Rempel, Hitler’s Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 233, 248–250.
25. “Schlegl to Crowe,” November 17, 1999; Chris Staehr and Tina Staehr, interview by the author, Stuttgart, Germany, October 31, 2003.
26. Schindler, Light and Shadow, 115.
27. Keneally, Schindler’s List, 37.
28. Vollmacht (Power of Attorney), Lastenausgleichsarchiv (Lastenausgleich Archive), Bayreuth, 306 2230 D (Oskar Schindler). Oskar Schindler’s extensive Lastenausgleich files are hereafter referred to as LAG (OS). This file states that soon after Fanny’s death, El-friede, by then Elfriede Tutsch, died at University Hospital in Munich. Given that she later bore three children, this account is inaccurate.
29. “Martin Gosch interview with Oskar Schindler,” November 18, 1964, Paris, France, Delbert Mann Papers, Special Collection Library at Vanderbilt University, 2 (hereafter referred to as “Gosch-Schindler Interview,” November 18, 1964, Delbert Mann Papers, Vanderbilt University).
30. “Gosch-Schindler Interview,” November 18, 1964, Delbert Mann Papers, Vanderbilt University, 3–4.
31. Fikejz, Oskar Schindler, 21–22.
32. “Schindler to Lang,” 1; Dieter Trautwein and Ursula Trautwein, interviews by the author, Frankfurt, Germany, May 25, 1999, and January 18, 2000.
33. Joseph Rothschild, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars, vol. IX, A History of East Central Europe (Washington: University of Washington Press, 1990), 76–78; Victor S. Mamatey, “The Establishment of the Republic,” in Victor S. Mamatey and Radomír Luža, eds., A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 24–27.
34. Václav L. Beneå, “Czechoslovakia Democracy and Its Problems, 1918–1920,” in Mamatey and Luža, History, 39; Herman Kopecek, “Zusammenarbeit and Spoluprace: Sudeten German–Czech Cooperation in Interwar Czechoslovakia,” in Nancy M. Wingfield, ed., Czech-Sudeten German Relations, Special Topic Issue, Nationalities Papers 24, no. 1 (March 1996):63; J. W. Brügel, “Die Aussiedlung der Deutschen aus der Tsche-choslowakei,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 8 (April 1960):134–135; Radomír Luža, The Transfer of the Sudeten Germans: A Study of Czech-German Relations, 1933–1962 (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 1, 2 n. 6, 3 n. 9, 30.
35. Kopecek, “Zusammenarbeit and Spoluprace,” 63–65.
36. Ibid., 66, 70; J. W. Bruegel, “The Germans in Pre-War Czechoslovakia,” in Mamatey and Luža, History, 184; Rothschild, East Central Europe, 110–111, 116–117.
37. Kopecek, “Zusammenarbeit and Spoluprace,” 63–64, 70–72; Bruegel, “Germans in Pre-War Czechoslovakia,” 173–175; Luža, Transfer, 30.
