Oskar Schindler

THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME QUESTION ABOUT WHEN OSKAR Schindler first came to Kraków after the outbreak of World War II. Emilie Schindler says in her memoirs that Oskar went to Kraków in mid-October, but Thomas Keneally places him there at the end of the same month. Robin O’Neil says that Oskar received orders from Abwehr on October 17, 1939, to report immediately to Major Franz von Korab in Kraków for further duties. Yet other sources indicate that Oskar was in Kraków well before the third week of October because of his importance to Abwher regionally. O’Neil says in his unpublished manuscript on Oskar Schindler, The Man from Svitavy, that “Oskar had followed on the heels of the invading German army” into Kraków, which surrendered to the Wehrmacht on September 6. This is almost the identical phrase used in a Gestapo investigation in 1940 centering around the July 1939 break-in of Oskar’s apartment in Mährisch Ostrau. It stated that Schindler “had gone to Poland with the advancing German troops.”¹

This explanation is more probable than the idea that Oskar did not arrive in Kraków until the third week of October. He already had an apartment in Poland’s ancient capital by this time, a sign that he was already familiar with the intricacies of the new German administrative system there. Then what did happen to bring Oskar to Kraków on October 17? More than likely, it was the date of his permanent formal transfer to Abwehr headquarters in the new capital of the General Government. Traveling with him was another Abwehr agent, Josef “Sepp” Aue. Indications are that Schindler and Aue were sent to Kraków to open businesses that would serve as Abwehr fronts. We do not know whether the two men were close friends or not, but they shared accommodations in Poland for the next few months.²

Keneally and O’Neil both claim that Oskar already had possession of the luxurious apartment at Straszewskiego 7/2 made famous in the film Schindler’s List. Today, the original top-floor apartment, with its wonderful balcony view of Wawel Castle and the small Planty Park across the street, is still as elegant as it was when Oskar lived there. But this was probably not his first apartment in Kraków. Though there is no question that Oskar ultimately lived at Straszewskiego 7/2, Polish court records in Kraków dealing with the lease of his first factory there in early 1940 and his signed sworn statement for the Gestapo in Kraków on August 22, 1940, about the robbery in Mährisch Ostrau the previous summer, listed two addresses. The first was on busy Krasivskiego Zygmunta, 24; the second was Fenna Serena Gasse 14/8. This seems logical because it is doubtful that Oskar had the means to live in the grand style that later became his hallmark. When he moved to Kraków in the fall of 1939, he was still an Abwehr officer searching for a front and a new career. And remember, he still maintained a home at Parkstraße 25 in Mährisch Ostrau for Emilie. His move from Krasivskiego Zygmunta to the quieter Fenna Serena Gasse, on the edge of Stare Miasto, and finally to the exquisite apartment on Straszewskiego, reflects his own success as a businessman in Kraków.³

Nonetheless, Oskar did not live a spartan life in his new apartment on Fenna Serena Gasse 14/8. Leopold “Poldek” Pfefferberg-Page, a Schindlerjude perhaps more important than anyone else in ultimately bringing Schindler’s story to the world, first met Oskar at the apartment of Poldek’s mother, Mila Pfefferberg-Page, in the fall of 1939. Page, who died in the spring of 2001, was born in Kraków on March 20, 1913. He attended the prestigious Jagiellonian University, no small feat, given the growing spirit of anti-Semitism in Poland’s universities and the calls for restrictions on Jewish enrollment. A year after Poldek earned his master’s degree in 1936, some Polish universities adopted a “seating ghetto” policy that required Jewish students to sit in segregated parts of classrooms. Yet for anyone who knew the feisty Poldek Pfefferberg-Page, the restrictions and taunts that he met as a university student only stiffened his resolve to complete his education.⁴

After graduation, Poldek taught physical education in a Jewish gymnasium (college preparatory high school) until the war broke out in 1939. Whenever I mentioned certain Schindler Jews during the few conversations we had, he would remind me that this or that person had once been one of his students. He served as a lieutenant in the Polish army, probably with the Eleventh Infantry Division, which retreated to Przemyśl, a medieval fortress town on the Polish-Soviet Ukrainian border, after its defeat at the hands of the German Fourteenth Army near the San River on September 10–12. Three days later, after a fierce defense by the city’s Polish troops, Przemyśl fell to the Germans. Poldek, who was wounded in the San River battle, recovered in the military hospital in Przemyśl until he was captured by the Germans. While there, he worked for the Poles and then the Germans as a hospital orderly. German hospital authorities gave him a pass that allowed him to travel with ambulance crews working in the city.⁵

He took advantage of the pass while in transit from Przemyśl to the Greater Reich. One night, he was on a POW train for captured Polish officers that stopped in Kraków. The Polish officers were taken off of one train, Poldek among them, to wait for a new one. An hour or two before dawn, the bold Poldek approached the sleepy, lone German soldier guarding the several hundred officers in the first class waiting room in one of Kraków’s railway stations and showed him the military ambulance pass that had allowed him to move freely throughout Przemyśl. Poldek fluttered the impressive-looking multi-stamped document in front of the soldier’s face and explained in German the rights of movement afforded him in the document. The flabbergasted guard nodded his head in approval as Poldek walked out the door of the waiting room and into the dark streets of his beloved Kraków.⁶

Schindler, whom Pfefferberg-Page would later call his closest friend, first met Poldek in less than auspicious conditions. In fact, Page intended to kill the unknown German during their first encounter. After his escape, Poldek blended in with the hundreds of other Polish officers still moving freely throughout Kraków because the Germans had not had time to process them. As an escaped POW, Poldek hid out with friends, visiting his parents only under the most secretive conditions. According to Thomas Keneally, who worked closely with Page when he wrote Schindler’s List, said that Page felt so comfortable in Kraków in the early months of the German occupation that he was able to return to his teaching job.⁷

If he did, the window of opportunity was narrow. The war broke out on the same day that many Jewish schools throughout Poland were about to open. Some state-run Jewish schools tried to reopen at the end of September, though official permission was not granted until October 8, when military authorities agreed that all schools in operation before the war could begin the fall term. When the General Government came into existence, Nazi officials ordered all Jewish schools closed. The doors of the last Jewish school in Poland were shut on December 4, 1939. Jewish students and teachers were also forbidden to attend or teach in the limited number of non-Jewish schools now allowed to operate in the General Government. Though German policy towards Polish education would change over the next few years, Frank and Himmler both thought the schools that provided Poles with the necessary skills to serve the economic needs of the Greater Reich should remain open. Elementary and vocational schools were allowed limited classes, but universities and gymnasia, traditionally centers of intellectual enlightenment and bastions of Polish culture, were closed.⁸

Poldek Page had been working with his mother’s interior decorating business and first met Oskar Schindler at his mother’s apartment on ul. (ulica; street) Grodzka 48. Grodzka is one of the main streets running just to the north of Wawel Castle to the center of Stare Miasto, the elegant Rynek Krakowski (Kraków Market Square). The Pfefferberg apartment was on what remains one of the most historic and beautiful streets in Kraków. Though many of Kraków’s Jews lived in the nearby old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, there were others, particularly more secular Jewish families who were later saved by Oskar Schindler such as the Pfefferbergs and the Müllers, who lived in other parts of Kraków.

From Poldek’s initial perspective, Oskar Schindler symbolized all that was evil about Poland’s German occupiers. But when Schindler knocked on Mina Pfefferberg’s apartment door in November 1939, Poldek’s initial fear was arrest by the Gestapo as an escaped POW. The ever cautious Poldek went to the kitchen door, one of two hallway entrance ways into the Pfefferberg apartment, and peered out. He immediately thought it was the Gestapo because the tall, blondish, well-dressed German was wearing a Nazi Party badge on his lapel. The Gestapo was responsible for threats to internal state security. Now that the military had relinquished control over Kraków, the Gestapo was responsible for arresting so-called enemies of the state. As a Jew and an escaped POW, Poldek qualified. For the former high school teacher and Polish officer, this meant life, and possibly death, in a concentration camp if arrested. For his parents, it could also mean the loss of their home and personal possessions.⁹

Consequently, Leopold Page had a lot to fear when he saw Oskar Schindler at the front door of his mother’s apartment. Mina was terrified, and Poldek hid in the kitchen when she went to the door. Ideally, he would try to escape; but, if necessary, he was prepared to shoot Schindler with the .22 pistol he kept hidden in his parent’s apartment. When Mina opened the door, Oskar saw the terror on her face and quickly reassured her: “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not here to arrest anybody, I am here to make business with you because I took an apartment, a Jewish apartment, and I pay money to this Jewish fellow, and he said that you were in interior decorating, and he was decorating his apartment.” Poldek, who by this time was standing behind the double doors separating the dining room from the living room, was relieved. As Schindler struggled to speak with Mrs. Pfefferberg in broken Polish, Poldek came through the door and interpreted for them. Though Oskar would later become fluent in Polish, it is doubtful that he knew very much in 1939. But Czechs and Poles can understand each other if they converse in their separate languages. My Polish research assistant, Konstancja Szymura, and I had this experience in the summer of 2000 when we were looking for Emilie Schindler’s remote Bohemian village. As we stopped frequently to ask directions, we spoke in Polish and received directions in Czech.¹⁰

Leopold Page would later say that he felt an immediate closeness to Oskar Schindler, and by the end of their first meeting they had become friends. Oskar was so reassuring that Mina Pfefferberg agreed to decorate his new apartment. Oskar then asked Poldek whether he would find him some black market items for his new apartment as well as other black market goods. Little did Schindler know how well connected Leopold Page was to the thriving black market in Kraków. Almost from the moment he escaped German military detention, Poldek was active in the black market jewel trade. Poles, Jews and non-Jews alike, but particularly Jews, were desperate for food, which the Germans carefully restricted.¹¹

When World War II broke out, the Germans initiated a Reich-wide rationing system based on race. Hitler was determined that the German people would not suffer the same economic hardships they had endured during World War I, so the real burden of rationing fell on the shoulders of the occupied peoples, particularly the Jews. Ration books were distributed to Kraków’s Jews through the Temporary Jewish Religious Community and later the Judenrat (Jewish Council). In fact, food and the illnesses that came from lack of it became the largest initial problem faced by the Judenräte throughout German-occupied Poland.¹²

The food shortages faced by Kraków’s Jewish community were similar to those suffered by Jews in other parts of Poland during World War II. In 1939, the Stadtkommissar (city commissioner) in Łódź, for example, decreed that Jews were supposed to receive 25 percent of the city’s food allocations. In reality, Jews got much less because of problems with food distribution and deliberate German efforts to starve them. By the end of 1940, Warsaw’s Jews were allotted only 3,250 grams of bread apiece; the city’s Aryans received 6,100 grams. Warsaw’s Jews also got no sugar, flour, meat, eggs, or potatoes, which were reserved for non-Jews. The Polish historian Eugeniusz Duraczyvski estimated that the average daily food allotment for residents in Warsaw in 1941 was 2,613 calories for Germans, 669 calories for Poles, and 184 calories for Jews. Because of the underground economy, some Poles were able to buy food to increase their daily caloric intake by 1,000 to 1,500 calories.¹³

Underground activity was much more difficult for the General Government’s impoverished Jewish population, particularly after the creation of the ghetto system, which severely restricted their ability to buy food on the black market. The Judenräte throughout the General Government were able to set up food acquisition, production, and distribution systems, but they were barely able to raise Jewish caloric intake slightly above the 1,000 calories deemed necessary to sustain life over a long period. The situation worsened after Hans Frank decided in the fall of 1942 to stop supplying food to the 1.2 million Jews in the General Government not involved in jobs considered vital to the German economy. Starvation had now become an active German tool of mass death for Jews.¹⁴

When Oskar Schindler first talked to Page about helping him learn the Kraków black market system, he was thinking less about basic foodstuffs than the elegant life he hoped to live as a prosperous businessman and sometime Abwehr agent. One of the things that interested Schindler during his first meeting with Poldek was the fine blue silk shirt that the former Polish officer was wearing. Oskar asked him whether he could purchase more and how much they would cost. Though Poldek could buy them for Zł 5 ($1.56) apiece, he told Schindler that one shirt would cost him Zł 25 ($7.81). He added that he would need Oskar’s shirt size and an advance payment. Oskar gave Poldek RM 200 ($83.00). It was enough for Page to buy fifty shirts for Schindler, and the overly generous Oskar knew this. The following week, Oskar received a dozen shirts from Poldek. Thus began a close friendship that was to last until Oskar’s death in 1974. And though it was black marketeering that drew the two men together, there was also something else. Poldek Page and Oskar Schindler were similar in many ways. Both men were independent, self-assured, strong-minded, and intrepid individuals. These characteristics served them both well during and after the Holocaust.¹⁵

