Oskar Schindler

OSKAR SCHINDLER’S LIFE IN THE 1960S WAS FILLED WITH SERIOUS financial and health problems that were exacerbated by a humiliating failed movie deal with MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) and an unscrupulous effort to use his name to raise funds for a phony Martin Buber prize in London. There were some momentary high points in his life during this period, though Oskar struggled with long bouts of depression. He came to depend more and more on his Schindler Jews in Israel and the United States for his emotional and financial well-being. The same was true of Emilie, who received similar support and friendship from the German Jewish community in Buenos Aires. This group was determined to care for what one Argentine German newspaper called “Mother Courage” for the rest of her life.¹

Oskar left Emilie deeply in debt and emotionally devastated when he departed for Germany via New York in 1957. They said almost nothing to one another during the trip to the airport on that fateful day in June 1957. As Oskar boarded the plane, he said goodbye without looking directly into Emilie’s eyes. And though she knew their marriage had ended long before and that Oskar was a complete stranger to her, she felt as though “a part of [herself]… was leaving.” She felt “a tangible emptiness” when she returned to their farm in San Vicente. She was also broke and had no money to pay the workers who helped her with the small farm. Emilie estimated in her memoirs that she was a million pesos ($14,706) in debt and survived by selling milk from her cows.²

There is little evidence of much direct contact between Oskar and Emilie once he returned to Germany. He wrote her periodically, though Emilie said that his letters all “seemed copies of one another.” From her perspective, they “amounted to a lot of excuses, delays, and confused stories, without the slightest reference to [her] repeated pleas for help and to the difficult situation” he had left her in. He sent her money only once, DM 200 ($47.62), along with a copy of the Diary of Anne Frank. At first, Emilie held out hope that Oskar planned to return to Argentina. After a while, she decided to ignore his letters.³ On the other hand, Oskar still seemed to care for Emilie and expressed frustration over her failure to respond to his letters. Some of his concern, though, probably came more from their mutual financial interests in Argentina and the MGM film deal than any deep affection Oskar might have had for her.

Walter and Beate Pollack, two of Oskar’s closest friends in Buenos Aires, were German Jews who had come to Argentina in the 1930s and met Oskar through their involvement with the Joint. The Pollacks adored Oskar and did everything they could to help Emilie after he left Argentina. In fact, most of what we know about Emilie’s life after 1957 comes either from her memoirs or from Walter and Beate Pollack’s correspondence with Oskar. Over time, Walter Pollack became the intermediary between Oskar and Emilie because of her refusal to have any contact with her husband.

As Emilie’s financial plight worsened, she was forced to sell their quinta (house) and sold about half their farm in 1963 to cover back taxes and debt. She was fifty-six years old now and considered herself “con mano atrás y otra delante” (destitute: with nothing on and trying to cover oneself).⁴ After she sold her beloved quinta, Emilie lived in an outhouse until a neighbor took pity on her and gave her a small shack to live in. One neighbor told me that she remembered Emilie picking and eating tangerines from neighbors’ trees.⁵ Another friend, Walter Pollack, wrote Leopold Page in 1965 that when he first got to know Emilie several years earlier she “almost literally” lay in the street. Her only steady companions seemed to be the growing menagerie of dogs and cats that she was so fond of, though she later had several boy friends and female live-in companions. She wrote that in the immediate years after Oskar’s departure, her “loneliness was so absolute” that she hardly knew how to bear it.⁶ Emilie, like Oskar, was deviled by long bouts of depression brought on by loneliness and financial desperation. But that would all change when Peter Gorlinsky, a writer for the Argentinisches Tageblatt, Buenos Aires’ major German newspaper, wrote an article about Emilie’s plight in January 1963, Vater Courage bleibt unvergessen—aber wie steht es mit Mutter Courage (Father Courage Has Not Been Forgotten—But How Does It Stand With Mother Courage?). Gorlinsky’s article was stimulated by two things: news in the Argentine press of Oskar’s Righteous Among the Nations nomination and efforts by Emilie’s neighbors in San Vicente to contact B’nai B’rith about her plight.⁷ Gorlinsky praised Oskar Schindler, whom he called the “‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ of the Second World War,” and noted that he now lived modestly in Frankfurt. For the most part, he went on, the world seemed unmoved by Oskar’s wartime deeds.⁸

But most of Gorlinsky’s article dealt with Emilie, whom he argued deserved as much acclaim as her husband. Time and again, he noted, the Schindler Jews talked of her “kind smile” and her efforts to help save them. Yet few people knew of her efforts during the war and treated her as though she lived “on another planet.” Argentinians, for example, would be surprised to know that she lived in Buenos Aires, “not as a legend, not as a modern fairytale, but as a human being made of flesh and blood.” Yet, Gorlinsky continued, “Mother Courage” was struggling to survive and lived in far worse conditions than the survivors whom she helped save. All she had in life was a “small plot” of earth and it was possible that she would soon lose this; indeed, Emilie Schindler was “barely able to make a scant, humble living.”⁹

This, Gorlinsky added, had to change. There had to be a way in the “evening of her life” to give some security to the woman who had helped so many others. There were pensions available for judges and civil servants (in Germany) who had once supported the Nazis but none for people like Emilie Schindler. So the only ones who could now help her were the people who had received [her] “good deeds.” It was, Gorlinsky concluded, the responsibility of everyone to set right “a truly insufferable state of affairs.”¹⁰

The impact of the article on Argentina’s German Jewish community was electrifying. Its B’nai B’rith (Bene Berith) lodge, Traducion (Tradition), began to send her Arg$5,000 ($37.31) a month in March 1963 but soon increased this to Arg$9,000 ($67.16). That fall, the Joint decided to give her a additional monthly stipend of Arg$5,000 ($37.31). She would later receive stipends from the Argentine and German governments as well as some money from MGM after they began to consider making a film about Oskar’s wartime exploits. In addition, Traducion, which periodically held fund-raisers to help Emilie, created the Helen Strupp Foundation to build her a lovely home near the center of San Vicente. Walter Pollack told Oskar in the summer of 1964 that the Buenos Aires German Jewish community had “committed itself to care for [Emilie] for the rest of her life.” Emilie moved into the house at San Martin 353 in 1965 and lived there until she was forced permanently to enter the Hogar los Pinos (Home in the Pines), a German retirement home in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, after she broke her hip in November 2000. But from the perspective of Traducion, which owned the deed to the house and land, it remained her home until her death in Germany in the fall of 2001.¹¹

Oskar, Emilie, and MGM: “To the Last Hour”

Emilie’s bitterness over Oskar’s departure clouded her perspective when it came to his explanations about why he was not able to help her anymore than he did in the immediate years after his departure. She was very bitter, for example, that he had “received a hundred thousand marks in compensation for the Brünnlitz factory” but that she “never saw a penny of it.” It was evidently never explained to her that this money was not paid directly to Oskar but was used to help him purchase a bankrupt business in West Germany. Though she never mentions it in her memoirs, she must have known about his failed stone-and-concrete business because Oskar had told the Pollacks, who were very close to Emilie. But by the time that Oskar began to involve her in the contractual issues surrounding the planning for the film deal with MGM, Emilie refused to have direct contact with her husband and worked with him through Walter and Beate Pollack.

By the early 1960s, Oskar had become something of a media figure in Europe. In the fall of 1960, Bayerischer Rundfunk did a radio play, “Licht in der Finsternis” (Light in the Darkness), that included a section on Oskar’s wartime efforts to save Jews. In 1962, he was approached by MCA (Germany) about signing a multi-media contract. He ultimately signed a contract with George Marton with the idea of developing a film script with Austrian writer Jochen Huth. When filming began, Oskar was to receive $10,000. Oskar was also working with Walt Disney Productions in Vienna, which prepared an eleven-page synopsis for a film project that was essentially based on the article he had done years earlier for Kurt Grossmann. It is difficult to determine whether this was linked to the movie envisioned by George Marton. Regardless, nothing ever came of either of these projects, though they no doubt did help generate some interest in Europe and the United States in Oskar’s story.¹²

This new interest in Oskar’s efforts to save his Jewish workers during the war came from widespread news reports about his Righteous Among the Nations nomination in Israel. But it would be another year and a half before any serious effort to make a film about his life bore fruit. And that would come not in Europe but in the United States. Leopold Paul (“Poldek”) Page was the person responsible for what would become the most serious effort to memorialize Oskar Schindler’s wartime exploits in film prior to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List. From 1964 on, Page would be the driving force behind Hollywood’s interest in telling the story of his beloved Oskar Schindler.

Page stubbornly talked to anyone who would listen to his stories about Oskar. In the summer of 1963, he met a Los Angeles Times reporter, Anton Calleia, and told him about Schindler. Calleia decided to interview Page as well as many other Schindler Jews in the Los Angeles area and finally contacted Oskar in Frankfurt as part of his research. Calleia told Schindler that although he was impressed by his heroism during the war, what touched him the most was “the deep love and reverence” that these people had for him: “You are their angel.” He wanted to share these thoughts and sentiments with Oskar so that they might comfort him in his “moments of loneliness, discouragement or sadness.”¹³ Several months later, an article appeared in the New York Herald Tribune on Oskar. This time, it was not Leopold Page but his close friend, the violinist Henry Rosner, who provided the author, Robert Parrella, with information about Oskar’s wartime exploits and his current problems in Germany. Rosner noted, for example, that earlier in the year Schindler had been stoned in Frankfurt for helping Jews during the war. But, Parrella added, Schindler Jews in Israel and the United States were doing everything they could to help their “old friend.” The Schindler Jews in Los Angeles, for example, were “contributing one day’s pay per year to assist the Schindler cement plant” in Germany.¹⁴

Three months later, Lucille “Chip” Gosch, the wife of Hollywood film director and writer Martin Gosch, had walked into Leopold Page’s luggage shop in Beverly Hills to have a bag repaired. Poldek immediately recognized her and said: “I have an interesting story for your husband. I am one of thirteen hundred Jews saved by Oskar Schindler.” Gosch, who had been blacklisted in the 1950s and had recently returned to Hollywood from Spain to rebuild his career, was fascinated by what his wife told him about Oskar Schindler. He went to Page’s shop and asked him to repeat the story. Gosch later told a reporter with the Los Angeles Times that he was astounded. “How could such a story be kept out of the public limelight for so long?” Gosch asked. But he also found Page’s tale about Schindler hard to believe. He had the Schindler story checked out by the State Department and other sources abroad and found Page’s account “to be true and incredibly exciting.” He did more research on the subject and in May 1964, prepared a thirty-six-page preliminary analysis titled “The Oskar Schindler Story.” Gosch showed his analysis to Delbert Mann, who had received an Academy Award in 1956 for his film Marty. According to Gosch, Mann “jumped” at the chance to film the story of Oskar Schindler.¹⁵

Once Mann agreed to direct the film, contractual preparations for the film moved along very quickly. On May 1, 1964, Page sent Gosch a preliminary contract for the film with Poldek acting as Oskar Schindler’s “Attorney in Fact.” On January 24, 1964, Oskar had agreed to give Page his power of attorney. The draft contract gave Gosch “exclusive rights” for a period of nine months commencing on February 28, 1965, to develop a film script of the Oskar Schindler story. Gosch would pay Schindler through Page $50,000 for the story rights. Oskar would receive a $25,000 advance for these rights during the option period and another $25,000 on the first day of filming. Once the film was completed, Gosch, who would now own the rights to the Schindler story “in perpetuity,” would give Schindler through Page 5 percent of the producer’s profits, which in this case amounted to 50 percent of the film’s net profits. Other clauses required additional payments of 50 percent or $10,000, whichever was greater, if Gosch sold the Schindler story rights for purposes other than a film. Page was to receive 2.5 percent of the producer’s profits and 10 percent of the profits from any sale of the Schindler story to other media outlets once Oskar had received his payments for the non-film story rights. If for some reason Gosch was not successful in commercially exploiting the Schindler story, then the contract with Schindler and Page would become “null and void.”¹⁶

The preliminary contract also stipulated that if Gosch and his associates did complete the film script, Schindler and Page would serve as paid film consultants. Prior to filming, Oskar and Poldek would offer their expertise without compensation. However, once filming began, then they would be paid consultants for a minimum of ten weeks with a fee of $300 a week apiece. In addition, Gosch would fly each of them as well as Emilie first class to any film site not in “the environs of Frankfurt, Germany.” He would also pay for their daily living expenses during the filming.¹⁷

A month later, Irving Glovin, an attorney in Beverly Hills, wrote Oskar that he had been hired by Leopold Page to represent the two of them “with reference to [their] war experiences.” Glovin told Oskar that he, Gosch and Page were working “with people and companies whom [they] consider of sufficiently high caliber and standing to be capable and worthy of doing a story such as this.” Operating under Page’s power of attorney, they expected soon to enter into a commitment to develop the film. At this time, Page would sign a new contract for Schindler after which he would “be advised of its complete provisions.” Glovin added that Page’s “personal co-operation will be necessary” and that everyone involved in the film development process thought that this would be a “very successful and profitable venture.” He hoped that they would have the opportunity to meet soon. In the meantime, Glovin asked Oskar not to discuss these exclusive arrangements with anyone. “The arrangements we are making are intended to be world wide in scope and the parties with whom we are dealing undertake all of the necessary publicity at that time.” He concluded by asking Oskar to acknowledge the receipt of his letter and his “understanding of its contents.” He added: “This could be persuasive with the parties with whom we are negotiating that you do understand and approve our proceeding.”¹⁸

Several days later, Page wrote Oskar about the film and other matters. He told him that their lawyer [Glovin] was working on a contract with a movie producer and that the terms of this contract “will be good” for him. Page said that the producer thought the “film must be monumental” and wanted Gregory Peck to play the role of Oskar.¹⁹ It is difficult to tell from the extensive correspondence between Page and Schindler in the summer of 1964 how much Oskar knew about the details of the film deal. He told Dr. Moshe Bejski about the project and Bejski suggested that he use the testimony he had compiled during the May 2, 1962, banquet in Tel Aviv to help with the script development. Bejski thought that the testimony of the individual Schindler Jews at the banquet was “good material.” He added that he would write Page separately about the film contract.²⁰

But Oskar had a lot more on his mind at this time than just the film. He was still having to deal with the bankruptcy court over his failed stone-and-cement business and was also working with the Schindler Jews in Israel who were trying to convince the West German government to grant Oskar an honorary pension. Oskar was in bad shape financially and unable to work because of his heart problems. In fact, in August, he checked himself into a sanatorium in Bad Wildungen to recover from his heart attack. He had planned to stay ten days but instead was there for a month. He hoped to use his time in the sanatorium to work on the synopsis for the film.²¹

Several weeks after Oskar got out of the sanatorium, Gosch flew him to London, where they spent time with Irving Glovin discussing the film. Oskar later wrote Page that he believed he had found a new friend in Gosch. Schindler was particularly pleased to discover that Gosch spoke fluent Spanish, which meant the two of them could converse without a translator.

He also liked Glovin, whom he considered an “iron-hard, clever attorney.” Oskar was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of money they thought he might make on the film. And though Oskar was personally interested in the financial aspects of the film, he told Gosch that he should make arrangements to cover Page’s business losses while he was away from his leather shop in Beverly Hills. It was not that he did not trust Gosch, Oskar wrote Page, but “the burnt child shies away from fire,” a reference to his own recent financial and business difficulties. This was, he explained, perhaps his “last chance to prepare for the evening of [his] life.” The only thing he asked of Page, who was Oskar’s sole representative in the film negotiations in California, was that he be honest and open with him throughout the project’s development.²²

When Gosch met with Oskar in London, he told him that he had close ties with Cardinal Joseph Francis Spellman of New York and to Democrats close to U.S. President Lyndon Johnson. This impressed Oskar, who thought such contacts would help when it came time to promote the film. Such recognition, Schindler wrote Page, whether it be “from the government of Israel, the Pope in Rome, or the President in Washington, is a slap in the face for the highest local authorities [in West Germany], who for years took notice of articles [about Schindler] in the press, but have not officially offered… a solid piece of dry bread until today.”²³

In a different letter on the same day, Oskar asked Page to arrange for a power of attorney document in Page or Glovin’s name for Emilie. Once he received this document, which was to be in English, Schindler would send it to Stern in Israel, who in turn would send it to Walter Pollack for Emilie to sign in Buenos Aires. He went on to explain that he had told Gosch that he should consider paying Emilie $10,000 for her film rights, although this amount could be less depending on what Gosch had to pay Schindler Jews for the rights to their stories. Oskar added that Gosch had promised to “transfer a considerable sum as advance for expenses… within the next few days” to cover his costs for doing preliminary research, travel, and interviews for the film.²⁴

As plans for the film matured, Oskar became more excited about the project. In light of his financial difficulties, he wrote Walter Pollack that he saw it as an opportunity to achieve “a higher standard of living” both for himself and for Emilie. But Oskar was also concerned about Emilie’s ability to handle money, whether it be from the film or other sources. He had learned, for example, that Emilie had a boyfriend, Cascho Bosetti, who was thirty years her junior. Oskar, in a surprising bit of jealousy, described Bosetti as her “one-time peon and horse lackey.” Schindler was concerned that if Emilie received a large fee for her film rights, that would give the ten-member “family Bosetti illusions of grandeur.” Oskar added that he could have flown Emilie to London to meet Gosch. However, this would have cost $1,000 and that sum could be used to insure a “secure life for 1–2 years” for her as well as a vacation in the Mar de Plata, a seaside resort south of Buenos Aires. Oskar ended his letter to Pollack by asking him to serve as his trustee for Emilie over the next few months. Oskar would voice these concerns over and over again in letters to Pollack during the next few years. The odd thing about all this is that Oskar had just as much trouble handling money as his wife.²⁵

According to Pollack, Oskar’s concerns about Emilie’s ability to handle money were well placed. He told him in a letter on October 19, 1964, that she had lost the Arg$4,000 ($27.78) that Traducion had recently given her as a Yom Kippur gift. Earlier that year, Pollack continued, she spent another Arg$100,000 ($694) that Traducion friends had given her to fence in her five acres of land. In a letter to Page in early 1965, Pollack explained that the land she had just fenced in did not even belong to her. What frustrated Pollack was that she promised to use the money only for emergencies. Moreover, Emilie had told him earlier that the land was already fenced. Pollack advised Oskar that the best thing to do with Emilie when it came to money was to give it to her in small portions. Otherwise, she would spend it all at once.²⁶

On the same day that Pollack wrote Schindler in Frankfurt, Oskar sent Gosch and Page a telegram asking for more details about the film project. Page responded hurtfully the same day and asked him whether he was “serious” about the concerns he had raised in his telegram. Page, who almost always wrote Oskar in Polish, told him that he had spent fourteen years trying to get the film made and had knocked on “thousands of doors” to persuade someone to make a movie about Oskar. He considered Oskar his “best friend” and intended to do as much for him as Schindler had done for Page. People, he added, laughed at him because of his efforts to tell Schindler’s story. And when they did, he always told them that as long as he was alive he would “always try to do something for Oskar.” Page then told him that he was setting up an Oskar Schindler Fund that would last forever. He advised Oskar not to interfere in the film project because the professionals involved in developing it were preoccupied with the movie and “don’t like to be disturbed.” He advised Oskar to leave everything to Martin Gosch and promised to explain everything to him when they met in Paris in a few weeks. He also told Schindler to take care of himself: “Don’t drink and don’t smoke too much.” Page, who had been sending Oskar money almost every month, ended his letter by asking whether he needed money for underwear or clothes.²⁷

Page included in his letter another letter of the same date from Irving Glovin, who told Oskar that work on the film project was “serious” but warned him to be patient because “nothing is certain until it is completed.” He said that a “fine writer” had been hired to write the screen play and that the writer would go with Gosch and Page when they traveled to Europe in November and December to do further research and look at possible film sites. Glovin said that he greatly admired what Oskar had done during the war, though he thought that Schindler’s story was more than simply a “war story” and that it “had the quality of greatness.” He also had the “deepest admiration and respect for the man who was responsible for preserving the life of… Paul [Page],” and the many others with him who were “now useful and productive human beings the world over.” Glovin said his firm would charge Schindler a small contingency fee of 10 percent but he would not make any money unless Oskar did. He reiterated that it was important for Oskar to “be patient” and keep his “own confidences.” He added that “big plans” were being made in his honor but warned Oskar that his interference in the film’s development could “complicate and perhaps destroy the project completely.” Glovin asked Schindler “to avoid further communication with Mr. Gosch” and not to talk with anyone about the film. He ended by advising Oskar to please be patient and “don’t complicate matters.”²⁸