Page, though, had little to do with Oskar’s next step in becoming a prosperous German businessman in Kraków. Though Oskar had enough ambition and guile for several men, he needed other contacts to help him open his first business in the General Government’s new capital. From a distance, it would seem that not much effort was needed because Jewish properties were available to most Germans for the taking. But not in November 1939. By the time Oskar made his first visit to the Pfefferberg-Page apartment, German authorities were well on their way to depriving the city’s 60,000 Jews of their rights, dignity, and property. On September 8, SS-Brigadeführer Bruno Streckenbach, the head of the First Operational Group of the SD and SS, ordered that all Jewish businesses were to display a Star of David on their windows by the next evening. On the same day, SS-Oberscharführer Paul Siebert, the head of Sipo’s Jewish affairs office, appointed Dr. Marek Bieberstein, a prominent prewar Jewish community leader, as head of the Temporary Jewish Religious Community in Kraków. Ten weeks later, this organization, still under Bieberstein, was transformed into a Judenrat. The Judenräte, which were used throughout German-occupied Europe, were to act as liaisons between the Germans and a city’s Jewish community and carry out the Nazi administration’s orders.¹⁶

The first official decree of Dr. Bieberstein’s administrative board came on September 21, when Bieberstein asked the city’s Jews to begin working to fill in the various antiaircraft ditches throughout Kraków. This was the beginning of the German forced-labor practices that transformed the General Government’s Jews into slaves of the Third Reich. Once Hans Frank was in power, he decreed that all Jews between twelve and sixty were obligated to work for a two-year term in a forced labor camp. Frank’s subordinate, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Wächter, the governor of the Kraków district, decreed on November 18, 1939, that all Jews in his district older than twelve were required to wear a white band with a blue Star of David sewn on it. Wächter added that the white band had to be 10 cm wide and the star had to be 8 cm in diameter. The Kraków governor defined a Jew as someone “who is or was a believer in the Jewish faith” and whose mother or father “is or was a believer in the Jewish faith.” This order included temporary as well as permanent Jewish residents of Kraków.¹⁷

The final blow to Jewish dignity and pride soon followed when a series of decrees and regulations stripped Jews of their homes, businesses, and personal property. Oskar Schindler, like many other German carpetbaggers, would benefit greatly from these developments. But Jews had already lost many of their possessions during the random military and civilian plundering during the invasion and occupation of Poland in September 1939. In November, the Germans froze all Jewish and foreign assets in banks and other financial institutions and permitted them to keep only Zł 2,000 ($625) in cash. On December 5–6, 1939, the Germans blockaded all Jewish homes in Kazimierz and other parts of Kraków and brutally confiscated everything collectively valued more than Zł 2,000 ($625) from individual Jewish residences. Several days earlier, Kraków’s Jews had to report and then turn in their motor vehicles. On January 24, 1940, the city’s Jews were given five weeks to register their remaining property with the German authorities. They were also forbidden to change their addresses. According to Dr. Roland Goryczko, the lawyer appointed by the Polish trade court to handle the business affairs of the bankrupt Jewish factory just leased by Oskar Schindler, the registration order marked the beginning of official German confiscation of Jewish property in the General Government.¹⁸

In the midst of all of this, Oskar Schindler began his inquiries about Jewish property. The logical path for him was through the office of the Main Trusteeship Office East (HTO; Haupttreuhandstelle Ost), created by Hermann Göring on November 1, 1939, and headed by Max Winkler, a close associate of Joseph Goebbels and Reich Commissioner of the German Film Industry. Though headquartered in Berlin, the HTO had branch offices (Treuhandstellen) throughout German-occupied Poland, including Kraków. Those in each of the General Government’s four districts were overseen by the General Government Trustee Office (Treuhandstelle für das General Gouvernement). Göring’s directive, later clarified in early 1940, recognized two methods of property seizure based on taking over (Beschlagnahme) property rights and confiscation (Einziehung). According to a new directive issued by Göring on January 24, 1940, the HTO could take over or confiscate all property deemed important to the public interest. Local HTO offices would then be responsible for overseeing the stolen property and putting it in the hands of carefully selected Treuhänder (trustee). Polish property that was not officially registered with the Germans was considered ownerless and was subject to seizure by the HTO. Jewish property seized by the HTO, the military, or other organs of state for the benefit of the Reich was not bound by Göring’s property seizure directives. For Jews, the only things exempt from seizure were personal items.¹⁹

When Oskar Schindler began to look for confiscated Polish property to build his new business career in the fall of 1939, the seizure of Polish property, whether it be public, private, or Jewish, was just getting under way. Jewish property was certainly being stolen in the immediate months after the German conquest by the military, the police, and a few civilians. On September 29, for example, the military issued a decree allowing for the immediate seizure of property that was improperly managed or that belonged to absentee owners, an action that became a pretext for the confiscation of much Jewish property. Oskar, though, despite his Abwehr ties, had to follow a more formal, legalistic route to acquire property in Kraków at this time.²⁰

Jewish property was still hard to acquire in such situations because Jews in the General Government were not required to register their property with the HTO until late January 1940. And it was not until September 17, 1940, that Göring issued a new directive ordering immediate confiscation of all Jewish property in Poland with the exception of personal belongings and RM 1,000 ($400) in cash. These regulations were enforced unevenly throughout German-occupied Poland. In Kraków, for example, the new rule was applied only to homes that brought in rent of more than Zł 500 ($156.25) a month. Yet most of the private property seized in Poland by the Reich was Jewish-owned. The only exception was state-owned Polish property, which Frank declared in the fall of 1940 was now the property of the General Government. At the end of 1941, Germans only owned 157 private businesses out of 2,973 in Kraków. Non-Jewish Poles owned the rest.²¹

Initially, some effort was made to compensate Jews for their extensive property losses. Early in the occupation, the Germans seemed interested only in larger Jewish businesses and homes, though, over time, the Jews in the General Government lost everything. In Kraków, for example, the HTO agreed to pay former apartment house owners 75 percent of the property’s value; by the summer of 1940, the HTO reduced these payments to 50 percent. Jews who had money in the state-owned Polish Post State Savings Bank (Pocztowa Kasa Osczědnośsci) were allowed to take out only 10 percent of their savings, and their total withdrawals from their individual accounts could be no more that Zł 1,000 ($312.50). Those who had money in the Jewish credit unions after November 18, 1940, lost everything because they were liquidated on this date.²²

On February 18, 1941, the General Government’s Trustee Office laid out specific guidelines for compensating former Jewish property owners. The first criteria for payment was that the former Jewish owner could not support himself from other sources of income. Second, if compensation was given, it could be no greater than a quarter of the former property owner’s net income. Moreover, German compensation could not exceed Zł 250 ($78) a month. Given that it required about Zł 1,300 ($406.25) a month in 1941 to meet the basic cost of living expenses in the General Government, these limits were another indication of German efforts to rid themselves of the Jewish population well before the implementation of the Final Solution. A third HTO criteria stipulated that compensation given could not affect the value of the seized property. Finally, and this was the most damaging to Jewish hopes of compensation, the HTO directive stated that Jewish property seized for the benefit of the Reich was not subject to compensation. Once the property was taken over, the new German owner was not obligated to pay any of the confiscated property’s prewar debts to Polish creditors. At the same time, the new owners had the right to demand payments from Poles for debts owed the former owners. Oskar Schindler would benefit from these German debt regulations.²³

Some of the worst initial losses suffered by Polish Jews came in the midst of random property seizures by the Wehrmacht and the police forces in the early months of the war. Göring and Himmler both claimed extensive authority to seize property for the good of the Reich, which was then not subject to compensation consideration. Winkler, who technically answered to Göring, claimed the same rights for the HTO. The military and the police, and occasionally bold civilians, had no qualms about raiding a Jewish business, factory, or home and stealing everything inside. Stella Müller-Madej, a Schindlerjude, tells one such story in her memoirs. Early one November morning in 1939, three SS men entered her family’s spacious apartment on fashionable ul. Szymanowskego Karola. Like the Pfefferbergs, the Müllers were secular Jews who chose to live in a predominantly Polish neighborhood. At first, the Germans thought they had the wrong apartment because of its elegance and Stella’s mother, Bertha, a Jew of German descent with blond hair and green eyes who spoke impeccable German. Bertha politely informed the SS officer that she was Jewish. After a moment of hesitation, the SS officer informed Bertha that her family had half an hour to vacate the apartment. They would not be allowed to take anything with them. The officer assured the Müllers that they would receive a detailed inventory of everything in the apartment. The family quickly dressed and added extra layers of clothes. Bertha was also able to sneak a few items from her jewelry box, though she was sure the Germans would keep their word about a receipt for the confiscated items. But when they walked out the door, they lost everything. Such tragic stories were repeated time and again throughout German-occupied Poland during the first years of the war.²⁴

These developments had a direct impact on Oskar Schindler’s ability to acquire property in the early months after the outbreak of World War II. The extensive Trustee offices (Treuhandstellen) were just being set up as he was looking for a cheap piece of property in Kraków. Moreover, Oskar was in a hurry to begin his new business, whether it be for profit or as an Abwehr front. Even if he was receiving some of his startup money from Abwehr, he still did not have unlimited funds. And he now had two homes, a wife, and several mistresses to take care of. Most important, he needed good business advice. If his wartime and postwar experiences are any indication, Oskar Schindler was not much of a businessman. He was extremely impatient, particularly when it came to details, and did not handle money well. He would need someone to help him find an appropriate business to invest in and someone to run it. Perhaps Steven Spielberg best captured the essence of all of this in the fictitious scene in Schindler’s List that had Liam Neeson (Schindler) and Ben Kingsley (Itzhak Stern) together in an office. Neeson was trying to find out whether Kingsley knew of any Jewish businessmen willing to put up funds to help him open a factory. In return for their investment, Neeson explained, they would receive manufactured goods to trade on the black market. When Kingsley asked what Neeson would bring to the bargain, he responded, “I would see that it had a certain panache. That’s what I’m good at, not the work, not the work. Presentation.”²⁵

Schindler, Stern, and Bankier

Josef “Sepp” Aue told the Czech secret police after World War II that Oskar Schindler was the principal figure involved in helping him acquire a business in Kraków during the early months of the war. According to Aue, all this was linked to the activities of two Abwehr operatives in Kraków at the time, Walter Muschka and Oskar Schmidt, who went by the cover name of Ervin Kobiela. Aue claimed that Muschka was head of an office in Kraków that oversaw the confiscation of Jewish property. Robin O’Neil claims that Muschka was head of the General Government’s Trustee Office in Kraków, though this office did not exist at the time. More than likely, Muschka oversaw a Wehrmacht Wirtschaftsstelle that handled Jewish property confiscations. According to Aue, Abwehr’s office in Kraków was headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Kipka. SS-Hauptsturmführer Rolf Czurda served as his deputy. This link between Abwehr and the SS was not as strange as it seemed. Ties between both organizations had grown closer in the days leading up to the war and would become even closer. They had both worked together on the invasion of Poland, and some Abwehr officers in Poland were drawn from SS units. Abwehr officers had trained members of the SS Standby Troops (VT; Verfügungstruppen), the forerunner of the Waffen SS (Armed SS), in security and counterespionage matters, and members of Himmler’s newly created super police organization, the RSHA, taught Abwehr officers police tactics. At a distance, ties between Abwehr and the Gestapo, an arm of RSHA, were so close that some anti-Nazis thought that Abwehr was an extension of the Gestapo. The special relationship between Abwehr and various branches of RSHA, which would wane during the war, would often work in Oskar Schindler’s favor.²⁶

Certainly Schindler and Aue’s ties to Abwehr helped them acquire property in Poland. When they arrived together in Poland in late September 1939, Oskar immediately took Sepp to meet with Muschka and Kobiela. Kobiela took Aue aside and asked him what type of business he wanted. Sepp replied that it did not really matter to him. Kobiela suggested that he might be interested in a Jewish firm, J. L. Buchheister & Co., at 15 Stradom Street. When Aue agreed, both men went to the shop, where Kobiela introduced himself as a clerk for the Wehrmacht’s Wirtschaftsstelle (Economic Planning Office). Kobiela demanded that the owner give him the contents of his cash register as well as a detailed inventory of all of his shop’s goods and other possessions. The Abwehr agent then told Mr. Buchheister that when he had completed the inventory, he should leave the shop and never return. The shop was now controlled by Josef “Sepp” Aue. He said that when he took it over it had on hand about Zł 650,000 ($203,125) in textiles and Zł 500 ($156.25) in cash. Like Schindler, Aue formally took control of this company in early 1940 after official confiscation regulations were put in place.²⁷ Though Aue told the Czech secret police that he stopped working for Abwehr when he came to Kraków, his asking known Abwehr operatives to help him find a factory negates this claim. Though he might not have formally been working for Abwehr, he could never escape obligations to Canaris’s organization, at least while he remained in Kraków. In fact, he was part of a larger Sudeten-German Abwehr network that was actively involved in property acquisitions in the General Government’s capital in the early months of the war. Muschka and Korbiel, for example, not only helped Schindler and Aue acquire property but also helped Oskar’s right-hand man in Ostrava, Frantiåek Turek, acquire a business there.²⁸