A week later, Martin Gosch wrote Schindler on an MGM letterhead to tell him of their planned research trip to Europe and plans to meet him in Paris from November 17–20. This would give Oskar a chance to meet Howard Koch, who would write the film script. Koch was considered one of Hollywood’s finest screenwriters and had coauthored scripts for Sergeant York (1941) and Casablanca (1942). He had also adapted H. G. Welles’s War of the Worlds for radio, which became the basis of Orson Welles’s terrifying national radio broadcast in October 1938. Koch’s 1943 script for Mission to Moscow got him into trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950 and he was blacklisted. He lived in Europe for several years and returned to the United States in 1956, hoping to revive his writing career. Koch was to be paid $55,000 for the script for To the Last Hour, and its success would hopefully play a role in reviving his career.²⁹

It is uncertain at this point, though, whether Oskar knew much about Koch. Before he departed for Europe, Gosch wrote Oskar and asked him to give him the names of Schindler Jews in Paris whom he could talk to while he was there. But Gosch said he wanted to spend most of his time in Paris tape recording his wartime memories. He added: “[I am] making some very important plans for you to receive world recognition for your efforts, in addition to the other compensations.” Page would tell him about other developments that should make life “much easier and more pleasant” for Oskar. Gosch ended by asking Oskar to control his “very excited and nervous enthusiasm,” and added, “We want you to be well and healthy and to enjoy a good life.”³⁰

As Oskar began to plan for his meeting in Paris with Gosch, Page, and Koch, he wrote Moshe Bejski to ask him whether he could meet with the group in the French capital. Oskar had come to trust Dr. Bejski implicitly and, with the exception of Walter Pollack, wrote to him more frequently than to anyone else. Oskar respected Bejski’s judicious approach to his concerns and wanted him to be with him in Paris during the final negotiations on the film. He sent Bejski all the letters he had received from Gosch and Glovin and told him that Stern had advised him in a telegram that it was important “to hold out stubbornly” when it came to the contract discussions. Over the next few years, Oskar would become increasingly frustrated with the pace of the movie’s evolution and came to rely heavily on the advice of Dr. Bejski and the other prominent Schindler Jews in Israel for advice and direction regarding his role in its development.³¹

Unknown to Oskar, Gosch had contacted Bejski and Stern about a trip to Israel in late November to interview the Schindler Jews there. Dr. Bejski immediately wrote Oskar about these developments and told him that Stern had recently sent Page a telegram telling him that the Schindler Jews in Israel would need a copy of Emilie’s power of attorney before they would consider giving their testimony to Gosch. Bejski was a little surprised that Oskar was not coming with them to Israel and said that Page had written him earlier to warn him to deal “very carefully with MGM— in order not to ruin the whole thing.” Dr. Bejski evidently did not appreciate Page’s advice and instead warned Schindler to be careful with Gosch and MGM, particularly when it came to the type of film they might produce. Bejski said it was important that they “try to influence” the film by insuring that it was based on fact.³² It is uncertain whether Oskar received Dr. Bejski’s letter before he left for Paris.

In the meantime, Gosch was hard at work on the film. About two weeks before he left on his trip to meet with Oskar in Paris, he sent a memo to MGM’s Maurice Silverstein and Delbert Mann about selecting a film title. Gosch preferred The Third Face of War, which would highlight war’s third element such as Schindler’s efforts to save his Jews. He also was considering No Sound of Trumpets, The Man Who Dared, The Final Chapter, The Last Index, They Live Again, My Brother’s Keeper, and the one ultimately chosen, To the Last Hour.³³

Gosch was also desperately trying to get Gregory Peck to play the role of Oskar Schindler in the film. In a November 9 letter to the character actor Syl Lamont, who was close to Peck and had worked with him in several films, Gosch discussed the importance of the film, and called the role of Oskar Schindler “a great tour de force.” He discussed the honors he planned for Schindler, including a special Humanities Medal to be awarded by Congress and President Johnson. He noted that Readers Digest and Life Magazine intended to publish extended articles on Schindler. Gosch, possibly in an effort to draw Lamont more deeply into the project and entice him to influence Peck, said there would be seven or eight important costarring roles in the movie. Normally, Gosch told Lamont, actors of Peck’s stature wanted to read a script before they committed to a film. But given its special nature, Gosch hoped that Peck would consider the thirty-six-page preliminary analysis of the film, “The Oskar Schindler Story,” sufficient to make a decision. He added that he had met with Schindler in London in September, and that Oskar was “enormously impressed with the shadings of the character which Greg brought to ‘Mockingbird [To Kill a Mockingbird].’” Schindler thought that Peck, of all that period’s film actors, best resembled the way he was “as a human being inside.” Gosch added that 92 percent of the Schindler Jews he had interviewed agreed with the choice of Peck for the role of Oskar Schindler. From Gosch’s perspective, Gregory Peck had “the same warm regard for the humanities of life which are so clearly evidenced by the things that Schindler did at great danger and sacrifice to himself.”³⁴

Gosch, Koch, and Page’s research trip abroad took place from November 11 to December 8. Gosch and Koch followed this up with a trip to Poland to explore film sites. They began their interviews in New York on November 14, where they spoke with Rabbi Menashe Levertov (Lewertow), Edith Wertheim, Pauline Boyman, Ryszard Horowitz, Alex Rosner, Frances Spira, Lewis Fagin, and Roman Ginter. They flew to Paris where they met Oskar on November 18 and did an extensive series of interviews with him. This was followed by a trip to Vienna, where they interviewed Raimund Titsch, the manager of Julius Madritsch’s sewing factories in the Kraków ghetto and Płaszów, and Regina Bankier, the wife of Abraham Bankier. From there they flew to Tel Aviv, where they interviewed Itzhak Stern, Josef and Rebeka Bau, Helen Hirsch Horowitz, one of Göth’s two Jewish maids, Dr. Moshe Bejski, Mr. and Mrs. Yanuk Sternberg, Israeli Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, and Dr. Steinberg, a physician at one of the factories next to Emalia in Kraków. Afterwards, Jakob Sternberg wrote Oskar and told him that Gosch only talked in “vague contours” about the film. Like Dr. Bejski, Sternberg was worried about the film’s accuracy. Using background documents and notes supplied to them by Oskar, Page, Dr. Bejski, and others, Gosch, Koch, and Page gathered the most complete body of testimony about Schindler up to that time. The transcript of these interviews, as well as Gosch and Koch’s post interview notes, which are in the Delbert Mann Papers at Vanderbilt University, provided Thomas Keneally and Steven Spielberg with some of their most poignant stories.

Oskar never said much about the meetings with Gosch, Page, and Koch, but did express some frustration over the new contract he signed with MGM while he was in Paris. Before he left for Paris, Oskar asked Schindler Jew Henry Orbach for advice on the proposed contract, which Gosch had recently sent him. Orbach suggested that they go to see Robert J. Fiore, an American lawyer in Frankfurt. Orbach, a prominent diamond trader to whom Ian Fleming devoted a full chapter in his only non-fiction work, The Diamond Smugglers, had used Fiore to do some work for him in New York. Oskar wanted Fiore’s advice on “the form and enforceability” of his contract with Gosch. Since Oskar knew little English, Orbach served as translator during the discussion.³⁵ Fiore, who received Germany’s highest civilian award, the Order of Merit, in 2003, told Oskar “that the contract would be a binding legal document and he could look forward to receiving at least $50,000.” Orbach explained that Schindler was having some financial problems and was concerned that his creditors in Germany would get his film advance if it was transferred to a German bank. Fiore suggested that Oskar have the money deposited in a US dollar account at the Chase Manhattan Bank where the US military deposited its funds. German officials, Fiore went on, “rarely scrutinized” accounts at Chase Manhattan.³⁶ Mr. Fiore met Oskar only once more, when he dropped by to give him photos of Amon Göth during his trial in Kraków in 1946. At the time, Fiore knew little about Oskar Schindler. Orbach later told him that Oskar was a hero, but “not here in Germany, Mr. Fiore, they don’t want to know about him.” After Emilie’s death in 2001, her heir, Erika Rosenberg, approached Fiore about filing a lawsuit against Steven Spielberg for 5 percent of the profits of Schindler’s List. Mr. Fiore respectfully declined the offer.³⁷

The new agreement, which was dated November 13, was similar to the one that Page had originally drawn up with a few exceptions. Emilie had evidently signed over her power of attorney to Page and the contract was now in the names of Oskar and Emilie Schindler. It stated that they would receive $25,000 once Gosch decided to exercise his option to make the movie and another $25,000 on February 28, 1966, or on the date when filming began, whichever was earliest. The option date for Gosch had now been moved ahead by one year. Oskar would receive 80 percent of the advance and Emilie would receive 20 percent, but only after legal fees and other expenses were deducted from Oskar and Emilie’s advances. Oskar was still to receive 5 percent of the “Producer’s Profits,” though neither he nor Page were to be paid as consultants for the movie once filming began. On the other hand, Page would receive 2.5 percent of the “net profits” of the film and no less than 1.25 percent of the “Producer’s Profits.”³⁸

Oskar returned from Paris revitalized and generally enthusiastic about the film despite some small frustrations over certain aspects of the contract. He thought these could be changed later but was annoyed because Page had taken Emilie’s contract from him “under false pretenses.” He considered Martin Gosch a real friend and, in a letter a few days after Christmas, he wrote him: “You have given me the nicest Christmas I can think of.” He had heard good reports from his Schindler Jews in Israel about Gosch’s trip there in November. He noted that Gosch’s personality and “unheard-of-initiative” deeply impressed them. Yet even in the midst of Oskar’s joy over the pace of the film’s development, he still wanted more specific details about Gosch’s trip to Israel and the movie itself, particularly as reports about the film had appeared in the press throughout the world.³⁹

Oskar wrote Walter Pollack on December 30 that the film would be made by MGM with Martin Gosch as producer. It would be titled To the Last Hour. He expected filming to begin in London at the end of January; the following month the production company would move to Madrid, where they would film the outside shots. It would cost $9 million to make. He told Pollack: “I am happy, after vegetating the last years, to have reached my goal with perseverance.” Their mutual friends in Israel were equally pleased because the film would create “a historical monument for the Polish Jewish victims” of the Shoah.⁴⁰

Oskar expected to be on hand for the filming in London and Madrid, yet still felt uneasy about the contracts he had signed for himself and Emilie and questions of historical accuracy. He wrote Dr. Bejski that though he had no reason to distrust Gosch, he had to remind himself that the film’s producer was “merely a free coworker of the president of MGM.” But, Oskar told Bejski, the only way the film could be a success was if they did not allow themselves to be “pushed aside altogether and, at least in the historical part” they should “develop a united obstinacy.” He assured the Israeli judge that he would pay attention to the question of historical accuracy “like a pointer (dog)” and would regularly keep him abreast of developments once filming began.⁴¹ Oskar and Bejski sensed almost from the beginning of the planning for the film that something was not quite right. Little did they know at the time that the film would never be made and that Gosch was not quite the honest, creative force that he seemed to be.