Thomas Keneally tells a different story about Aue and Schindler’s relationship, which he based on interviews with Jewish survivors. The Czech secret police files and Schindler’s own comments about this were not available to the Australian novelist when he did his research for Schindler’s List in the early 1980s. According to Keneally, Aue and Schindler first met at a party in late October 1939 at the apartment of one of Schindler’s girlfriends, a Sudeten German Treuhander named Ingrid. Sepp Aue invited Oskar to drop by his office the next day. It was during this meeting that Schindler was supposed to have first met Itzhak Stern. Stern, at home with the flu, had been called to the office by Aue to check into a payment discrepancy involving two German soldiers and one of the company’s Jewish bookkeepers. While Stern was trying to resolve this matter, Aue introduced him to Schindler, a meeting that would begin a lifelong friendship. According to Keneally, though Stern spent only a few minutes with Oskar, he was able to review the business records of the Polish Jewish firm, Rekord, Ltd., that Schindler proposed to take over. Stern told Oskar that he was familiar with this company and that his brother, Natan, had worked for one of Rekord’s Swiss creditors. He explained that Rekord, which had made enamelware, had been badly managed and had gone bankrupt. After glancing at Rekord’s books for three minutes, Stern told Oskar that it was a good business, particularly with military contracts looming on the horizon. He added that Rekord had been grossing more than Zł 0.5 million ($94,340) a year and that new equipment could easily be acquired to expand its production. Stern went on to tell Schindler that the best way to acquire Rekord was through the Polish Trade Court instead of the Treuhandstelle. What Schindler could do, suggested Stern, was lease Rekord with the option later to buy it outright. “As a Treuhänder,” Stern noted, “only a supervisor, you were completely under the control of the Economics Ministry.” According to Keneally, the first meeting between Schindler and Stern ended with a modest philosophical discussion on religion. Stern’s last comment was a quote from the Talmud: “He who saves the life of one man saves the world.” Keneally implied that Oskar seemed to agree with this thought, and has Stern saying that “it was at this moment that he… dropped the right seed in the furrow.” This is the beginning of the story that it was Stern who gave Oskar Schindler the timely business advice he needed to acquire Rekord, Ltd., and planted the seed that later led to Schindler’s decision to hire and save Jewish workers.²⁹

Stern tells a somewhat different story. In fact, what we know about the early phase of Stern’s relationship with Oskar comes from the detailed testimony Stern gave to Dr. Kurt Jakob Ball-Kaduri, who worked for Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, in late 1956, and the testimony he provided Martin Gosch and Howard Koch in 1964. Both men were preparing a film script for a movie on Oskar Schindler. Over the next year, Stern supplied Dr. Ball-Kaduri with supplemental details and documents. The Yad Vashem archivist was simultaneously corresponding with Oskar Schindler in Buenos Aires. With the exception of Schindler’s own postwar accounts, Stern’s lengthy testimony in German and his remarks to Gosch and Koch are some of the most important accounts we have of Oskar’s wartime activities. Even before Dr. Ball-Kaduri got to know Stern and Schindler, he had already gained a reputation for accuracy. Prosecutors in the 1961–1962 trial of Adolf Eichmann used testimony collected by Dr. Ball-Kaduri. During the trial, State Attorney Ya’acov Bar-Or noted that Dr. Ball-Kaduri, a specialist in the history of Central European Jews, began to record their testimonies after the end of the Holocaust. When Yad Vashem (Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority) came into existence in 1953, Dr. Ball-Kaduri volunteered to continue his work for the new Israeli Holocaust memorial institution. Bar-Or told the Eichmann court that Dr. Ball-Kaduri’s recorded testimonies “constitute today the only record and the only proof about some most important events.”³⁰

According to Stern, his first meeting with Oskar Schindler took place on November 18 or 19, 1939, not late October. At the time, Stern was at home, ill and suffering a high fever. Aue, who had just taken over Buchheister, called Stern into the office to resolve a situation involving one of the Jewish clerks accused of theft. The day before, two German soldiers had walked into Aue’s new shop and bought several bolts of cloth worth Zł 60 ($18.75) with an outdated 1858 German bill and a 1914 German occupation note. The morning after the sale, Buchheister’s German bookkeeper saw the bills in the cash register and accused the Jewish clerk of stealing Zł 60 and replacing the money with outdated German bills. Stern listened to the story and realized that if he did not resolve it quickly, the Jewish clerk could be shot. Stern told Aue: “Well, this is a piece of false money—we don’t need this—and I forgot about it anyway, that we had charged this up to a matter of profit and loss.” Stern then took the two bills and threw them into a nearby stove. Aue really liked the way that Stern handled the matter and told him that he wanted to share something confidential. Stern assured Aue that anything he told him in confidence would remain their mutual secret. Aue then introduced Stern to Oskar Schindler.³¹

Schindler was interested in acquiring a business and wanted his advice, according to Stern. At this point, Oskar took a financial balance statement out of his pocket about a company called Rekord, Ltd. and wanted to know Stern’s opinion about its financial health. Stern’s brother, an attorney, had represented a Swiss company that was suing Rekord, Ltd. and knew a great deal about its economic history. Stern recommended that Oskar rent or purchase a business and not take one over as a trustee. From Stern’s perspective, the owner of a factory “was relatively free in the employment of Jews” and would be more personally connected to the factory than a trustee, who would operate the factory for the Reich. Stern said that at one point in their conversation, he forgot he was talking to a German; he told Schindler that the Talmud said that if one man could save another, it was like saving the whole world. Schindler was amazed that Stern knew what he did about Rekord, Ltd. and asked him how a Jew was privy to such information. The day before, Aue had asked Stern to analyze and explain to him a recent set of regulations from Berlin on labor and related costs in Poland. This was how Stern had learned so much about the advantages of renting or buying property as opposed to taking it over as a trustee. Stern knew this was highly sensitive information but told Oskar that it had been readily available in many German newspapers. Oskar looked at Stern and said, “Don’t tell me this. I know better than that.” He then affectionately patted Stern on the back as they walked into Aue’s office to discuss politics and philosophy.³²

This is all that Stern had to say about his first meeting with Oskar. The second meeting took place on December 4; this is when Oskar obliquely warned him of the forthcoming German raid on Jewish homes: “Tomorrow you’ll see a big thing, and you’ll find out what the Germans can do.” Oskar was trying to tell Stern of a deadly German Aktion, though Stern and his friends, who were suspicious of Schindler, refused to heed his warning. Afterwards, Stern regretted his understandable hesitancy to believe anything a German told him and became more trusting of Schindler.³³

The difference between Stern’s and Keneally’s accounts of how Schindler met Stern are nothing compared to Steven Spielberg’s decision to cast Itzhak Stern as Schindler’s Jewish alter ego in Schindler’s List. Spielberg, or more appropriately his final scriptwriter, Steven Zaillian, intended Stern to be Schindler’s subconscious, a composite figure encompassing three people: Abraham Bankier, Mietek Pemper, and Stern. Mietek Pemper, though, told me that Steven Spielberg told him during the filming of Schindler’s List in Kraków in 1993 that Itzhak Stern was a composite of Stern and Pemper. Spielberg said nothing to him about Abraham Bankier. This decision made for good cinema, but it was bad history. Bankier was the financial genius who ran Schindler’s factory in Kraków. Stern himself readily admitted to Dr. Ball-Kaduri that “he never worked for Schindler in Kraków, and he also at no time was living in the Jewish camp near the Schindler factory.” Instead, Stern continued to work for J. L. Buchheister & Co., and later for the Progress metalworking factory, first in Kraków and later in the Płaszów concentration camp. Both were run by a trustee, Herr Unkelbach, whose Progress factory was shut down by Amon Göth, the commandant at Płaszów, because Unkelbach had been too lenient towards his Jewish workers. Stern then went to work for Göth in the camp’s administrative offices.³⁴

So if Stern did not work closely with Schindler from 1939 to 1944, what was the reason for his relationship with the Sudeten German businessman? Moreover, why was he given so much more prominence in Keneally’s novel and Spielberg’s film than equally important figures such as Pemper and Bankier? Certainly Schindler thought highly of Stern and maintained contacts with him throughout the war. In a letter to Dr. Ball-Kaduri on September 9, 1956, Oskar wrote: “Seldom in my life have I encountered people of his standard. His high ethical values, his fearless willingness to help, his sacrificial efforts for his brothers combined with modesty in his own life have repeatedly caused my great admiration and respect. Mr. Isaak Stern has been a substantial part of the reason why my rescue efforts were successful.” But what was the nature of their relationship? It had little to do with the running of Schindler’s Emalia factory because Bankier did that brilliantly. More than likely, it had to do with Stern’s contacts in Göth’s office and his invaluable ties to the Kraków Jewish community’s leadership.³⁵

As we shall see later, in 1943 Oskar Schindler became a courier and go-between for the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which was trying to filter money into Poland to help Jews and determine the depth of Germany’s deadly policies towards Jews there. Soon after the war broke out, Stern went to work for the Society for the Protection of Health (TOZ; Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia), which was created and funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint; AJJDC). Stern headed TOZ operations in Kraków and was responsible for the health of Jews in the city. TOZ operated different types of medical facilities and, as long as the Germans permitted it, gave training courses for nursing personnel. When necessary, TOZ opened soup kitchens for orphaned children. Once sent to Płaszów, Stern became an important contact for Schindler and the Jewish Agency. Stern supplied Schindler with information about conditions in the camp, and Schindler supplied him with funds from the Jewish Agency to help the Jewish prisoners there.³⁶

Though Keneally said that Stern had the manners of a Talmudic scholar and an East European intellectual, his relationship with Schindler had more to do with business and survival than with intellectual matters. In some ways, Schindler and Stern were quite different, though they also had things in common. What drew the two men together was opportunity. Schindler was an impatient and impulsive personality; Stern was thoughtful and calm. Both men exuded a certain strength. And in their own ways, Schindler and Stern were brave men. Jews who worked for Amon Göth lived in constant fear for their lives. Stern was no exception. Yet he prided himself on his calm nature, particularly when he dealt with Germans. Both men also came from business families. Stern’s father, Menachem, was a successful bookkeeper. To prepare himself to follow his father, Stern studied trade science in Vienna and Kraków before he joined J. L. Buchmeister. Though he was only nine years older than Oskar, Stern was more of a father figure to Schindler than an elder brother. But it would be wrong to depict him as Oskar’s friend, at least during the war. Friendship requires a level of personal contact that was not permitted between Germans and Jews during the Holocaust. Moreover, Oskar Schindler was still a German and Jews who wished to survive had to maintain a distance from all Germans.Numerous Schindlerjuden have told me that despite what Oskar Schindler did for them, during the war they were distrustful of him because he was a German. Not until the war ended did they feel comfortable with a more trusting relationship with their “savior.”³⁷

Yet one other Jew was equally or more important to Oskar Schindler during the war: Abraham Bankier. After Oskar leased Emalia, his friends kidded him about his acquisition. They said that “all his fortune consisted of was a Jew by the name of Bankier and ten enamel pot covers.” Janka Olszewska, one of Oskar’s closest Polish friends and who still lives in Kraków, said that Emalia was run by Schindler and Bankier. She added that together they looked like the “comic heroes of some silent movie.” To Janka, they looked like Mutt and Jeff, “Bankier, short and fat, and Schindler tall and slim.” Janka’s statement about Bankier’s importance to Schindler and Emalia is supported by numerous statements by Schindler and other Jews such as Sol Urbach, who worked for Oskar in Kraków and Brünnlitz and had access to his office complexes. According to Urbach, Bankier had an office behind Schindler’s at Emalia. Schindler’s office was decorated with the usual Nazi art and photos for his German clients, but Bankier received Polish businessmen in his plain rear office.³⁸

Victor Dortheimer, one of the few Schindler Jews who worked for Oskar at Emalia and Brünnlitz, confirmed the importance of Bankier to Schindler’s operations in Kraków. Dortheimer was never consulted by Keneally or Spielberg even though he considered himself Schindler’s personal master painter: “I had a personal relationship with the Director [Schindler]. All the time I was in the Emalia factory, Stern was never seen. Bankier was the boss, he had his own office and never wore the ‘star.’”³⁹ Dortheimer later told two German reporters that it was Bankier who was responsible for bringing the first Jewish workers to Emalia. Bankier had a special pass that let him come and go from the ghetto to the factory. At first, he took a group of twenty Jewish workers from the ghetto to the factory and back each day; in fact, he was the one principally responsible for bringing many of the Jews to Emalia, thus saving their lives.⁴⁰

Bankier’s genius centered around his black market skills, which provided Schindler with substantial profits and the money he used to help his Jewish workers. Bankier obtained quantities of metal beyond the factory’s quota to make extra pots and pans, which he then used to purchase goods on the black market. Bankier was always the one blamed for black market deals that went bad. He risked his life, Dortheimer explained, time and again, but Schindler remained unmolested. Because of this, Bankier became indispensable to Oskar Schindler. When Dortheimer attended the London premiere of Schindler’s List, he spotted Steven Spielberg. As Spielberg’s body guards pushed him away, Dortheimer shouted to Spielberg, “It’s all wrong.” Later, he told two German reporters: “Schindler was our savior. But in the Emalia factory Bankier was the key figure. Without Bankier there would have been no Schindler.”⁴¹

Bankier traveled frequently with Oskar around Kraków. Oskar thought so highly of Bankier that he told Jewish Agency representatives in Budapest in November 1943 that because Bankier had “a clear overview of the whole business,” he could, “without worrying, go away for four weeks, and know that he [would] faithfully substitute” for him.⁴² Bankier enjoyed such a position of privilege that Schindler got into trouble for it. One day after the opening of the ghetto in the early spring of 1941, SS-Hauptscharführer Wilhelm Kunde and SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Hubert Heinrich, whom Schindler described as two of the most feared SS men in the ghetto, met with Oskar at Emalia. They said they had just learned from the Gestapo about Bankier’s privileged position in the factory. What followed was a detailed SS investigation of the operation at Emalia, which was assisted by a representative from the Trustee Office. Evidently they were looking for a legal violation so they could close the factory and turn it over to the Trustee Office. They found nothing and left Oskar and Bankier alone, at least for a while. Schindler later found out that a former disgruntled employee, Natan Wurzel, had told another ghetto resident, Mr. Spitz, about Bankier’s special position at Emalia. Spitz in turn told Kunde and Heinrich.⁴³

It is no accident, then, that Oskar first thanked Bankier and then Stern in his July 1945 financial report about his wartime activities. Over the years, Oskar developed a deep affection for Bankier. In a letter to Stern in the fall of 1956, Oskar included some pictures from the “Old Time.” One of them was of Oskar and Bankier, whom Oskar affectionately called “Boguslav.” The photo, he wrote, “awakens many memories in me.”⁴⁴ Unknown to Oskar, his beloved loyal Bankier had recently died in Vienna. For daily activities, then, Bankier was much more important to Oskar than Stern. Almost 80 percent of Oskar’s business dealings were on the black market and it was Bankier who did most of the trading. Bankier’s skills as a businessman and a black marketeer provided Oskar Schindler with the vast resources he needed to hire, house, feed, transfer, and save hundreds of Jewish workers.

Schindler, Emalia, and the Wurzel-Wiener Controversy

The reason that Bankier became so close to Oskar was through his earlier ties with Rekord, Ltd. Given the nature of the German occupation, one would presume that Oskar’s takeover of a former Jewish business would have been easy. In many ways, it was, though after the war it would lead to a series of charges so serious that some questions were raised in Israel in 1962 about whether Oskar Schindler should be named a Righteous Gentile. Even if these charges had not been made, broader ones arose in the 1980s and 1990s after the appearance of Keneally’s novel and Spielberg’s film. They centered around the idea that, despite his motivations, Schindler was no better than a thief when he acquired Jewish property in German-occupied Poland. At a distance, this was a general charge that could be made against any German who took over Jewish property in German-occupied Poland. But for Oskar Schindler, the charge was more personal because one of the two Jews who waged a campaign against Schindler in the courts and media of Argentina and Israel was a Schindlerjude.

The reason so little has been written about these charges is that until recently not much information was available and most of them were in Hebrew at Yad Vashem. Thomas Keneally alluded to the controversy in his novel but did not deal with it in detail. Schindler’s defense of his actions can be found in the recently discovered Schindler Koffer (suitcase) files now at Yad Vashem. But to get the full story behind Schindler’s acquisition of the former Polish Jewish factory, Pierwsza Małopolska Fabryka Naczyń Emaliowanych i Wyrobów Blaszanych “Rekord,” Spółka, z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnościąw Krakowie (First Little Polish Limited Liability Factory of Enamel Vessels and Tinware, Record, Limited Liability Company in Kraków), one must look also at the extensive Polish Okrêgowy (Trade) court records in Kraków on this subject.⁴⁵ Also revealing is the extensive collection of documents supplied by Schindler to West German officials in the 1950s and 1960s in his efforts to qualify for Lastenausgleich (equalization of burdens) compensation for his lost factories in Kraków and Brünnlitz. Collectively, these files detail the steps that Oskar Schindler took first to lease and then to buy the bankrupt Jewish factory. His decision to allow Abraham Bankier full control of his factory’s daily affairs is linked to all this. The Polish court records also carefully document efforts by the principal figure involved in the postwar controversy, Natan Wurzel, to be awarded compensation for what he felt was stolen property.

Rekord, Ltd. was the joint endeavor of three Jewish businessmen in Kraków, Michał Gutman, Wolf Luzer Glajtman, and Izrael Kohn, who bought a small enamelware factory built in 1935. These men were not on the famous “Schindler’s List” in the fall of 1944. They filed papers for the incorporation of their enamel and tinware factory on March 17, 1937, in Kraków. Rekord, Ltd. was set up with Zł 100,000 ($18,939) in capital. Each of the new owners received shares in Rekord Ltd., each share being worth Zł 500. Wolf Glajtman contributed Zł 50,000 ($9,470) for a hundred shares, and Luzer and Kohn Zł 25,000 ($4,735) for fifty shares apiece.⁴⁶

In the fall of 1937, a new partner, Herman Hirsch, bought into the firm for Zł 12,000 ($2,273) and twenty-four shares, which reduced the capital investments of Glajtman (now Zł 48,000, Kohn (Zł 20,000), and Gutman (Zł 20,000). This ownership arrangement was also expanded to include Wolf Luzer Glajtman’s four brothers, Uszer, Szyj, Leibisch, and Zalka, as well as his brothers-in-law, Abraham Bankier and Abram Szydłowski. They would collectively be given sixty-six shares of Rekord, Ltd., with the stipulation that Wolf Luzer Glajtman would always keep thirty shares for himself. Herman Hirsch was also given the right to transfer his shares to his wife, Adela, or to his brother-in-law, Natan Wurzel, or his wife, Gustawa Wurzel. Hirsch also gave the Wurzels proxy rights to act in his stead on business matters.

The board of directors consisted of the owners, though only one, Bankier, who was the factory manager, could be dismissed. This arrangement would not go into effect until the end of 1938. Wolf Luzer Glajtman and Bankier had the right to sign checks and enter into business deals for the company, but Michał Gutman had to approve checks for more than Zł 2,000 ($379). A year later, a new partner was brought into the business, Hersz Szpigelman, who invested Zł 3,000 ($566) in the firm. Rekord, Ltd.’s base capitalization remained at Zł 100,000. This reduced Michał Gutman’s investment in the firm to Zł 17,000 ($3,208).⁴⁷

It would seem to be an optimum time to open a factory in Kraków— unless you were Jewish. Poland, like many of its Central and East European neighbors, had suffered terribly in the immediate years after World War I. The country’s economic ills had been one of the issues that led to Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s military coup in 1926. A modest economic recovery followed, but ended with the Depression in the early 1930s. A year after Piłsudski’s death in 1935, government officials launched an economic recovery plan that saw industrial production increase rapidly. It now seemed that the time was ripe for the opening of new business ventures in Poland. Unfortunately, part of the government’s economic plan was the reduction of the role of Jews in the Polish economy. Prime Minister General Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski of Poland perhaps best summed up official attitudes towards the Jews’ role in the Polish economy when he said in 1936 that there should be an “economic struggle [against the Jews] by all means—but without force.” In reality, Poland’s Jews had suffered from almost two decades of economic anti-Semitism. According to Ezra Mendelsohn, what was new was the government’s support of such policies. The ongoing economic pauperization of Poland’s large Jewish population now intensified with a new round of boycotts and other anti-Semitic actions.⁴⁸

The question is what effect, if any, economic anti-Semitism had on Rekord, Ltd., which filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 1939. Polish court records reveal little about the reasons for the company’s failure except to say that it was in bad financial shape. The factory was making goods for the Polish military and was operating under military mobilization orders by this time. The owners somehow thought that if they could find a way to come up with extra cash to pay their creditors, they could keep the factory running. This is what led to the controversy with Natan Wurzel.⁴⁹

The controversy between Rekord, Ltd.’s primary owners and Natan Wurzel initially had nothing to do with Oskar Schindler. He was drawn into it after he leased the factory in the fall of 1939. Though the factory had trouble paying its bills, it had tremendous assets in its machines, buildings, and other factory property. A detailed financial report prepared on March 17, 1939, in preparation for the sale of Rekord, Ltd.’s property before its official declaration of bankruptcy showed fixed and liquid assets valued at Zł 681,559 ($128,596). The company owed almost as much to its creditors and was only able to break even because of the original Zł 100,000 investment of its owners. The value of its machinery and dies was Zł 223,309 ($42,293). It was the machinery and its ownership that was the center of the controversy between Natan Wurzel, Michał Gutman, and Wolf Luzer Glajtman. The sources on this disagreement are the letters of both sides in Polish trade court records. Each party tells his side differently, which means the truth is somewhere in between these accounts.⁵⁰

The problem began with the sale of Rekord, Ltd.’s machines to Natan Wurzel during the company’s auction of the factory’s possessions. According to Gutman and Glajtman, the auction was just a formality designed to keep the factory running by selling the machines to Wurzel, who would take the machines in pawn to satisfy the money loaned to Rekord, Ltd. by his brother-in-law, Herman Hirsch. Gutman and Glajtman thought Wurzel would keep the machines in trust until the factory was back on its feet. The controversy arose when Wurzel tried to take possession of the machines and sell them to someone else. Wurzel bought the machines and dies at the auction for Zł 46,000 ($8,679), though they were worth more. As part of this deal, Gutman and Glajtman also gave Wurzel an additional Zł 10,000 ($1,887) to buy the machines for Rekord, Ltd’s use. When Wurzel tried to take possession of the machines, Gutman and Glajtman stopped him. By early August, it seemed as though both sides had come to an agreement. Gutman and Glajtman found a buyer for the factory, who agreed to pay Wurzel Zł 60,000 ($11,321) for the machines and dies. When this deal fell through, the controversy reignited.⁵¹

By this time, both sides were using lawyers and the courts. It does not appear that Gutman and Glajtman denied Wurzel’s technical ownership of the equipment, but they disagreed with him about his intent. According to them, Wurzel, who handled the negotiations for himself and his brother-in-law, Herman Hirsch, reneged on an under-the-table arrangement that would have kept the factory under Gutman, Glajtman, and Bankier’s control.⁵² When the war began, Wurzel’s charges shifted to Oskar Schindler and centered around not only ownership of the machines and the factory but also claims that Schindler had physically abused one of Wurzel’s partners, Julius Weiner.