News of the film, To the Last Hour, began to appear in the press about a week before Oskar signed the contract in Paris. The New York Times did a small article on the film on November 8, 1964, though it said the film would be shot in Portugal, not Spain, and at MGM’s Elstree studio in Boreham Wood north of London. News of the film appeared in the Israeli press about a week later and, just before Christmas 1964, a lengthy article on it appeared in the Los Angeles Times. It reported that MGM had offered Richard Burton $750,000 to play the role of Oskar Schindler. Ma’ariv, Israel’s most prominent daily newspaper, also noted Gosch’s plans to have Burton play Schindler in the film. Oskar Schindler, the article went on, was a “hero in life, a hero in reality,” but Burton was a stage hero, a hero with makeup. But the article also noted that while Schindler received no reward for his heroism, Burton was to be paid $750,000 for his stage “heroism.” Several weeks later, Variety Weekly reported that Gosch and Koch, who would jointly write the film script, had just returned from a research trip to Poland where officials had tried to convince them to make the film using original locations. Several months earlier, Oskar had advised against this and told Page that there were plenty of factories in Germany that produced the same goods and had scenery similar to that in Brünnlitz.

There were also plenty of concentration camps in Bavaria, such as Dachau and Flossenbürg, that could duplicate the camps in Poland.⁴²

Gosch wrote Oskar about his trip to Poland and Israel a month or so after he returned to California. However, he provided Oskar with far less information about his trip than he gave to the Israeli press and Variety Weekly. He also told reporters about the new Oskar Schindler Foundation and why he and Koch rejected the idea of shooting the film in Poland. Gosch told the Israeli-Polish newspaper, Nowiny i Kurier, that Oskar did not save just 1,300 people but at least 28,000. As he explained: “There are thousands of other Jews saved by him, who are now in other countries and owe their lives to the courage and sacrifice of this man.” Gregory Peck would play Oskar and Danny Kaye would play an Auschwitz prisoner. Both actors “declared that they would give their salaries for this movie to the ‘Schindler Foundation.’” The Schindler Foundation, Gosch went on, would be used to give out awards for “outstanding humanitarian acts,” and its funding would come from “ticket sales.” Profits from the film would also be given to the Schindler Foundation annually to insure that $20,000 would be “devoted to this noble purpose.” The Schindler Foundation prize would be “some kind of Nobel Prize from the movie industry.” Gosch hoped that the U.S. and Israeli governments would support the foundation, which would insure that history would remember and honor the great work of Oskar Schindler.⁴³

But all Gosch told Oskar in a letter in mid-January 1965 about shooting in Poland was that there would simply be too many political and bureaucratic problems filming there. Instead, he thought MGM’s new studio in Madrid would be a perfect site for the outdoor shots, and most of the interior shots could be done in London (Boreham Wood). On the other hand, Gosch told Variety Weekly that Polish officials had made a “big pitch” for the film, which he had rejected because of the weather and because there were “few signs of the purported abatement of government controls.” Gosch felt that Poland was still a pretty closed society when compared to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia and he did not want his movie to be the “guinea pig” to see how open Poland had become. Gosch and Koch found a visit to the site of Schindler’s former factory in Kraków particularly troubling. When they asked whether they might film the interior and exterior of the factory, their guide told them that this would be prohibited. Gosch said, “This seemed pretty silly… if it’s an example of the problems we would face.” The Variety Weekly article ended by saying that James Garner would be one of the stars in the film.⁴⁴

Gosch followed up his January 15, 1965, letter to Oskar with another one ten days later that told him about his efforts to pressure the West German government to acknowledge Schindler’s wartime heroics by honoring him through a pension or a substantial contribution to the Oskar Schindler Humanities Foundation. He told Oskar that he had just had lunch at MGM with Dr. Irene Weinrowsky, the press and cultural attaché of the West German Legation in Los Angeles. Gosch said he understood that Schindler was not entitled to a pension until he was sixty-five. However, he warned Dr. Weinrowsky that the West German government might find itself embarrassed if other governments were the first to recognize Oskar for his accomplishments. He explained “that the only way… Bonn could preserve its dignified face in the international spectrum would be to act before other nations, and not afterwards.” If West German authorities wished to make a one time gift to the Schindler Foundation, then the foundation could use the funds to hire Oskar in some capacity. As usual, Gosch reminded Oskar to keep this information confidential.⁴⁵

Gosch wrote Schindler again two weeks later in response to a letter Oskar had written him on February 1. Schindler had included several newspaper clippings about the film in the German press. One discussed several programs that the state-run television station Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) was going to do on Schindler in March. Gosch told Oskar that such programs would violate his film contract. Television, Gosch went on, “should only be used to assist the film industry when it can do the most good.” He again reminded Schindler that media contacts should be directed to his office at MGM. Gosch immediately cabled the program director of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Dr. Hans Joachim Lange, and told him that he, MGM, and Delbert Mann owned the exclusive rights to the life of Oskar Schindler.⁴⁶

After chastising Schindler once more, Gosch went on to tell him that he had been in contact with Gunther von Hase, the Minister of Information in West Germany, who oversaw Westdeutscher Rundfunk. He hoped to use the conflict over WDR’s programs to pressure the West German government to do more to help Oskar: “I cannot permit them to make you into a national hero while still owing you a great deal of money.” He added that Howard Koch was hard at work on the film script and should complete a preliminary script or “treatment” by the end of February.⁴⁷

In the meantime, Gosch was trying to drum up publicity for the film in the United States. His biggest coup came on the floor of the United States House of Representatives on February 24, 1965, when Congressman James C. Corman of California gave a short speech about Oskar Schindler and To the Last Hour. Corman, whose congressional district included Hollywood and Beverly Hills, began his brief comments by noting that the American film industry was often criticized because of its “almost unlimited freedom” to express itself. But occasionally, he added, a motion picture comes forward that “is very nearly above criticism.” This was true of MGM’s upcoming film, To the Last Hour. It was about Oskar Schindler, a man recently honored by the State of Israel for saving 1,300 Jews during the war. The theme of the film, “that man’s humanity to man must always prevail,” certainly was the case with Schindler, a German and a Catholic. The fact, Corman went on, that Schindler, in the “face of incredible dangers and adversities” was still willing to “become his brother’s keeper” was certainly a “sign of hope that one day a true peace [would] be built from friendship and understanding.” Congressman Corman concluded by saying that he knew of no recent film “that convey[ed] so great a message or that ha[d] the potential to weave all peoples into the common thread of individual brotherhood.”⁴⁸

Corman’s remarks thrilled Gosch, who sent a copy by special delivery to Dan Terrell with MGM’s publicity office in New York. Gosch wrote Terrell that he had spent the past two months with the leading Hollywood artists’ representatives “using every persuasive means… to mind-condition… difficult and temperamental people to one inalienable fact: that for an important star to appear in their forthcoming film vehicle [would] be tantamount to a status symbol within the industry.” Gosch then went to the heart of the matter about the progress of the film: finding a top notch star to play the role of Oskar Schindler. He thought that Corman’s remarks were “the final seal of approval… to break down the one rule-of-thumb of [their] business—no star wants to commit to a picture without seeing the screenplay.” He and Delbert Mann felt that if proper use were made of these remarks in the Congressional Record they would “fire the strongest opening gun that a picture has ever had in the difficult area of top casting.” He assured Terrell that he would have a script treatment ready in a few weeks that would then be used to cast the leading actors. The final script would be ready in May. He hoped to begin production in December though it would take several months to build a set near MGM’s studio in Madrid. Gosch said that he had some top rate actors interested in the film. He added: “Agents for Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman and a number of other players of similar category are giving the Oskar Schindler role so much consideration that, literally, they are holding open any likelihood of conflict with a possible December starting date until they have had an opportunity to read and discuss the treatment of our picture.”⁴⁹

In the meantime, Gosch sent Delbert Mann a list of the main characters for the film. Howard Koch would use the real names of Oskar and Emilie only; all other characters would be given new names. Leopold Page was now “Poldi” Resnick and Amon Göth would become Karl Gunter. Itzhak Stern was the character Solomon Kravitz and Herman Rosner became the model for Herman Spivak. Helen Hirsch Horowitz was now Rebecca Bartok and Rabbi Menashe Levertov was the character Rabbi Julius Levy. All the major and minor characters in the film were many of the same people interviewed by Gosch and Koch in late 1964. Steven Spielberg chose to feature many of the same people in his 1993 motion picture, though he used their real names. What is also different about this earlier film proposal is the expansion of the story to include Schindler’s Abwehr contacts and Righteous Gentiles such as Raimund Titsch.⁵⁰

The Film Treatment for To The Last Hour

Koch finished a 130-page screenplay treatment, or preliminary script, on March 15. The “Producer’s Statement” at the beginning declared: “The amount of fictionalization content is minimal” though, in reality, there is a great deal of fiction in this early draft. Emilie, for example, plays a major role in the March 15 treatment. But as no one ever interviewed her for the film, much of what she did in this treatment was fictional. The same is true of Helen Hirsch, who figured prominently in the 1964 MGM treatment and Spielberg’s 1993 film. In Koch’s preliminary screenplay, for example, there is a preposterous scene in which Karl Gunter (Göth) forces Rebeka Bartok (Helen Hirsch) slowly to strip in front of Schindler. In another scene, Koch’s tale of Oskar’s first trip to Budapest to meet Jewish Agency representatives in 1943 is much more exciting than his real trip there using a German travel visa. Koch has Oskar flown to Hungary by Rudi Froelich, an Abwehr agent enamored with Emilie, where Oskar parachutes into the countryside and is met by armed men who lead him to Jewish Agency representatives in Budapest.⁵¹

Other than the shocking moment where Koch has Rebeka Bartok strip for Schindler, one of the most outrageous scenes is where Oskar plays poker with Gunter (Göth) to make up the list of Jews that he wants to take with him to Brünnlitz. There is no hint of the sacred “Schindler’s List” made up by Stern and Schindler in Spielberg’s film. Instead, every time Oskar wins a hand in Koch’s 1965 film treatment, and he seems to win handily that particularly day, he adds a new name to his list. This is how, supposedly, Schindler is able to put Poldi Resnick (Leopold Page) and Rebeka Bartok (Helen Hirsch) on his list. When the lengthy game ends, Gunter flies into a rage, calling Schindler a “Jew-lover.” Oskar in turn calls Gunter “an inhuman bastard.” As Gunter pulls out his pistol, Schindler warns him that he has a letter in his safe detailing Gunter’s corruption. His secretary had orders to send it to General Otto Wechsler (General Maximilian Schindler of the Armaments Inspectorate) if Oskar never returned from Gunter’s villa.⁵²

Wechsler also plays a fictional role in granting Schindler Armaments Inspectorate permission to make the move to Brünnlitz. In real life, General Schindler (Wechsler) did everything he could to help his Sudeten German namesake save Jews. But in the Koch treatment, Wechsler tells Oskar after he grants him permission for the move that “he would be accountable for every one of them [Jewish inmates] and for their eventual liquidation.” But before the move can take place, there is one last hurdle: SS approval. To get this, Emilie, against Oskar’s wishes, volunteers to go to SS headquarters in Prague, where she beguiles the commanding general, Schemerhorn, with her beauty. To avoid Schemerhorn’s efforts to seduce her, Emilie gets him drunk, but not before he gives his permission for the move. Oskar’s wife did all this “without either surrendering herself to the obnoxious General or incurring his enmity.”⁵³

The trip to Brünnlitz for the men is also fictionalized. They make the long trip mostly on foot, though Oskar did manage to “get together an assortment of vehicles ranging from lorries to bicycles and horse-drawn wagons” for some of them. The account of Oskar’s efforts to save the women in Auschwitz is a mixture of fiction and fact. After Oskar goes to Auschwitz and fails to convince the commandant to release his three hundred women, Oskar’s secretary, Ilse Schoen, volunteers to go to Auschwitz to try to free the Schindler females. Early one morning, Ilse suddenly appears at the front gate of Brünnlitz, leading the women. A surprised Oskar rushes out of his office to greet the group, but Ilse pleads: “Please don’t ask me anything.” She then falls weeping into Emilie’s arms. Though about a fifth of the script deals with Brünnlitz, there is no mention of the Golleschau transport and the remarkable efforts to save the Jews on it. For many Schindler survivors, this was the most memorable event in the Schindler story other than those surrounding liberation.⁵⁴

Koch became really creative when it came to the days leading up to the liberation of the camp. Oskar, presumably away trying to find a way to prevent the murder of his Jews, leaves Emilie, who has emerged as the script’s principal heroine, in charge. As Jewish workers dig a death pit with a large bulldozer, a member of the Czech underground infiltrates the camp dressed as an SS officer and convinces Emilie to come with him in a truck to get hidden arms. When Oskar returns, he organizes a Jewish commando unit under Poldi Reznick (Leopold Page). As the armed Jewish group begins to take over the camp, Oskar confronts the commandant, Bischel (Josef Leipold) and tells him that he is taking over Brünnlitz. A fight ensues and Bischel tries to shoot Oskar with his Luger. As the struggle continues, Oskar knocks the Luger out of Bischel’s hand. A few moments later, Oskar hits Bischel with “a hard blow on the side of his head. Bischel falls back, trips, and plunges through the open window, landing on the cement pavement below.”⁵⁵

Now that the Jewish commandos have control of the camp, Oskar tells them to put signs “warning of typhus” outside the gates to prevent Germans from entering the lager. Now the scene shifts to a gathering of all the inmates inside. Oskar, with Emilie and Ilse by his side, tells his Jewish workers that Hitler is dead and that the war is over. He warns them of the danger of German units still operating in the area but assures them that he will remain with them to protect them “to the last hour.” He also asks them to keep order and discipline and not to harm their guards. There had already been enough killing and enough inhumanity: “Let us behave like human beings.” In the final scene, Oskar, “standing at the head of the Jewish throng,” greets the Soviet officer, Colonel Rakov, who heads the Russian squad about to liberate the camp. When Rakov learns that Schindler is a German, he puts his hand on his pistol. Quickly, Poldi (Page) and the other Jewish commandos surround Oskar as Emilie and Ilse protect him with their bodies. Poldi then steps forward and tells Rakov, “We are Schindler Jews.” In a flash, first Francischa Resnick, Poldi’s mother, and then others behind Schindler rush forward to embrace the Russians. “This spontaneous emotional gesture,” the film’s treatment reads, “breaks the ice and now the repressed joy and relief surge over the group in a wave of wild celebration.” The Russians reciprocate this loving outpouring while Oskar stands proudly with his arm around Emilie. They watch the celebration knowing that they have saved 1,300 souls “who will live to testify to one man’s humanity to his fellow beings.”⁵⁶

The sad thing about this early script treatment is that it contained the very inaccuracies and fictionalization that so concerned Schindler and Bejski. It also explains why Gosch refused to give Oskar a copy. He knew that both men would have been outraged at the liberties taken with the Schindler story. Oskar seemed to sense all along that something was amiss with the film’s progress and accuracy, which in turn fed his uncertainties. This explains, for example, his comments to Walter Pollack in mid-February when he told him that because of his “precarious [financial] situation [he] had no chance of placing demands [during the contract negotiations] and had to accept and sign the completed outcome.” In this particular situation, he added, he had to “eat bird or die.” But on reflection, he was determined “to achieve an increase of… material fees from the collaboration and successes.”⁵⁷ He hoped to do this with meetings with Gosch in Germany in March. Leopold Page expressed the same frustrations in a letter to Oskar several weeks later. He had lost his consultancy position in the final contract, though Gosch promised to hire him and Mila during the actual filming. He only hoped that Gosch would keep his promise. Page had spent a great deal of time away from his business dealing with film matters, and he was not doing too well at the time. So, like Oskar’s, Gosch’s plans were very important not only to tell the world about Schindler’s dramatic efforts during the war but also to help ease serious financial difficulties for both men. The same could be said for Emilie.⁵⁸

Despite this, Oskar and Page remained deeply trustful of Martin Gosch, whom Oskar still considered his friend. Yet finances remained at the forefront of his concerns. His attorney, Dr. Alexander Besser, had recently reached a settlement in Schindler’s bankruptcy case, though Oskar still owed his creditors some money. He hoped to use money from his advance to pay them off. According to the contract, Oskar was to receive 80 percent of the first half of the advance minus $6,250 in expenses and legal fees for a total payment of $13,750; Emilie was to receive 20 percent or $5,000 minus expenses and legal fees, or $4,375. In some ways, it proved more difficult getting the money to Emilie than to Oskar. In addition to exchange rate problems with the weak Argentine peso, there were questions about whether it would be wise to send Emilie a lump sum or to give her a monthly stipend. In fairness to Gosch, Page, and Glovin, their only concern through all this was the welfare of Oskar and Emilie. They knew that each of them had financial problems, though Oskar’s were worse because he did not have someone caring for him as Emilie did in Buenos Aires. The modest problems that arose about the distribution of these particular advances were perceptual and arose more out of their concern to be certain that both Schindlers got the most for their money in terms of exchange rates and bank interest. In late February, for example, Oskar, desperate for money, asked Page to wire him $7,500 immediately. Page advised holding the money in a California account to gain more interest, but Oskar insisted on being paid immediately.⁵⁹

Oskar’s financial problems intensified his frustrations with Gosch, particularly when Gosch told him that he did not want Oskar to take part in Brünnlitz liberation ceremonies in Israel in May. Initially, Oskar told Dr. Bejski that if necessary he would sneak into Israel to see his friends despite the restraints from MGM. Gosch wanted to coordinate the celebration with Oskar and the Schindler Jews with the film and asked the organizers in Israel to delay it because he wanted the celebration to be a part of “the planned propaganda for the film.”⁶⁰ On March 8, Schindler wrote Irving Glovin and expressed his frustration with the amount of his advance and with the problems of getting Emilie’s money to her. Glovin reminded Oskar of the difficulties of getting that kind of advance, particularly as it was based only on an idea for a film when the contract was signed. Oskar, of course, was thinking of his payments in light of the projected costs of the film, $9 million. Glovin told him that these were merely cost projections and had nothing to do with the value of the story. He simply felt it was unrealistic for Oskar to expect any more money from the project than laid out in the contract. In fact, he wrote, Schindler’s receiving cash in advance at all was remarkable; and to have “gained a participating interest in the production [was] extraordinary.” He went on to explain the delays in getting the advance to Emilie. The check for the full amount had been written early and sent to Argentina. But concern over the distribution of the money there delayed the payment.⁶¹

Glovin’s letter did little to still Oskar’s frustration over what he perceived to be the failure to send Emilie her advance. To his credit, Oskar remained protective of Emilie’s interests throughout the film’s development and seemed to care about her well-being, though this was partially driven by their contractual arrangement on the film. In the fall of 1964, Emilie applied for a certificate of citizenship at the German consulate in Buenos Aires so that she could obtain a German passport. She had lost her birth and marriage certificates; all she had for identification was an invalid Allied zone pass from occupied Germany. Oskar was called to Regensburg to verify their marriage. The official questioning him asked why they were not divorced after living apart for so long. Several years before, Oskar had asked Walter Pollack to find out whether Emilie was willing to grant him a divorce. She told him that she had no reason to divorce her husband. The citizenship matter and the question of divorce upset Oskar, who misunderstood the reasons for Emilie’s request for a certificate of citizenship. He wrote Pollack that he was quite willing to grant Emilie a divorce, but was afraid that he would lose title to what remained of their property in Argentina as well as his claim to their “bungalow” in San Vicente.⁶²

Pollack gave Oskar frequent updates about money, which he claimed Emilie often mishandled, and expressed concern about her relationship with Cascho Bosetti, whom Oskar thought was simply a gold digger. On December 20, 1965, Schindler wrote Pollack again about his concerns for Emilie’s welfare and the question of divorce. Several people told him he was a fool not to divorce his wife, which, Oskar explained, would give him the right to free himself “from a burden which has as the only positive result the tie to a person who is to be described as outside any social order even in the generous Argentinian society and was laughed at.” In another letter, Oskar told Pollack that the question of a divorce was really not important to him because it would not change Emilie. He had to, “for better or worse, leave her [Emilie] at liberty to be a fool.” Regardless, Oskar still wished the best for Emilie though she was also the reason he did not return to Argentina for a visit. If he did, he explained to Pollack, he would sneak into the country to avoid her “with one crying and one laughing eye.” He added: “I do not know how I myself could stomach such situations incognito.”⁶³ In part, Oskar was probably reacting to Emilie’s decision to have nothing to do with him. On one occasion, when Walter Pollack begged her to write Oskar, she responded, “Oh, leave me in peace. I have no time.”⁶⁴