But what about Natan Wurzel’s initial dispute with Gutman and Glajtman? It remained in the Polish courts, which continued to operate after Germany conquered Poland. Only in 1942, as Oskar prepared to buy the former Rekord, Ltd. factory, was the controversy revisited by the Polish regional trade court’s legal representative (syndyk), attorney (Adwokat) Dr. Bolesław Zawisza, who oversaw affairs for the former Rekord, Ltd. In the spring of 1942, Dr. Zawisza contacted Natan Wurzel in an effort to clarify the ownership before the so-called auction of June 26, 1942, where Oskar Schindler bought the former Rekord, Ltd. At the time, Wurzel was living in the ghetto of a Polish town, Brzesko, about forty miles east of Kraków. Wurzel sent Dr. Zawisza a letter on April 20, 1942, giving his side of the controversy. Among other things, Wurzel renounced his claims to the controversial machines. Dr. Zawisza went to Brzesko on May 27, 1942, to confirm Wurzel’s statement. During this meeting, Wurzel stated that he did receive money from the two factory owners not only to buy the machines in the fictitious auction but also to buy Rekord, Ltd.’s considerable holdings of enamel pots and pans. He added that Gutman and Glajtman gave him Zł 10,000 ($1,887) to do this. He borrowed the additional Zł 36,000 ($6,792) from Israel Kohn. On July 24 and August 3, 1942, Wurzel sent Dr. Zawisza two more letters in which he changed his story again and claimed that he had sold the machines on the eve of the war to an engineer named Brulivski. Wurzel added in his final letter that he had made a statement in August 1939 renouncing his claim to the machines, which he had bought for Rekord, Ltd. He explained that he decided to make this final statement because he had heard the factory was about to be sold.⁵³

One can only speculate about why Wurzel decided to change his stories. By this time, Wurzel said, he had already had some pretty nasty encounters with Oskar Schindler; more important, Jews were trying to avoid drawing attention to themselves. The Final Solution was in its early stages and Brzesko’s Jews were particularly vulnerable. About 4,000 Jews lived in the Brzesko ghetto, which the Germans had opened in 1940. Over the next two years, the Germans would send another 1,000–1,500 Jews there. In September 1942, 2,000 Brzesko Jews were sent to the Bełżec death camp 150 miles to the northeast. A year later, the Germans ordered the Brzesko ghetto closed and sent its remaining 3,000 Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz. In the midst of these horrors, the Germans also massacred another 500 Brzesko Jews. Today, a monument in the Jewish cemetery marks the site of their mass grave.⁵⁴

Consequently, fear influenced Wurzel’s statements in 1942. It is possible to clarify what really happened by comparing the statements of Glajtman, Gutman, Wurzel, and Schindler in the Polish court records before and during the war with their comments after the war. The information must be then linked to the next part of Natan Wurzel’s claims, which centered around charges of brutality and theft against Oskar Schindler. These events, if they took place, occurred in the early months of the war when Oskar Schindler took over Rekord, Ltd.

Oskar Schindler Acquires Rekord, Ltd.

Itzhak Stern said in his Yad Vashem testimony that he did not meet Oskar Schindler until November 19 or 20, 1939. According to Polish court records, by that time Oskar had already taken possession of the factory. On November 13, the HTO’s Trustees for Trade and Industry (Treuhänder für Handel und Gewerbe) in Kraków approved Oskar’s lease of Rekord, Ltd. The next day, Schindler signed a hastily prepared handwritten document acknowledging his lease; he took the keys, but did not sign a formal lease until January 15, 1940. Dr. Roland Goryczko, who acted as the Polish trade court’s legal representative, handled the legalities for the lease agreement. Oskar bought Rekord, Ltd.’s equipment for Zł 28,000 ($8,750) and paid the court a quarterly rent of Zł 2,400 ($750). This hasty arrangement was made to prevent Rekord, Ltd. from being seized by the German Trustee Office as a formerly owned Jewish factory.⁵⁵

According to the lease agreement, Oskar Schindler was “obliged to run the factory in an efficient way according to its social and technical requirements. Also, he is supposed to use all means possible to produce enamelware vessels and hire as many workers as possible.” The lease also stipulated that Oskar was to compensate his employees in a just and appropriate way. He could not change the type of goods that he produced without the permission of the trade court judge responsible for the leased factory. Oskar could also use the name of the former factory, though he decided to rename it the Deutsche Emailwarenfabrick Oskar Schindler (German Enamelware Factory Oskar Schindler). For convenience, Schindler and his workers referred to the renamed German factory simply as Emalia. The address of Emalia remained the same as Rekord, Ltd., ul. Lipowa 4. Because Oskar was only leasing the former company, a different address would be used in all Polish court matters dealing with the former Jewish factory; that address was ul. Romanowicza Tadeusza 9, a street running adjacent to the factory.⁵⁶

Dr. Goryczko was appointed the trade court’s legal representative several weeks earlier to look into its financial state, particularly charges of property theft. On his first visit on October 20, he found several former workers living in the company’s offices. One of them, Jozef Janda, was a guard and was paid four times the normal salary for a guard. Dr. Goryczko found no evidence of theft. While there he took the keys to the company’s storeroom and also got the keys for the machines from Natan Wurzel, who, Goryczko noted, owned the machines. He also took the company’s records. Goryczko prepared a list of the company’s creditors in anticipation of a sale of the company’s finished enamelware. The sale was announced for November 6, though it never took place because Oskar Schindler began negotiations with Goryczko for the lease of Rekord, Ltd. Six days after Oskar took control of the factory, Dr. Goryczko completed a detailed, twenty-seven-page inventory of the factory’s machinery and stores. Presumably Oskar saw a rough draft of the inventory before he signed the preliminary lease agreement.⁵⁷

Schindler’s factory was located in Podgórze, a suburb of Kraków. The factory was equidistant from Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter of Kraków just across the Vistula (Wisla) River, and two Jewish cemeteries two miles to the south on Jerozolimska Street. Though Oskar could not know it, his factory would sit at the edge of the Kraków Jewish ghetto after it was opened in the spring of 1941. The following year, the SS would open the infamous Płaszów Forced Labor Camp (Zwangsarbeitslager Plaszow des SS- und Polizeiführers im Distrikt Krakau) on the site of the Jewish cemeteries on Jerozolimska Street. All Schindler’s Jewish workers would initially live here when the camp opened.

Kraków’s industrial quarter, Podgórze, was substantially working class and still retains that flavor. Unlike the neighborhoods just across the Vistula surrounding Stare Mesto, Podgórze is a bit run down. Schindler’s factory at 4 Lipowa is several blocks away from the Plac Zgody (Peace Square) in a subdistrict of Podgórze, Kraków Zabłocie. Oskar would occasionally tell people that Emalia was located in Zabłocie. A major rail line runs through Podgórze and trains stop at the station there, Kraków Zabłocie. The railroad tracks through Podgórze also separate the industrial part of the district from its residential area. Today, Schindler’s factory rests in the middle of a complex of factories just as it did during the war.

From a distance, little seems to have changed at Emalia. The old gated entranceway is still there as is the striking glass stairway leading to the former Schindler offices. The sign over the entrance now reads Krakowskie Zakłady Elektroniczne “Telpod” (Kraków Electronic Works “Telpod”). Several firms now have offices in the buildings that once housed Schindler’s factory. New buildings have been built on the site and the old brick smokestack was torn down in the late 1990s. Security is modestly tight there, particularly if one tries to go upstairs to find Schindler and Bankier’s offices. I was once able to sneak upstairs, only to discover that no one in the various firms on the top floor of Emalia’s former business quarters had any idea where Oskar had his elegant offices. Sol Urbach, that rare Schindlerjude who worked for Oskar in Kraków and Brünnlitz, often worked in Schindler’s office at Emalia as a carpenter. He said that Schindler’s office was just at the top of the stairs. Abraham Bankier’s office was behind Schindler’s office. Because so much had changed at 4 Lipowa, Steven Spielberg used only the gated entrance and the glass stairway in his film. The factory interior shots were done at an enamelware factory in Olkusz about thirty miles northwest of Kraków.⁵⁸ Though Spielberg was probably not aware of it, Olkusz was the hometown of Wolf Luzer Glajtman, the principal founder of Rekord, Ltd.

The Wurzel-Wiener Affair Continues

The controversy between Oskar Schindler and Natan Wurzel became quite ugly in the 1950s and deeply troubled Oskar. Here was the acknowledged German “savior” of almost 1,100 Jews being accused by a Jew of theft and physical abuse. Wurzel, who after the war moved to Israel and changed his name to Antoni Korzeniowski, found an ally in Schindlerjude Julius Wiener. In 1955, both men mounted publicity and legal campaigns against Oskar Schindler that centered around charges of physical abuse and theft. Wiener’s charges of physical abuse were the most serious. Yet Julius Wiener was also the more timid of the two. In a letter to Wiener on May 21, 1955, Wurzel told him that he “must not be like the young woman who, after her first disappointment in love, decides to enter a monastery.”⁵⁹

It is not clear what prompted Natan Wurzel/Antoni Korzeniowski to bring his charges against Schindler. On October 30, 1951, he wrote the Tel Aviv office of the Joint requesting information on the whereabouts of Oskar Schindler. He explained, in Polish, that Schindler knew the fate of his family and that he wanted to contact him “in order to obtain full information about my lost relatives.” Ten days later, Helen Fink, an administrative assistant at the Joint, responded that she believed Schindler had moved to Argentina. She suggested he write their office in Buenos Aires for further information.⁶⁰

Whatever his intentions, he did not follow through on them for another four years, when he wrote letters to various Jewish organizations in Israel charging Schindler with theft and brutality. Wurzel told Wiener that “it is our duty to find a good and conscientious lawyer, maybe in Tel Aviv, who will take it on himself to conduct the trial. We must offer this lawyer a share in the proceeds of the trial as payment for his work.” Wurzel was partly motivated by the desire to be compensated for what he claimed was his stolen factory, Rekord, Ltd. And perhaps this is the key to Wurzel and Wiener’s charges against Oskar Schindler. Like many Holocaust survivors struggling to rebuild a life in Israel, a young and poor country, they were driven by a desire for some type of compensation for their losses; indeed, Wurzel and Wiener had not only lost family members in the Holocaust but also their worldly possessions. In his May 21, 1955, letter to Wiener, Wurzel told him that Schindler “lives well, with wealth, without worries.” But little did they know that at the time that Oskar Schindler was also in poor financial shape.⁶¹

Schindler, of course, denied that Wurzel had ever owned the factory. The charges prompted Oskar to send a detailed letter in response to several Schindler Jews in Israel in April 1955. This was followed by a detailed, well-thought-out Bericht (report) on October 30, 1955, that discussed his efforts to save Jews in Kraków and Brünnlitz from 1939 to 1945.⁶² Particularly important about these letters is their view into the “office politics” of the Jews who first began to work for Schindler after he leased Rekord, Ltd. Because Wurzel’s statements lack the detail of Oskar’s letters and statements, much of the following story is drawn from Schindler’s perspective. Schindler’s account of how he acquired Rekord, Ltd. follows pretty closely that found in the Polish trade court records. The biggest flaw in his story is the claim that he acquired his factory “legally.” Certainly he followed a proper “legal” course with the Polish trade court, but nonetheless Oskar Schindler was able to lease a former Jewish factory for a pittance of what it was worth. Moreover, even though Rekord, Ltd. had gone bankrupt just before the war began, it remained the confiscated property of Poland’s new German rulers after the outbreak of World War II. So buried in Wurzel’s charges, and to a lesser degree Wiener’s, was the pain of these humiliating losses.⁶³

According to Oskar, he decided to lease Rekord, Ltd. only after lengthy discussions with various wholesale suppliers, among them Samuel Wiener (Julius’s father), Samuel Kempler, and the Landaus. They all assured Oskar that they would have no trouble moving the goods he produced in his newly acquired factory. Oskar said that he had been offered several factories but that the promises of the Jewish wholesalers had prompted him to lease Rekord, Ltd.⁶⁴ This Jewish connection is important because Schindler would come to rely on Rekord, Ltd.’s former Jewish owners to help run Emalia. When he reopened the factory, he hired seven Jewish workers, among them Wolf Luzer Glajtman, Uszer Glajtman, Natan Wurzel, and Abraham Bankier, and 250 non-Jewish Polish employees.⁶⁵

Natan Wurzel worked for Schindler for about eighteen months. According to Oskar, Wurzel became an active player in an “egotistical power struggle among the top group of my employees” that centered around efforts “to gain my favor and to win influence over me.”⁶⁶ Wurzel, like all Polish workers, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, had to register with the Labor Exchange (Arbeitsamt) for a work assignment. Schindler, who initially trusted Wurzel, used his influence with the corrupt Labor Exchange to secure him a job at Emalia. And then the trouble began. According to Oskar, Wurzel was responsible for Wolf Luser Glajtman’s dismissal after he told Schindler that Glajtman had embezzled Zł 4,000 ($1,250) when he brought sheet metal from the Synger Sosnowitz factory. Oskar investigated the matter and discovered that Glajtman had sent the money to his wife in Olkusz to help his family. Oskar fired Glajtman and informed the Labor Exchange of his dismissal. But this was not the end of the Glajtman affair. Soon after Wolf Glajtman’s dismissal, Wurzel told Schindler that Wolf’s brother, Uszer Glajtman, an ammunition maker at Emalia, was making mistakes. Wurzel added that Uszer was also taking advice from Wolf. Oskar did not fire Uszer but transferred him to the warehouse.⁶⁷

It began to dawn on Schindler that Natan Wurzel was a bit of a manipulator. Oskar now began to rely on Abraham Bankier more and more because he thought Bankier was “more decent.” By this time, Wurzel had succeeded in having his rivals for Schindler’s favor neutralized or fired. Only Bankier remained in the “top group.” If Oskar is to be believed, Wurzel now set out to destroy Bankier. On one occasion, he personally attacked Bankier in front of the chief purchasing agent for the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF, Der Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer), Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger. For one Jew to attack another Jew in front of an SS officer was dangerous and potentially deadly. The buyer, whom Oskar never identified, persecuted Bankier for months after Wurzel’s attack. On one occasion, the drunken buyer came to Emalia to find and shoot Bankier. Fortunately, he could not find him.⁶⁸

After this incident, Oskar took Natan Wurzel aside and told him, in front of witnesses, not to incite Emalia’s customers against Bankier. This did little to stop Wurzel, who told several of the German trustees whom Oskar did business with that Bankier was “in cahoots” with another Jewish worker, Samuel Kempler, who worked for Frantiåek Turek. Turek had been Oskar’s right-hand man in the Abwehr office in Moravská Ostrava before the war and was now the trustee of a factory in Kraków. Turek was furious with Bankier and fired Kempler. When Turek visited Emalia, he insulted and humiliated Bankier. Oskar periodically stepped in to “slow Turek down.” But Wurzel’s criticism of Bankier continued. If there was anything wrong at the factory, whether it be not enough vodka or too few promotions, Wurzel would always say “[w]vinna Bankiera (guilty Bankier).”⁶⁹

Though Wurzel was tough on the other Jews who worked for Schindler, he got along well with Emalia’s German customers, Wehrmacht officers, and members of the SS. He even had a good relationship with SS-Hauptsturmführer Rolf Czurda, the head of the SD’s foreign defense division in Kraków; because of this, Oskar said, Wurzel developed a sense of false security that led to his dismissal. But it was Wurzel’s allies at Emalia who told Oskar that Wurzel had taken money from a German client in Tarnów named Baytscher. These funds were meant to pay for furniture and transportation. Instead, Wurzel took the money he received from Baytscher and spent it. Schindler informed the Labor Office of Wurzel’s dismissal but did not inform the Gestapo or the police of his crime. But this was not the end of Natan Wurzel. For several months after his dismissal, he would drop by Emalia and ask for handouts so he would not go hungry. Often the naive Bankier would intercede for him.⁷⁰

This was a mistake. Whatever positive relationship Wurzel had with Schindler and Czurda now changed. Czurda was the SD’s liaison with the Armaments Inspectorate and would visit Emalia three or more times a week to collect the “significant” gifts that Oskar would give him. Though Czurda had nothing to do with Jewish labor issues, Schindler saw him as a potential “business confidant” because of his ties to the Armaments Inspectorate. Czurda was always driven to Emalia in a private car and usually arrived drunk. During one visit after Wurzel’s dismissal, Czurda ran into Wurzel at Emalia. During their conversation, the drunk Czurda took offense at something Wurzel said to him. He then slapped him twice in the face in front of Oskar and his secretary, Elisabeth Kühne. Oskar and Ms. Kühne stepped between the two to prevent further harm to Wurzel. Wurzel later claimed that Schindler had ordered Czurda to hit him. Esther Schwartz, a Jewish clerk who knew Wurzel and worked for Oskar in one of his subsidiary business in Kraków until 1943, testified in Israel in 1963 that news of Wurzel’s beating caused quite an uproar in the Kraków ghetto. After she heard the story, she recalled that she had heard Oskar tell Marta, who ran the subsidiary business for him, “After I gave him [Wurzel] the ‘hairdo,’ he finally agreed to sign.” Esther concluded that Oskar was talking about Natan Wurzel.⁷¹

Julius Wiener testified after the war that he learned of Wurzel’s beating after he heard people talking about it near the entrance to the ghetto. After the beating, which took place in the summer of 1941, Wurzel was taken to an apartment on Limanowskiego Bolesława Street, one of the main thoroughfares running through the ghetto. When Julius entered the room, he saw Wurzel lying unconscious on the bed. Wiener, who also claimed to have been beaten on Schindler’s orders, was shocked by what he saw. Wurzel, he testified, “looked like one blue mass of flesh with blood trickling down.” Natan’s brother told Julius that Schindler had ordered Wurzel to come to the factory. Once inside, Schindler told him to sign a document stating that he had earlier sold the factory to a Christian. When Natan refused, Schindler told him to wait. After a few minutes, several SS men took Wurzel into a separate room, where they brutally beat him. Frantic with pain, Wurzel begged for mercy. The SS men then asked whether he was prepared to sign Schindler’s document. He agreed. Wurzel then stumbled into Schindler’s office and signed the required document without reading it. Before he left, he was told not to say anything about the “incident.” If he did, he was reminded, there was nearby Auschwitz. Natan could barely walk when he left the factory. His brother hired a carriage to take him back to the ghetto.⁷²

In his charges against Schindler after the war, Wurzel agreed that he was forced to sign false statements on the day of the beating about Rekord, Ltd.’s former owners and about the factory’s bankruptcy proceedings. Later, he claimed that the Gestapo, working with Dr. Zawisza, forced him to sign other documents about Rekord, Ltd. in Brzesko. What is interesting about this claim is that Oskar’s version of the story, told from memory ten years after the war, is more in line with the events recorded in the Polish trade court records than Wurzel’s account. According to Oskar, it was Dr. Zawisza and another attorney, J. Hrycan, who visited Wurzel in Brzesko on May 27, 1942. Wurzel said he was forced to sign the “false documents in terror,” a claim that Oskar disputed. He said that Hrycan was an elderly white-haired man and Dr. Zawisza was a passive invalid who had lost an arm in World War I. Both men worked for Emalia to earn a living and had always been extremely polite in their dealings with Wurzel.⁷³

Oskar said that Natan Wurzel was able to turn the slapping incident with Czurda into “a quite profitable collaboration” between himself, Czurda, and the SD. This new relationship also enhanced Wurzel’s “chance for escape.” Oskar learned from a business acquaintance, a Baltic German trustee from Riga, Herr Sommer, that Wurzel occasionally visited Czurda in his Kraków apartment. Czurda in turn met with Wurzel in Brzesko. Sommer periodically worked as a translator in Czurda’s office. Moreover, Czurda’s secretary, Frau Schürz, confirmed all this when Oskar asked her about these stories. She added that Czurda even got Wurzel a job working for a German Jew, Alexander Förster, a known SD agent. Oskar stated that Förster used Wurzel as a driver in an escape scheme for wealthy Jews. After they paid the appropriate bribes, these Jews would be driven to the border, where they would be picked up by the SS, robbed, and murdered. According to Oskar, at this point, “the famous buddies Förster and Wurzel cashed in on their fees and Lapuvka (bribe) in any case.”⁷⁴

Förster and Wurzel’s efforts seriously affected the Jewish Agency’s smuggling routes in and out of Poland from Hungary. Dr. Chaim Hilfstein, who worked for the JSS (Jüdische Soziale Selbsthilfe; Jewish Self-Help Association), the only Jewish aid society allowed to work in the General Government, prepared a report on the phony smuggling ring. Oskar took this report to Budapest on one of his first missions for the Jewish Agency and handed it over to Dr. Resz~e (Rudolf or Israel) Kasztner, the vice chairman of the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest (Va’ada; Va’adat ha-Ezra ve-ha-Hatsala be-Budapest), which, among other things, helped smuggle Jews into Hungary from Poland, Germany, and Slovakia. Va’ada considered the report serious enough to change its smuggling routes into Hungary.⁷⁵

Dr. Rudi Sedlacek, an Austrian dentist from Vienna who worked with the Jewish Agency, gave further information about Förster’s activities to an old friend, Major Franz von Korab. He in turned shared Sedlacek’s report with an SS officer, Kraus, who responded, “Hands off Förster.” According to Oskar, the SD left Förster alone as long as they needed him. When the German Jew was no longer useful to them, he was überstellt (handed over). Oskar claimed that he had been told that Förster had been murdered by some of his victims just after the war ended.⁷⁶

Förster is discussed in some depth in the memoirs of Malvina Graf, a survivor of the Kraków ghetto and Płaszów, and Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a Righteous Gentile who ran a pharmacy in the Kraków ghetto. The son of a piano maker from Leipzig, Förster spied for the Germans throughout the war. The forty-year-old-Förster was a dancer appearing in a Kraków café, the Feniks, when the war broke out. Though Jewish, he never wore the required white arm band with the blue Star of David, even if he went outside of the ghetto. Because of his privileged position, Förster was able to leave the ghetto whenever he wanted. Pankiewicz and Graf said Förster had a three-bedroom apartment near the entrance to the ghetto and ran a restaurant-dance bar in the same building. He kept a second apartment at the Hotel Royale in Kraków, which Malvina Graf’s relatives had once owned.⁷⁷

Pankiewicz said that Förster was on personal terms with several Gestapo agents. He would greet some of them with the personal Du (thou or you); they would then shake his hand after he had raised it in salute. One of Förster’s duties was to arrange private all-night parties at his nightclub for high-ranking Gestapo officers. As the drunken Gestapo officers left Förster’s parties, they would fire their revolvers in the air. Some Jews believed that Förster had a private office in Gestapo headquarters on Pomorska Street and “would sit there in a German uniform.” Other rumors had him writing the Gestapo’s Stimmungs-Berichte (opinion polls), publications that analyzed the mood of the ghetto’s population.⁷⁸

In May 1942, the Germans began to transport Jews from the Kraków ghetto to death camps. During the roundups, Förster would always stand beside the Gestapo and supervise the Aktionen. He would occasionally intervene to prevent certain Jews from being put on the transports. It was known that Förster took bribes and gifts to help Jews, though sometimes he helped them for humanitarian reasons. Graf stated in her memoirs that he helped many, many Jews get the appropriate work stamps on their identity cards (Kennkarten) and in so doing saved them from the transports.⁷⁹

Förster’s ties to the SS and the Gestapo did not protect him from mistreatment and jail. On one occasion, he was arrested and sent to the Jewish Security Police (OD; Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst) jail. The OD was a Jewish police force in the Kraków ghetto headed by Symcha Spira. Tadeusz Pankiewicz said that Leutnant Oswald Bousko, the vice commandant of the Schutzpolizei (municipal police, or gendarmes) that guarded the ghetto and often helped Jews, explained to him the reason for Förster’s arrest. The day before his arrest, Förster had sent Hermann Heinrich a bouquet of roses to celebrate Heinrich’s promotion. Heinrich opened Förster’s gift at a celebration party at Gestapo headquarters. As a joke, Heinrich called the OD and told them to arrest Förster. Some felt that Heinrich also wanted to let Förster know that he was still a member of an “inferior race,” regardless of his ties to the Gestapo. The morning after Förster’s arrest, Heinrich went to the OD jail and ordered Förster released. Both men left the jail laughing and joking.⁸⁰

After the Germans closed the ghetto in the spring of 1943, Förster stayed in Kraków. Rumor had it that he was sent on a three-week “secret mission” to Hungary and later charged with working for the British. Förster left Kraków again and was arrested and imprisoned in Montelupich prison. Pankiewicz said that Förster was probably liquidated by the Gestapo. Afterwards, the Gestapo spread rumors that the charges against Förster had no merit and that he had been released. Some stories had him parachuting into Great Britain on a secret mission. Two Schindler Jews, the musicians Hermann and Henry Rosner, wrote to Pankiewicz after the war from the United States and told him that they knew someone who had been jailed with Förster. According to this witness, the Gestapo had clubbed Förster to death.⁸¹ Though it is difficult to verify the stories about Förster’s activities after the Kraków ghetto closed, it is interesting that he went to Hungary on several “missions” at about the same time as Oskar Schindler. Was there a connection? We will never know.