Yet despite his mixed feelings towards his wife, Oskar was still angered by what he perceived to be the unwarranted delays in getting her the film advance. Oskar wrote Walter Pollack at the end of March that Glovin’s letter was simply “beating around the bush” when it came to Emilie’s money. When angry, Oskar was at his verbal best. He added that “for Borscht one needs no teeth, after all, nor any 15 minute conversations in the Plaza Hotel.” He then laid out the terms of a letter that Emilie should write to Glovin to insure that he sent her the film money promptly. A quick payment, he noted, will “eliminate all doubts about cheating my wife.” Oskar followed up this letter with one to Glovin in which he reemphasized the need to send Emilie her money as soon as possible. But he took a much less angry and more conciliatory tone than the one he displayed in the letter to Pollack of the same day. He was not, as Glovin’s earlier letter implied, dissatisfied with the pace of the film’s development. On the other hand, he reserved the right as Glovin’s client “to express… [his] part of the problems.” Finally, he wanted to know what fees Glovin planned to charge him in the future.⁶⁵

In reality, Emilie was doing fine. One of the things that had angered Oskar, Pollack, and Emilie’s other Traducion friends was a report to Gosch and Glovin by an MGM representative who happened to be in Buenos Aires, that Emilie was in bad financial shape and “without shoes and accommodation, first aid, etc. She was just living in a terrible condition.”⁶⁶ Oskar wrote to Page that this was ridiculous. The MGM representative, Mr. Silvestre, Oskar noted, had seen Emilie for only fifteen minutes. Traducion had just built a lovely furnished home for her and she was doing “as well as [Page’s] dear children.” In fact, Traducion had done so much for Emilie that she had asked the head of the B’nai B’rith lodge, Helmuth Heinemann, who was also serving as her trustee, not to give her any more furniture once she had received her film money. When she got her advance from Page in April, she explained, she wanted to buy more furniture with her own funds. Emilie finally decided, in consultation with Heinemann and Pollack, to ask Page to put her money, $4,375 (Arg$30,000) in the Gibraltar Savings Bank and Loan Association in California. Page would then send her $100 a month stipend with the proviso that she could ask for additional funds as needed.⁶⁷

War Crimes Investigations, Continued Financial Problems, and the Film’s Failure

For the next few months there was no news on the film, though Oskar probably had his hands full dealing with a drunken driver charge. He lost his driver’s license for six months and, as a result, the police impounded his car. He was also “sentenced to a jail term of three weeks for violating German driving laws.”⁶⁸ When he got out of jail, Oskar’s attentions turned to the West German war crimes investigations against former SS-Hauptscharführer Wilhelm Kunde, SS-Hauptscharführer Franz Müller, and SS-man Herman Heinrich, who had all served in Kraków and Płaszów. Between 1962 and 1972, Oskar would testify in five war crimes investigations against former SS men and Nazis in West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany). However, according to Professor C. F. Ruter of the Institute for Criminal Law of the University of Amsterdam, with one exception, Schindler’s testimony was not relevant to the German courts’ findings because most of those investigated were not brought to trial or had died before they could be prosecuted. And when Oskar’s testimony did appear in the court transcript, it had little impact on the outcome of the case.⁶⁹

This was so in the trial of SS-Hauptsturmführer Walter Fellenz, the deputy HSSPF in the Kraków district. After the war, Fellenz returned to Germany, where he became a prominent leader of the small but politically important Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei). Fellenz was arrested and charged with war crimes in the summer of 1960. He was accused of responsibility for the murder of 40,000 Jews in Poland. His six-week trial began in Flensburg in November 1962. Oskar was required to testify in the case against Fellenz after he received a subpoena from the chief of police in Frankfurt. His testimony, which was taken on June 6, 1962, meant little in terms of the specific charges against Fellenz, whom Oskar admitted he knew well by name but did not know personally. His five pages of testimony, though, did help re-create the environment in which Fellenz operated during his time in Kraków. At the end of the trial, Fellenz was convicted and sentenced to seven years at hard labor, though the prosecutor had asked for life imprisonment. The Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) later overturned the verdict and Fellenz was retried and convicted of war crimes in 1965. On January 27, 1966, he was sentenced to a seven-year prison term but was freed on the same day for time served.⁷⁰

About ten months after he had provided investigators with information about Fellenz, Oskar gave the criminal police in Frankfurt testimony in the case against SS-Sturmbannführer Johannes Hassebroek. After the war, the British arrested the former Groß Rosen commandant and placed him on trial for war crimes. In 1948, a British court sentenced him to death but later commuted the sentence to fifteen years imprisonment. In 1954, Hassebroek was released from prison. In the early 1960s, West German authorities investigated him and in 1967 arrested him for war crimes. Hassebroek was put on trial in the District Court in Braunschweig for the murder of nine Jews and three non-Jews during his time as Groß Rosen’s commandant, but was acquitted. State prosecutors appealed the acquittal to the Federal Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling. This did not end the West German investigation against Hassebroek, which continued until his death in 1977. In his 1963 testimony, Schindler explained his relationship with Hassebroek, who periodically inspected Brünnlitz because it was a sub-camp of Groß Rosen. Oskar told investigators that he had interacted with Hassebroek during his eight months at Brünnlitz. He mentioned the considerable bribes he gave Hassebroek, but added that “no arbitrary killings occurred at Brünnlitz.”⁷¹

Schindler’s testimony in the investigations against Fellenz and Hassebroek set the stage for testimony against Kunde, Müller, and Heinrich at the end of 1965. Seven months earlier, Oskar had written Dr. Bejski and suggested that he, Stern, and Page should consider giving testimony against the three former SS men. When Martin Gosch learned of Oskar’s proposal, he tried to use this potential gathering of Schindler Jewish witnesses in Kiel to help publicize the film. What drove him to this were the movie’s dwindling prospects.⁷²

The first serious hint of problems with To the Last Hour came in the fall of 1965, when Gosch wrote Oskar to tell him that MGM liked the script prepared by Howard Koch but wanted to replace Delbert Mann as director. He asked Oskar not to be impatient and again explained that it took a long time to put the details of a film project together. Oskar responded on November 28 in poor English and seemed pleased that the script was finally ready. He requested a confidential copy of the script in English because his memories could add “valuable colouring” to the script. Schindler wrote, “I want to prevent any mistake in bringing forth the facts,” which would be a great disappointment not only to him, but also for his “freinds [sic], who trusted [him] during all those years of the awful war.” He invited Gosch to visit him whenever he could because he felt isolated in Germany. It was contact with his American and Israeli friends that gave him “the feeling of worth living,” particularly in light of his upcoming testimony against Kunde, Heinrich, and Müller. Such testimony, he explained, “before courts against Nazi people can only deprimate [deprimiert; depressed]” him.⁷³

Despite the friendly tone of his letter to Gosch, Oskar was quite upset over the delay in shooting. He wrote Walter Pollack that he was nervous and depressed about the delay: “It would be easier to sell a film in which sex and large breasts dominate, but my stuff is just not so popular.”⁷⁴ What is interesting about this letter is that he does not mention that he had just been awarded the Cross of Merit, First Class, of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Gosch, to his credit, had been the driving force behind the medal. After she lunched with Gosch in January, Dr. Weinrowsky of the German Legation in Los Angeles sent a detailed report about Schindler and the film’s development to the Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt) in Bonn, which recommended that the Federal president, Dr. Heinrich Lübke, award the Cross of Merit to Schindler. Dr. Lübke approved the award on November 5, 1965, and Oskar received it on January 12, 1966.⁷⁵

Though Oskar certainly appreciated the medal, his greater concern was money, and that was one of the principal reasons for his nervousness about the film’s progress. Dr. Bejski wrote Gosch just before Christmas 1965 about this very issue. He told Gosch that the past year had been a good one for Oskar. “After many years,” he explained, “Mr. Schindler had regained his composure.” He now looked much different than in years past and was “well and calm.” But his many friends in Israel continued to worry about him and wanted him to emigrate there because Oskar seemed so isolated in Frankfurt. However, Schindler hesitated because he hoped to be busy with the film and “eagerly” awaited news about its progress. Oskar underscored these concerns to Gosch in a January 19, 1966, letter in which he said that he was “a little afraid for the future, without any hope of economic security.” His financial situation seemed precarious and he asked for an early payment of the second portion of his advance. He evidently was still hounded by creditors from his failed stone-and-cement business, and a former Brünnlitz employee who had filed charges against Oskar for back wages. He was quite discouraged by these problems and frustrated because Gosch had still not sent him a script. He begged him for a copy of the script, which he needed for “a moral push” for himself.⁷⁶

For some strange reason, Schindler’s letter reached Gosch overnight and on January 20 he responded to Oskar’s letter of the day before. He explained that he had not sent Schindler a copy of the script because it was obvious from the poorly translated letters he had sent Gosch that Oskar would have trouble understanding the script. Moreover, it would cost Gosch $2,500 to translate into German what had become a very long script. Gosch wrote that he knew of film deals that were ruined by mistranslated scripts. He again asked Oskar to be patient with the film’s progress and pointed to MGM’s recently released Dr. Zhivago, which had cost $11 million to make and four years to develop. To the Last Hour was going through the same “growing pains,” Gosch pointed out. They now had a rough draft of a script that would take up four hours of film time. Moreover, Gosch was still unsure whether just covering Oskar’s life from 1938 to 1945 would be adequate. Perhaps it was important to expand the story line to include more of his life. And it might be, Gosch noted, better “to publish a book version of the story” as a way of “pre-exploiting the film, and to condition the world audience to the name and deeds of Oskar Schindler.” Finally, Oskar had to remember that MGM had the “right to refuse” any film proposal. This was a “large and expensive film” and “it might start out with Paramount and finish up at MGM. Or vice versa.” Once again, Gosch told Oskar that “PATIENCE” was needed as plans for the film moved forward. Gosch went on to say that it greatly annoyed him that the German government did not coordinate Oskar’s receipt of the Cross of Merit with him. He had anticipated building a “SCHINDLER CAMPAIGN” around the ceremony. Gosch added, “Bonn hopes to escape their righteous economic obligations to you by giving you a medal.” He intended to make a stink about this matter with the German ambassador to the United States and threatened negative publicity if Bonn refused to grant Oskar a pension.⁷⁷

Oskar sent Dr. Bejski a copy of Gosch’s letter, which the Israeli judge analyzed and, with great hesitancy, concluded, in a letter to Oskar, that the film deal with MGM seemed to have fallen through. Dr. Bejski also told Oskar that he was also troubled by “Poldek’s silence.”⁷⁸ Page soon confirmed Bejski’s suspicions. In fact, he explained, MGM had rejected the film deal in October 1965 and initially was not going to pay Oskar his advance until Page and Gosch threatened to sue them. Page went on to say that the reason for his silence centered around the fact that he had lost his business in Beverly Hills and was consumed with his own financial difficulties. This news greatly depressed Oskar, who was about to leave on a trip to the United States to discuss the future of the film with Gosch. Page told Bejski later that summer that MGM was still interested in To the Last Hour but would not make a decision about it until the spring of 1967.⁷⁹