Oskar Schindler’s charge that Wurzel was involved with Förster in an illegal escape scam is extremely serious. In his 1955 letter to several Schindlerjuden in Israel, Oskar told them of a story that he had heard from Janina (“Janka”) Pithard-Olszewska, a secretary for the enamelware wholesale company, Shlomo Wiener Ltd., that sold Emalia’s products. Janka said that one evening she paid a visit to a Polish friend who had an apartment near Gestapo headquarters. Wurzel and Förster were at the apartment and Janka heard them work out plans for the escape of seven young rabbis to Hungary. At some point in the planning, Janka told Oskar, SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Hamann and another SS officer joined in the discussions. Janka was shocked by the cold-bloodied cynicism of the discussions, particularly Wurzel and Förster’s concern about the amount of money they would make. She was also disturbed by Wurzel’s criticism of Oskar and his efforts to aid his Jewish workers.⁸²

Janka Olszewska was from the Vilnius (Wilno) region of Poland. A month after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland, Stalin transferred Vilnius, which many Lithuanians claimed as their historic capital, to Lithuania. Janka’s husband was drafted into the Polish army soon after the war began and disappeared. With her husband gone and their estate destroyed, Janka decided to go to Kraków and live with her father. She did not know that her father had died while a prisoner of the Germans. After several months in a German transit camp, Janka reached Kraków. Germans now lived in her father’s apartment, so she stayed with her in-laws. This was where she met Oskar Schindler. Schindler was interested in renting an apartment in one of the homes owned by Janka’s in-laws. She was struck by the fact that Oskar offered to pay for the apartment, whereas most Germans in Kraków simply “requisitioned” the apartments they wanted.⁸³

Janka met Oskar several times when he came by her in-laws’ apartment to pay the rent. On one visit, Schindler brought his girlfriend, Marta G. (Eva Kisch Scheuer), a Czech from Silesia (Šląsk) who now lives near New York. Marta G. was born in Zaolzie, Czechoslovakia, which was taken over by Poland in 1938. She lost her job as a teacher and began to smuggle goods across the Polish-Czech border to make a living. Though engaged, she also developed a relationship with Oskar Schindler. The Polish police became suspicious of her trips across the frontier, and particularly of her relationship with Oskar. To avoid arrest, she decided to escape to Czechoslovakia with her fiancé. Evidently, the Polish border police spotted them trying to cross the frontier and shot her fiancé to death. They arrested Marta and imprisoned her in Lvov. When Oskar arrived in Kraków, he began to look for Marta. During his search he went to Montelupich prison, where he would later be incarcerated. When she was released from prison, Marta went to Kraków and lived with Oskar; later, she moved into her own apartment on ul. Ujejskiego Kornela.⁸⁴

Schindler set Marta up in business. She ran a small shop at ul. 51 Krakówska, near Kazimierz, that sold Oskar’s enamelware. The former Jewish business has once been owned by Shlomo Wiener. When she learned that Janka was unemployed, Marta offered her a job as a bookkeeper. In the office with Marta and Janka were four Jews and an ethnic German (Volksdeutscher). Janka had no background in business and learned everything she needed to know from a bookkeeping textbook. Janka handled all Marta’s business negotiations with Bankier and Schindler. She negotiated her deals with Bankier and settled all financial matters with Oskar. She got to know the factory and its Jewish and Polish workers quite well. On one occasion, the Polish underground (Armia Krajowa) approached Janka about acquiring specially made kettles and bowls for its field kitchens. When she went to pay Oskar, he refused to take her money because, he said, it was “all for the Polish ‘bandits’ in the woods— the partisans.” On another occasion, Oskar asked Janka to help him conduct the roll call of his Jewish workers for Amon Göth, the dreaded commandant of the Płaszów forced labor camp. After Göth left, Schindler told Janka that, because of her, Göth had decided not to kill any of his Jewish workers that day.⁸⁵

This was not all that Oskar had to say about Wurzel in his 1955 letter to his Schindlerjuden friends in Israel. He was particularly offended by Wurzel’s accusation that Oskar ordered an official from the Foreign Exchange (Devisen), Werner, to take a 14-carat diamond from Wurzel. Oskar, of course, denied this charge and said that he doubted Wurzel ever had such an expensive diamond. The problem with this charge, Oskar said, was that Werner and Wurzel worked together, often in league with Frantiåek Turek. Oskar constantly warned his workers to be wary of Turek, who would often try to swindle anyone selling him their valuables. On one occasion, a young Jewish worker named Weil came to the factory to buy scrap metal. Weil used the money from the sale of the scrap dishes to care for his mother in the ghetto. When he got to Emalia, Weil called Wurzel from the guard’s office at the front entrance. Later, Abraham Bankier told Oskar that on this particular day Weil had 150 grams of Bruchgold (broken gold) to sell. Wurzel advised Weil to sell it to Turek. When Bankier learned of this, he tried to reach Weil by phone at Turek’s factory, but was too late; Weil had already lost his gold. When Weil arrived at Turek’s factory, he was made to wait until Werner showed up. He identified himself as an agent of the Foreign Exchange Office and took the gold from Weil. Oskar did not know whether Wurzel received a commission for the “transaction.”⁸⁶

Julius Weiner and Charges of Brutality Against Oskar Schindler

Oskar’s charges against Natan Wurzel were in direct response to Wurzel and Weiner’s claims of theft, brutality, and other crimes against him. One of their claims, which Oskar never denied but always kept under wraps, was his work for Abwehr. He told his friends in Israel in 1955 that all his acquaintances knew of his ties to Abwehr. In fact, Oskar explained, it “was precisely these friendly connections [with Abwehr] which in situations of no escape created help and often enabled my work of rescue.”⁸⁷

But the charges that Oskar never adequately dealt with were those made by Julius Weiner, Natan Wurzel’s hesitant partner in the campaign against Oskar Schindler. Details about Julius Wiener’s charges against Oskar Schindler did not surface in any detail until 1962, when Schindler was nominated to be included in the first group of the Righteous Among the Nations (Righteous Gentiles) honored at Yad Vashem in Israel. Because of the controversy, the Designation of the Righteous Commission, chaired by Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, investigated Wurzel and Wiener’s charges.

According to the testimony that Julius Wiener gave the Designation of the Righteous Commission on August 6, 1963, his father, Shlomo Wiener, owned the largest kitchenware, ironware, and cutlery business in Poland before the war. This claim was backed up by Esther Schwartz (Erna Lutinger), who had worked at the Wiener firm as a clerk since 1926. She said that Shlomo Wiener owned the business, located on ul. 51 Krakówska, and his son served as its sales representative. On October 15, 1939, Oskar Schindler came to the Weiner offices with his lover, Marta G. (Eva Kisch Scheuer). When Weiner entered the salesroom, Schindler locked the outer door, went to the cash register, and took out all the money. Mrs. Schwartz testified that Oskar then told everyone in the office that the “good times were over and that he would introduce new arrangements.” Schindler, waving a gun, continued to shout and threaten, particularly the elderly Shlomo Wiener, whom he called a crook and a thief. When Julius Wiener’s wife protested that it was not the way to treat an elderly man, Schindler shouted, “Pig, Talmudist! Now you will know me and Hitler!” Initially, Mrs. Schwartz thought that they were being “attacked by robbers.” Instead, Oskar Schindler was taking over their business.⁸⁸

Schindler then ordered all the Wiener employees to leave the premises. He locked the offices and took Julius and Shlomo to the Trustee Office in Kraków. Julius Wiener said that Oskar continued to insult his father. At the Trustee Office, Schindler made Shlomo kiss a portrait of Hitler. As he humiliated the old man, he sneeringly said, “This is your friend [Hitler], kiss him and give him thanks.” Both Wieners then had to sign an unfamiliar document, which, Julius later found out, transferred their property to Schindler. The following day, Oskar returned to announce that he was now the trustee of the Wiener business and that Marta would serve as his representative. Though Oskar paid both Wieners a monthly salary of Zł 700 ($218.75), Shlomo was not allowed on the premises. Before the war, Shlomo Wiener had paid his son Zł 1,000 ($312.50) a month. Esther Schwartz said that Oskar came to the warehouse every day with Marta and constantly discussed business matters with Julius Wiener, who continued to run the office. Initially, Oskar treated Julius with courtesy and, because Marta had few business skills, apparently depended heavily on his advice. Julius called Marta “a soulless puppet necessary only for official purposes.” This all changed when Oskar acquired Emalia.⁸⁹

On November 15, 1939, Schindler told Julius Wiener to fetch some enamelware from Natan Wurzel at Schindler’s new factory. Normally, Lola Halperin did this sort of thing. When Julius replied that he had a lot of paperwork to do and commented that Lola normally did this type of work, Schindler became angry. He told Julius that he should not forget who was the boss and who was the employee. Oskar added that he expected his orders “to be fulfilled immediately.” If not, Julius might be sent “to a place from which no one had yet returned.”⁹⁰

When he arrived at Schindler’s new factory, Julius went to the scales, where someone else weighed the products he was to carry back to the wholesale store. In his 1956 testimony, Julius Wiener said that “other workers” weighed the goods. In 1963, he testified that Natan Wurzel weighed the enamelware. As the items were weighed, Julius carefully wrote these figures down. In a 1956 statement supporting Wiener’s account, Natan Wurzel said that Schindler ordered a workman to put extra goods into the shipment to be picked up by Julius Wiener.⁹¹

After Wiener returned, Schindler called him into his office and berated him in front of other office workers. Oskar claimed that Wiener had taken too much merchandise and was trying to pilfer extra enamelware for himself. Julius, who was “pale as death,” tried to explain that the mistake had been caused by Natan Wurzel, who had not properly weighed the enamelware. He added that he had not weighed the items personally and had only written down the numbers dictated to him by Wurzel. Julius asked Oskar to explain why he thought he would do such a thing. What good would it do to steal things from one of Schindler’s businesses only to profit another of them? In his 1956 testimony, Julius stated that Schindler shouted in reply, “You are a swindler and a thief who does it from habit. Get out of here. If you dare to cross the threshold of this establishment again, it will cost you your head.” In his 1963 testimony, Julius said that Schindler replied that he thought Julius was a cheat, a thief, and a Scheißjude (shitty Jew). When Wiener tried to respond, Schindler physically threw him out of the office door and told him never to return.⁹²

Julius spent a sleepless night worrying about the incident with Oskar. The following day was Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath, and Julius decided to talk with Schindler about the “infinite nonsense of his accusation.” At this point, Julius Wiener’s two statements on the affair differ. In his 1963 testimony, he says that he went first to Schindler’s new factory to talk to Natan Wurzel about the mis-weighed enamelware. In his 1956 statement, he says he spoke only to Schindler’s secretary, who told him to wait for Oskar. After a lengthy wait, Schindler came out of his office but refused to talk to Julius. Wiener was determined to talk with Oskar and continued to sit outside his office. Natan Wurzel said that Wiener spent part of his time with him walking around the factory galleries. He claimed that when Oskar saw Wiener with him, he told Wurzel: “I will kill Wiener.” After this threat, Schindler, at least according to Wurzel, called the SS. Some time later, six SS men (in 1963 Julius Wiener said they were from the Gestapo), showed up. Oskar told their leader to give Wiener “the haircut.” The policemen took Julius to a side room and locked the door. They punched him so badly that he lost consciousness. Outside, Natan Wurzel could hear the cries and groans of Julius Wiener. The policemen poured buckets of water on him to wake him up and called him “a cursed Jew.” One of his tormentors gave him a warning: “If you dare to come again to worry the manager of the factory or if you dare to approach the Treuhandstelle, you will go to a place from where there is no return.” Julius replied that he would never go to either place. When Wiener staggered from the side room, Natan Wurzel testified, he was “bruised, soiled with blood, full of wounds from burns.” He was afraid to help Julius at that moment “because of my dread of the terrible force of the Nazi beast.” The bloody, bruised, and humiliated Julius Wiener was too ashamed to show himself in public and was afraid to go home until after dark.⁹³

Schindler then returned to Marta’s store on Krakówska Street and said in a loud voice: “Now he will not dare to come to the business any more.” Esther Schwartz overheard Schindler’s comments to Marta. That evening, she went to see Julius Wiener at his home in the courtyard just across from his old company. Esther found Julius in bed, his blood all over the sheets. His wife was applying cold compresses to his face, which was black and blue from the beating. Julius Wiener was bedridden for three days. Afterwards, he was afraid to leave his home because he lived so close to Schindler and Marta’s business. Oskar continued to pay both Wieners a salary for three months and then cut them off financially. Julius Wiener’s wife went to Schindler several times to ask for help, but he always refused her request.⁹⁴

Several days after the beating, Julius Wiener ran into Natan Wurzel and Uszer Glajtman, who told him that on the day of the weighing incident Schindler told the warehouse worker who was to weigh the enamelware for Julius secretly to add some extra goods to the shipment. Natan Wurzel confirmed this account in 1956. Wiener thought that Oskar had created the entire incident as a pretext to dismiss him and his father from the firm. He also felt that the only reason Schindler had been initially kind to him was to “gain my trust and persuade me to introduce him to our company.” When Oskar had achieved his goal, Julius testified, “he kicked me out into the street like a useless piece of furniture, leaving my father and I without any means to live.”⁹⁵

Esther Schwartz continued to work for Schindler until 1943 at the former Wiener firm. After Oskar took over the Wieners’ business, he raised everyone’s salary to insure their continued loyalty. Many of the goods sold by Schindler’s subsidiary were under the auspices of a Bezugsschein (raw materials license), though some of the enamelware was sold on the black market. Schindler always conducted his illegal business in cash. Though Marta continued to run the former Wiener business, it was apparent to Esther Schwartz and the other workers that Oskar Schindler was their real boss.⁹⁶