Oskar now gave some thought to finding a job. Several of his friends recommended him for a position with Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft, a giant chemical company based in Frankfurt. Since 1925, Hoechst had been part of the chemical conglomerate I. G. Farbenindustrie, but had been broken up into subsidiaries in 1950 after its most prominent leaders had been tried in Nuremberg in 1947 and 1948 for crimes against peace and humanity and for being part of a criminal organization. Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF were some of the more prominent firms to emerge from the breakup. Nothing ever came of this job prospect as Oskar was interested in working for Hoechst only if it made him its Israeli representative.⁸⁰

Camille Honig, the Martin Buber Prize Fiasco, and Conflicts with Martin Gosch

By early 1967, things seemed to improve for Schindler. The German government provided him with an interim honorary pension and he was nominated for the Martin Buber Peace Prize in London, which involved the promise of several financial awards. The press reported that Oskar was to receive £20,000 ($48,192) from the prize while Oskar told Leopold Page in March 1967 that Dino de Laurentis was going to give him £10,000 ($24,096). In addition, Martin Gosch had gained full control of the rights for To the Last Hour and wanted to revitalize the project, using the upcoming war crimes investigative trial against Kunde, Müller, and Heinrich to publicize the wartime deeds of Oskar Schindler. But the Buber Prize proved to be a scam and the film project was for all practical purposes dead. Moreover, Schindler’s involvement with Camille Honig, the head of the Martin Buber Society, brought him into serious conflict with Martin Gosch and almost destroyed their relationship.⁸¹

The most important developments over the next few years were the decisions of the Hessian and Federal governments to grant Oskar several pensions. In 1967, the governor of the State of Hesse granted Schindler a monthly temporary honorary pension of DM 500 ($125) that later became permanent. To a great extent, the Hessian pension could be attributed to Martin Gosch and Oskar’s supporters in Israel, who had put pressure on West German officials. Gosch had chosen to threaten the Germans into action, whereas the Schindler Jews in Israel chose a diplomatic course, which meant gaining the support of the West German ambassador to Israel, Dr. Rolf Pauls, and other prominent Germans, such as Earl Graf Yorck von Wartenberg, who would play an important role in helping Oskar get the Hessian pension. Unfortunately, this first pension was barely enough for Oskar to pay for his small apartment at Am Hauptbahnhof 4, across the street from Frankfurt’s main train station, and his basic living expenses. However, when Oskar turned sixty in 1968, his financial situation began to improve. The Federal government in Bonn awarded him an additional monthly pension of DM 200 ($50). He also began to receive a monthly stipend of DM $405 ($101.25) from the local reparations office as well as a monthly compensation pension of DM 118.80 ($29.70).⁸²

It is fortunate that German authorities finally came through for Oskar because nothing ever came of To the Last Hour and the Martin Buber Prize. As news of the film became more discouraging, Oskar briefly thought he might realize some sort of financial windfall when Camille Honig, the head of the Martin Buber Society in London, contacted Oskar in the fall of 1966 with news that he had been nominated for the first Martin Buber Peace Prize, which Oskar was to receive in early 1967. We now know that Honig was a con artist who simply tried to use Oskar’s growing fame to raise money from his many supporters in Europe, Israel, and the United States. Honig, in fact, was so slick that he conned everyone close to Schindler, even his friends in Israel, who sent Honig several glowing letters of support for Oskar’s nomination in the fall and winter of 1966.⁸³

Once Honig got a list of Schindler’s supporters, he then asked them to apply for membership in the International Martin Buber Society & Institute, which would include a subscription to the society’s journal, I and Thou, a play on one of Buber’s most important philosophical works. Honig not only used Buber’s name illicitly, he also adorned his publications with the names of some of the world’s most prominent intellectuals and artists without their consent. Albert Schweitzer, for example, was listed as the Late President and Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, as the Late First Sponsor. Igor Stravinsky served as the Life President and Yehudi Menuhin the Vice President for the British Commonwealth. Max Brod, Marc Chagall, Andre Maurois, and Reinhold Neibuhr were listed as Sponsors; the Advisory Committee included Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, and Sir Alec Guinness. Needless to say, this list was impressive and Honig’s publications were slick. It was hard for anyone to imagine that all this was just a façade to hide the scam.

Honig invited Oskar to London in January 1967 to discuss details of the award and help him plan the invitation list for the awards ceremony. Oskar told Martin Gosch that it would take place at the Hilton Hotel in London before two to three hundred selected guests. Even the wise Moshe Bejski was taken in by Honig’s offer and told Oskar that he could use the award to pressure the government in Bonn to award him a permanent Federal pension.⁸⁴ Martin Gosch was upset when he learned about plans for the Martin Buber prize. Oskar wrote him on March 6, 1967, about his meeting with Honig in London and sent him materials about the Martin Buber Society. He added that though he thought that ties to Honig, with his “superb connections in London,” might help with the film’s publicity, he would do nothing to harm their “film affair” and would discuss anything of importance with Gosch relating to the matter.⁸⁵

Gosch, though, was deeply suspicious of Honig and went to London soon after he received Oskar’s letter and looked into Schindler’s ties with the head of the Buber Society. When he had completed his investigation, Gosch asked the Criminal Investigative Division of Scotland Yard to look into Honig’s “efforts in connection with Oskar Schindler.” Gosch claimed that he and MGM had full legal rights to Schindler’s story and was troubled because Honig was attempting to raise money for Schindler with the claim that Oskar was “both poverty-stricken and destitute.” Gosch also claimed that Honig had entered into negotiations with the BBC and other media outlets as Schindler’s representative. Gosch evidently spoke with Honig while he was in London and wrote him on March 27 and ordered him to “cease and desist” in all his activities involving Oskar Schindler, both then and in the future.⁸⁶

Gosch was particularly angry about the Honig affair because he was trying to convince West German officials to turn the investigative trial of Wilhelm Kunde into a “show trial” that would center around the testimony of Oskar and prominent Schindler Jews such as Leopold Page and Dr. Moshe Bejski. Gosch also claimed that he was continuing to “negotiate” with German officials about a permanent pension for Oskar and the creation of an Oskar Schindler International Humanities Foundation. He was also talking with officials in the Vatican about “some fitting tribute” to Schindler. All this, of course, centered around efforts to publicize the war time heroics of Schindler and in turn create new interest for To the Last Hour.⁸⁷

Honig was shocked by Gosch’s letter and wrote Bejski and Sternberg asking them whether the Hollywood producer had “the rights over Mr. Schindler” and over them. He also wondered whether he had to obtain Gosch’s permission to give Oskar the Martin Buber Prize.⁸⁸ In the meantime, Oskar met with Gosch in Frankfurt and came away from the meeting quite disturbed about the entire Martin Buber Prize affair. He learned that the promise of £20,000 from the Buber prize and £10,000 from Dino de Laurentis was, like the Buber Society, “a paper-puff.” The whole idea of Honig’s using his name to raise money fictitiously depressed Oskar, who later told Dr. Bejski: “I have not experienced such a spiritual low since the collapse of my factory three years ago.” His only hope was that there was enough time left in his life to “survive this hit.” Oskar was also discouraged when Gosch’s efforts to use the Kunde investigative trial as a “propaganda” launching pad for the Schindler film were not successful even though Oskar and several Schindler Jews gave West German investigators their testimony in Kiel. Kunde was supposed to be tried for crimes centering around deportations to Bełżec and Auschwitz but died in Bremen in 1969 before he could be brought to justice.⁸⁹

But Oskar was soon to suffer further indignities at the hands of Camille Honig and Martin Gosch. On April 19, Honig wrote Schindler in Israel telling him that the plans for the Martin Buber Prize ceremony on May 21 in London had fallen apart because of Gosch. Honig explained that Gosch’s efforts to discredit him in London had destroyed six months of work on the prize for Schindler and “the bottom fell out” of his world. Yet he begged Schindler to contact him so that they could discuss future plans for the Martin Buber Prize.⁹⁰ On the same day, Martin Gosch wrote to Oskar in Israel in care of Dr. Bejski. Gosch was furious with Schindler for writing Honig letters filled with “threats of scandal.” Gosch claimed he preferred a more subtle approach and chastised Oskar for his methods: “If they continue you will lose my personal interests and help.” Oskar had evidently signed a conditional letter with Honig in London earlier in the year that had led to negotiations between Honig and various media outlets such as the BBC interested in the Schindler story. To a point, Gosch added, he was willing not to say anything about Schindler’s relationship with Honig because he hoped Oskar might gain something financially out of it. “You cannot,” Gosch went on, “ride with both the hares and the hounds and expect to come away unmarked.” He was deeply hurt by Oskar’s behavior and personally disillusioned “regarding the true greatness of Oskar Schindler.” He ended by telling Oskar that if he did not give him “unreserved authority to continue in regard to London and Bonn,” he preferred that Oskar handle his own affairs.⁹¹

Oskar never said much about Gosch’s letter and continued to maintain ties with Honig even though he was deeply suspicious of him. But Dr. Bejski did say something about Gosch’s letter to Oskar and a separate letter that Gosch had written Bejski that he included with the April 19 letter to Schindler, which Gosch asked Dr. Bejski to translate. What most disturbed Dr. Bejski was the threatening nature of this separate letter, which Gosch asked him to share with the Schindler committee in Israel. From Bejski’s perspective, Gosch had attempted to blackmail the Schindler Jews when he told him that “if he [Gosch] doesn’t get $50,000 at once” he would use the same threats that he had used against the German government when he tried to get them to award Schindler a pension. If the Schindler Jews were not forthcoming financially, then Gosch threatened to write the real Oskar Schindler story, naming names, dates, and places: “I will publicize the worthy and castigate the unworthy in the gaze of public light.” Bejski’s worry now was that Gosch would do something to hurt Oskar. At the same time, Bejski wrote Leopold Page that he [Bejski] “won’t be the object of threats and blackmail.”⁹²

It is difficult to know the exact purpose of Gosch’s letter because we do not have anything other than Dr. Bejski’s references to it. It was probably motivated, at least according to Gosch, by the fact that he had spent $250,000 on preproduction costs for To the Last Hour and was somehow trying to recoup his losses. But why he threatened the Schindler Jews in Israel is a mystery. They had done nothing but support the film project and each of them who were interviewed by Gosch had turned over their individual $500 honorariums to him to help support the Oskar Schindler Humanities Foundation. And though the money from this fund was meant partially to help Oskar, Gosch always rebuffed efforts to give the money to him, which, depending on whose figures you believed, amounted to anywhere between $2,000 and $10,000. Towards the end of Schindler’s life, Leopold Page told Dr. Bejski what had happened to the money. Gosch, who died in 1972, had taken all the money that the survivors had given him for the Oskar Schindler International Humanities Foundation, though he claimed that it had been stolen. Some thought was given to suing Gosch’s estate, but the idea was dropped when Gosch’s wife promised to pay back the stolen funds. However, Dr. Bejski doubted that Oskar would ever see any of this money because Gosch had left his wife destitute.⁹³

Yet even though Gosch and Honig had defrauded Schindler and his friends, Oskar continued to maintain relationships with both men, in part because he could not pull away from their continuing promises of fame and fortune. After many stops and starts, Honig finally gave the promised banquet for Oskar on December 4, 1967, and the evening’s other honoree, Dr. Gerhard Wolf, the former German consul in Florence who also helped save Jews during the war. Oskar later told Dr. Bejski that he had decided to take part in the ceremony because he did not want to be the “victim of public disgrace” at an event attended by so many prominent people. He felt that he had to put on “a good face to the evil game, so as to at least save face to the outside [world].” Honig, who had published a special edition of I and Thou beforehand to highlight the exploits of Schindler and Dr. Wolf, somehow managed to convince the renowned British author J. B. Priestley to give the keynote address, and two well-known artists and Holocaust survivors, Natalia Karp and Zwi Kanar, provided the entertainment. Many of the prominent guests were there to support Oskar, and were well aware of the humiliation he had already suffered at the hands of Honig. The banquet began with a speech by Priestley, though Oskar arrived at the end of it because Honig had picked him up late from his hotel. Priestley gave another impromptu speech welcoming Oskar. Reginald, Lord Sorensen (the Rev. R. W. Sorensen), a prominent member of the House of Lords and vice president of the Buber Society, and Rabbi Leslie Hardman, an important British Jewish leader and activist, followed with short speeches applauding Oskar’s wartime exploits. Both men, like Oskar, were conned by Honig’s missteps regarding the peace prize and promised to look into the prospect of creating a new Oskar Schindler Committee independent of Honig. The evening finished with a short speech by Oskar. When the Honig scandal finally hit the press in 1968 after Honig failed to pay the bills for the Schindler-Wolf banquet (which Wolf did not attend), Lord Sorensen explained that he had tried time and again to have his name removed from letters sent out by Honig. He told the Jewish Chronicle that he had no ties with the Martin Buber Society.⁹⁴

Oddly enough, Oskar partially blamed Martin Gosch for his failure to follow through on his promise publicly to expose Honig. In some ways, this was more of an expression of Oskar’s frustration over the failure of the movie deal. By early 1968, he was again having heart problems and suffered from renewed bouts of depression. He continued to have money problems and told Walter Pollack that he had lost more than DM 8,000 ($2,000) in the Honig affair. He asked Page to help him obtain funds from the Oskar Schindler International Humanities Foundation and wrote Gosch on April 8, 1968, urging send him to send some portion of the funds in the foundation’s account. He needed the money to live on and to help pay for the medical tests he desperately needed. Though Gosch expressed sympathy for Schindler’s current economic problems, he argued that it would violate the trust of those who had contributed money to create the Oskar Schindler International Humanities Foundation. Instead, Gosch proposed that Dr. Bejski and others create an Oskar Schindler Survivors Fund that would provide Oskar with an income. Oskar later told Page that if Gosch had sent the money as requested instead of offering him “pedagogical suggestions,” he could have undergone a test that showed he had severe diabetes. Instead, he had to wait until he got to Israel later that spring to find this out. His health had deteriorated to the point that several Israeli physicians suggested that he have heart surgery later that year to correct problems he had with angina pectoris. He planned to return to Israel later that summer for further medical checkups.⁹⁵

Revival and Hope

Oskar later admitted that if it had not been for the help of his Israeli friends that spring and summer, his health might have deteriorated further. Instead, he began to feel better and by November was able to travel to Israel. He was the guest of Lufthansa, West Germany’s national airline, on its inaugural flight to Israel. In fact, his second trip to Israel in 1968 seemed to represent a major turning point in Oskar’s life. In late October, Pope Paul VI made him a Knight of the Order of Saint Sylvester, though Oskar was annoyed because the Vatican’s bureaucracy had prevented him from receiving it earlier on his birthday. This event was followed by a wonderful trip to Israel in December, where he was fêted at a banquet held in his honor by the Kraków Society at the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv.⁹⁶

This was followed by a trip to the United States, where Oskar was honored at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles on January 5, 1969, for his efforts to save Jews during the war. Leopold Page and the other organizers of the tribute used the occasion to announce the creation of the Oskar Schindler Survivor’s Fund. The ceremony began at exactly 2:00 P.M. Page explained that this was the exact time on April 28, 1945, Schindler’s birthday, that he told his gathered workers in Brünnlitz that the war was almost over. Page added: “And he told us not to worry.” Page went on to say that Oskar had promised he would stay with them “until the Last Hour.” He then asked: “Can we do less for him?” Rabbi Jacob Pressman opened the commemoration service by reciting an ancient Jewish prayer of deliverance that was repeated simultaneously by Schindler Jews in cities throughout the world. Leopold Page then spoke about Schindler, whom he called “a living God to us,” and announced the creation of the Survivor’s Fund, which was meant to insure that Oskar would never “have to worry for the rest of his life.” Martin Gosch, who helped organize the gathering, then spoke and said he had grave doubts whether the Schindler story would “ever be seen on the screen.” Several months earlier, an article had appeared in the California Jewish newspaper, Heritage, that laid the failure of the film on the shoulders of the head of MGM, Robert O’Brien.⁹⁷

Regardless, he remained dedicated “to the proposition that in the consideration of man being, in truth, his brother’s keeper, the name of Oskar Schindler must be preeminent.” Gosch concluded his remarks by announcing the creation of an Oskar Schindler Humanities Foundation that he hoped would begin to award an annual prize in 1971 to honor “those individuals in the world who best symbolize the true meaning of Man’s Humanity to Man.” Oskar then gave a brief address in which he thanked everyone, particularly his Schindler Jews, for the creation of the Survivor’s Fund. He mentioned something newly dear to his heart, an exchange program of young people between Germany and Israel. For Oskar, children, whether they be those of his beloved Schindler Jews or anyone, were “mankind’s best, and last hope.” He went on: “Like the young of all creatures, they want to like, they want to love, and they will love, unless deliberately and carefully taught otherwise. For this is the true education—of the heart.”⁹⁸

The idea of an exchange program of German and Israeli youth had become something very dear to Oskar’s heart by this time. Several years earlier, he had been contacted by Dr. Dieter Trautwein, the city youth minister (Stadtjugendpfarrer) in Frankfurt who was involved in planning a workbook for young people in conjunction with the 450th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses (1517). Dr. Trautwein’s committee wanted to know whether there were any contemporary German reformers they could put in the workbook. One of the documents they looked at was an article on Oskar Schindler that was based on a radio play by Maria Lahusen, the widow of a Berlin pastor. She had gotten her idea for the radio script from Kurt Grossman’s Die unbesungenen Helden: Menschen in Deutschlands dunklen Tagen (The Unsung Heroes: People in Germany’s Dark Days). Trautwein was intrigued by Schindler’s story but also suspicious of it because he knew little about him even though he had seen Schindler’s tree at Yad Vashem. When he learned that Oskar lived in Frankfurt, Trautwein decided to pay him a visit. He showed Schindler the article on the radio play and asked him whether it was accurate. Oskar responded: “More or less.” Once he heard the full account of Schindler’s wartime exploits, Trautwein decided that it was important for him to speak at the Frankfurt Church Youth Day on May 25, 1967. Oskar, along with Leopold Page, who was in Germany to testify in the Kunde hearing, spoke before a gathering of approximately 450 young people. Page’s presence was particularly important because he, as a Schindler Jew, was able to back up what Schindler said. Oskar considered the meeting “a great success” and noted that the discussions with the young people at the meeting “took an hour longer than anticipated.”⁹⁹

His connections with Trautwein, who was becoming not only one of the German Lutheran (Evangelical) church’s most important youth leaders but also one of its most creative composers, helped lead to new ties with the West German Catholic Church. In the summer of 1968, Oskar took part in several Lutheran and Catholic discussion forums that dealt with a new Christian-Jewish dialogue. His participation in the Catholic symposium, “Tempted and Engaged Faith” at the Hedwig-Dansfeld House in Bendorf am Rhein, was promoted by Dr. Lotte Schiffler, a former Frankfurt city councilwoman who became very close to Oskar during this period. There is no doubt that Oskar was sincerely interested in becoming more involved in youth work, but he was also driven by hopes that Dr. Trautwein and other church leaders would help him obtain his pension from the West German government in Bonn. Yet what heartened Oskar most in all these discussions that summer was that no one, either Catholic or Lutheran, had “tired of taking an unequivocal position” for his Israeli friends “and their splendid country.”¹⁰⁰

Dr. Trautwein told me that Oskar spoke frequently about the importance of bridge building among German youth through the Aktion Sühnezeichen (sign of atonement) movement, which sent German young people to countries that Germany had invaded during World War II. Oskar was particularly proud of the role he played in helping organize one of the first Israeli-West German youth exchange programs in 1969. He played an important role in helping raise the funds to send thirty “Schindler-Sabres” [Sabras, native-born Israelis] to West Germany in July 1969 to spend a month in Frankfurt, the Catholic home in Bendorf, and Munich.¹⁰¹

This newfound interest in Israel among Oskar’s Catholic and Lutheran acquaintances meant a great deal to him and helped build an important psychological bridge for Schindler between Israel and West Germany that helped erase his confusing ties to both countries. He was particularly heartened by the positive reception to his work among Lutheran and Catholic youth groups and now considered himself “their partner in faith.” As a result, Oskar Schindler had, at least according to Dr. Trautwein, “returned in a certain way to his church, with which he had not had any ties for thirty years.” These ties, first to Israel and then to West Germany’s Lutheran and Catholic communities, would play important roles in finally giving Oskar Schindler a sense of self-worth and mission in the final years of his life. This, combined with his growing involvement with Hebrew University in the early 1970s and the appearance of the final love of his life, Ami (Annemarie) Staehr, would seem to point finally to a stable, happy time in his life. Unfortunately, that was never to be because of mounting health problems that left him weak and depressed.¹⁰²