Julius Wiener had no more contact with Oskar Schindler until the fall of 1944, when he discovered that Schindler was transferring his factory from Kraków to Brünnlitz in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Böhren und Mähren). Julius learned that he was on the famous “Schindler’s List,” though he was not certain why because he had nothing to bribe the principal author of the list, Marcel Goldberg. He did not want to be on the list because he was afraid of Oskar Schindler. When he arrived in Brünnlitz, Julius tried to avoid Schindler. But one evening, while working on the night shift, he met Oskar, who asked him about his father, Shlomo. Julius testified that “he did not want to say that his father had been murdered,” so he said he had died. Oskar replied, “Yes, yes, your poor father.” Oskar then wanted to know where Julius worked in the factory. Julius replied that he worked “in Bonderei [the worst work in the factory].” Schindler also asked whether Julius had enough food; Julius replied that he had enough to eat. This was the last contact Julius Wiener had with Oskar Schindler. Yet he remained bitter about how Schindler had treated him and his father. Unlike most Schindlerjuden who put Oskar Schindler on a pedestal after the war, the well-educated Wiener, who migrated to Israel in 1950, thought that Schindler had helped Jews only “to create an alibi for himself.”⁹⁷

Who was telling the truth? The evidence is inconclusive. After looking into the matter, the Designation of the Righteous Commission in Israel told Schindler in 1963 that it could not reach a conclusion about the matter without “an initial, detailed investigation of all the facts,” which it did not “feel legitimized to undertake.” The testimony it did hear about the charges was insufficient to draw any conclusions. Though Natan Wurzel, Julius Wiener, and Esther Schwartz’s testimony supported the allegations, that of another witness, Simah Hartmann (Gelcer), added little to their accounts. She testified in the summer of 1963 that, although it was Schindler who drove Shlomo Wiener out of business, she knew nothing about Oskar’s mistreatment of him. Moreover, she said that Oskar was quite kind to her during the two years she had worked for him.⁹⁸

Oskar Schindler had denied the charges for years. Because he was never asked by the Designation of the Righteous Commission to testify, all we have is his own response to the charges in 1955 and 1956 and a detailed letter of support from a select group of Schindlerjuden in Israel to the Designation of the Righteous Commission on December 10, 1961. In his 1955 letter, Schindler listed twenty witnesses in Israel, Poland, the United States, West Germany, and Austria who could support his claims and provide further evidence. On the list were some of the most important people in the Schindler story: Itzhak Stern, Abraham Bankier, Marta Eva Scheuer, Dr. Roland Goriczko, and Leopold “Podek” Pfefferberg-Page. Unfortunately, only one person on Schindler’s 1955 list of witnesses, Itzhak Stern, signed the December 10, 1961, letter, and this is why it did so little to address Wiener and Wurzel’s specific charges. It leveled modest criticism at Wurzel and Wiener but then fell back on the larger good that Oskar Schindler did during the Holocaust when he saved almost 1,100 Jews from death. The authors asked how could a man who was “trusted by the Jews” for five and a half years, a man who saved Jews, who “acted on their behalf” and who “interfered in their favor in every way” be accused of hurting Jews? Moreover, they argued, though the German nationalization of Jewish property in the General Government was no more than theft, Schindler was only operating under German law when he took over the property claimed by Wurzel and Wiener. The letter goes on to say that even if Natan Wurzel was correct and he did own the machines that he later signed over to Schindler, there was a greater good, and that was Oskar Schindler’s continued ownership of the former Rekord, Ltd. If this had not happened, Oskar Schindler could not have saved his Jews, either in Kraków or Brünnlitz.⁹⁹

Yet why did they not say more? Because they did not know anything else. Most of the Jews saved by Oskar Schindler in 1944 and 1945 did not work for him during the early part of the war. His use of Jewish labor began slowly and by the end of 1941 he only had 190 Jews working for him. And even those who worked for him seldom saw him or knew him very well. Oskar was often away on business for long periods. He would appear only briefly on the factory floor.¹⁰⁰

Perhaps Simon Jeret, one of Schindler’s closest friends in Israel, though not a signatory of the 1961 letter, best captured all this when he told Oskar in a letter of December 17, 1956, in response to the Wurzel and Wiener charges, that

In other words, Jeret, like most of the Jews saved by Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust, simply did not know anything about the charges leveled against Schindler by Natan Wurzel and Julius Wiener.

Could they be true? Of course. The Oskar Schindler of 1939 was a very different person from the Oskar Schindler of 1941 or 1942. He had suffered greatly for the Reich in 1938 and 1939 and was probably caught up in the excitement of Germany’s incredible victory over Poland in the fall of 1939. Ever the opportunist, Schindler came to Kraków as a carpetbagger to make his fortune and nothing was going to get in his way. He was steeled by months in a Czech prison and a modestly dangerous life as a German spy. But could Oskar Schindler have ordered or taken part in the mistreatment of a Jew? Perhaps the best person to answer this is one of the Schindlerjuden who worked longest for him in Kraków and Brünnlitz, Sol Urbach.

Each one of those who have done significant work on the Schindler story has developed a special relationship with one or two Schindler Jews who helped bring the past to life. For me, it was Sol Urbach. Sol, who now lives in Delray Beach, Florida, called me in 1999 after he learned that I would be speaking at Ramapo College. Over the next few years, I spent a great deal of time with Sol and his wonderful wife, Ada, also a Holocaust survivor, at their homes in New Jersey and Florida. Sol was born in 1927 in the Polish village of Kalwaria-Zebrzydowska, about thirty-five miles southwest of Kraków. A year after he was born, his father, David, moved the family to Romania. In 1933, as political and economic unrest swept Romania, authorities kicked the Urbachs out of Romania.¹⁰²

Once in Poland, authorities jailed Sol and his family for several days. Jews in the border village where they were being held heard of their plight and helped free them. After their brief incarceration, the Urbachs were sent to Lvov and then settled in the village of Borek Fałęcki, about twenty-eight miles north of Kraków. Sol attended school in Kraków though his family continued to live in Borek Fałęcki even after the Germans conquered Poland. His parents decided to go into hiding in Borek after the Germans ordered them to move to the Kraków ghetto in May 1941. They thought the war would soon be over and that they would be safer in Borek. In 1942, some of their Polish Christian friends who knew they were in hiding warned the Urbachs that they would not be able to keep their secret for long. Soon after this warning, the Urbachs smuggled themselves into the Kraków ghetto, but Sol remained in Borek Fałęcki.¹⁰³

At the time, Sol was working with a Christian furniture maker, Mr. Kaminski, who told him that he would hide him if Sol continued to work for him. He refused, though, to hide Sol in his home in Borek. Instead, he said that Sol could hide in his workshop. Sol said he was terrified of being discovered, particularly at night when it was dark and he was alone. About a week after his family had gone to Kraków, he heard a noise outside the workshop. He said it was probably a cat, but it frightened him so much that he decided he could no longer live this way; he walked from Borek to Kraków and joined his family in the ghetto.¹⁰⁴

After he sneaked into the ghetto, Sol found his father, mother, and five siblings living in one room in the basement of a large building. The family had entered the ghetto too late to find anything better. It was now the early fall of 1942. Soon after his arrival, Sol was walking through the ghetto’s central square, Plac Zgody (Peace Plaza; today, Plac Bohaterów Getta; Plaza of Ghetto’s Heroes). On a nearby corner was Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s pharmacy, Pod Orłem (“under the Eagle”). Several blocks away was one of Oskar Schindler’s factories, Emalia. An action was about to take place that would save Sol Urbach’s life.¹⁰⁵

As Sol was walking through the plaza, two German trucks pulled up beside him. Several SS men jumped out and began a random roundup of ninety to a hundred Jewish males. Such roundups had been going on in the ghetto since it was founded, and they often meant death for those caught in the German dragnet. After the SS loaded the Jews on the two trucks, they drove to the backyard of a nearby factory. When the Jews got out of the trucks, the SS ordered them into formation. Nearby, Sol noticed a civilian in short Tyrolean pants bent over a woodworking machine. When the Jews had lined up, the civilian came over and said, “You’ve brought me kids.” The SS leader tartly responded, “You keep what we deliver.” The civilian was Oskar Schindler and Sol Urbach was now a slave laborer at Emalia.¹⁰⁶

According to Sol, with the exception of a handful of Jews already working for Oskar, such as Bankier, he was in the first group of male Jews to work for Schindler. And though they were forced to work for this unknown German, they soon came to value their jobs. Sol Urbach became part of that rare fraternity of Schindlerjuden who worked for Oskar in Kraków and Brünnlitz. He worked as a carpenter in both camps and often worked in Schindler’s offices.¹⁰⁷ He saw Schindler as much as any of the Schindlerjuden who worked for the Sudeten German businessman but has always been careful not to overstate his relationship to Schindler either during or after the war. Moreover, he has always approached the Schindler story with a certain scholarly detachment that I came to value greatly as I sought better to understand Schindler and his motivations.

During one of my visits with Sol, I asked him his opinion about the charges of Wurzel and Wiener. I wanted to know whether he thought the charges could be true. His response was, “Of course.”

He then went on to explain that his first impression of Oskar Schindler was not very positive. To Sol, Schindler was a typically harsh, uncaring Nazi. There was nothing in Schindler’s words or bearing on the day Sol was brought to Emalia to indicate otherwise. But over time, Sol added, Schindler began to change.¹⁰⁸ The Oskar Schindler of 1942 was not the same man in 1944 or l945.

Yet Sol Urbach’s comments still do not tell us definitively whether Oskar Schindler could have mistreated Natan Wurzel, Shlomo Wiener, and Julius Wiener. Two other clues might help. The first was Natan Wurzel’s decision to withdraw his charges in 1963. He told Julius Wiener that he had made a “business agreement” with Schindler and suggested that Wiener “forget the matter.”¹⁰⁹ Did Schindler pay Wurzel off because he felt guilty about the way that he had treated him or did he simply want to silence him because he was finally receiving the recognition he felt he had long deserved for helping Jews during the war? Knowing Schindler’s financial problems at that time, it was probably Schindler’s Jewish friends in Israel who paid Wurzel off.

Perhaps the real clues lie in statements made by Schindler himself. In a letter to Dr. Ball-Kaduri in 1956, Oskar wrote: “I am far from being a saint. I am an immoderate human being and have many more flaws than the great majority of those who walk through life so very mannered and polished.” This was possibly a reference to Wurzel, who, Oskar once claimed in a letter to Simon Jeret, had “Oxford manners.” In his 1956 letter to Ball-Kaduri, Oskar went on to talk about the dozen Jewish women he had “sacrificed… to the orgies of the SS Uebermenschen [superior human beings].”¹¹⁰ In other words, Oskar Schindler was willing to admit that he had made decisions during the war that had harmed Jews.

Perhaps the most revealing of his comments came during an impromptu speech he made at a banquet given in his honor on May 2, 1962, in Tel Aviv by the Schindlerjuden then living in Israel. Oskar had come to Israel to receive his Righteous Among the Nations award from Yad Vashem. Unwittingly, he walked back into the middle of the Wurzel-Wiener controversy. But the hundreds of adoring Schindlerjuden who met him at the airport and attended the banquet tried to do everything they could to ease his pain. Many of them gave testimonials about Oskar, and towards the end of the evening, Oskar rose to thank them and say a few words. He alluded to the Wurzel-Wiener controversy and said simply, “The truth has already been told by yourselves,” meaning that the good things that Oskar did for the Schindlerjuden during the war were the proper response to Wurzel and Wiener. Yet at the end of his brief comments, Oskar mentioned the “hard problems” he constantly faced when dealing with the Jews and the Germans during his Holocaust years in Kraków. There were occasions, he admitted, when it was “not at all simple to bring about a situation in which no beatings should occur.” But he also added that though he had not “kissed” them, he had “tried to help as best [he] could, in those cases where [they] could not help [them]selves.”¹¹¹

Oskar would never have admitted at this time to any of the charges made against him by Natan Wurzel or Julius Wiener, particularly in light of the support that he had received from his Israeli Schindlerjuden on the controversy. But he was willing to admit that he had committed abuses of Jews, whether they be physical or otherwise. Oskar Schindler lived in a schizophrenic world that required him to balance his need to succeed in Nazi Germany’s “racial laboratory” with his concern for his Jewish workers. During his early years in Kraków Schindler was more interested in making money than anything else; to achieve his goal, he made the necessary moral and economic compromises. But as the war and the Holocaust changed, so did Oskar Schindler.