Oskar Schindler

THE CLOSING OF THE KRAKÓW GHETTO IN THE SPRING OF 1943 created problems as well as potential opportunities for Oskar Schindler. If he wanted to maintain his enamelware operations in Kraków, he would have to consider doing what Julius Madritsch would do—move it to the new Płaszów forced labor camp run by Amon Göth. But there was another option, and that was maintaining his operations in Podgórze as a sub-camp of Płaszów. But to do this, he would have to win the support of Amon Göth, whose goodwill, support, and important ties to SS leaders in the General Government were essential for such an operation.

According to Mietek Pemper, Schindler established contact with Göth soon after the Viennese SS officer took command of Płaszów. Both men evidently hit it off quickly, in part because they were the same age and “were big, athletic, strong, with the feeling that the world belonged to them.”¹ Pemper said that this created “a certain sense of connection” between Schindler and Göth despite the considerable differences between them. Schindler, Pemper admitted, was a “contact-artist” who quickly “took advantage” of his new relationship with Amon Göth.² Pemper said that Schindler “came from the region that produced the upright soldier Schweijk. And these Schweijk-like features, he played these out wherever it was necessary.”³

His allusion to Jaroslav Hašek’s brilliant Czech satire, The Good Soldier Švejk (Osydy Dobrého Vojáka Švejka za Svetové; 1921–1922), is interesting and is quite revealing. The central figure in Hašek’s novel is Josef Švejk (Schwejk or Schweik), at first glance a bumbling fool, who served in the Austrian army in World War I. What Švejk does best is confound and trick those around him. Švejk became, for better or worse, a symbol of the Czech national character after World War I. Švejk, Ivan Olbrecht said, was a “smart idiot, perhaps an idiot savant, who through his stupid but cunning good nature [had to] win everywhere because it [was] impossible for him not to win.” He added: “This is Švejk.”⁴ But Czechs saw him differently. In pubs throughout Prague during the 1920s and 1930s there were pictures of Švejk which bore the simple statement: “Take it easy!” often followed by “And keep your feet warm!”⁵ For many Czechs, Josef Švejk was an extremely adaptable person who made the best of bad circumstances. And this is certainly what Oskar Schindler did. So perhaps Mietek Pemper’s characterization of him as a Švejk-like figure is more on the mark than one realizes.⁶ Peter Steiner concludes in his analysis of The Good Soldier Švejk that

The horrible world of Oskar Schindler was nothing like that of the mythical figure, Josef Švejk. And Schindler could never be considered feebleminded. Yet both men, both real and fictional, dealt with insurmountable odds to defy the established authoritarian order of the day. Švejk managed to preserve his own dignity, but Oskar Schindler managed to save the dignity and lives of hundreds.

It could certainly be argued that Oskar’s adaptability to the worst of circumstances (and individuals) was what made him so successful, particularly when it came to his relationship with Amon Göth; in fact, one wonders whether there was more to Schindler’s relationship with Göth than mere business. There is no evidence, for example, to indicate that Julius Madritsch, one of the principal factory owners in Płaszów and a person who aided and cared as deeply for his Jewish workers as Schindler, ever became close friends with Göth. Madritsch’s relationship with Göth was strictly business. However, through no fault of his own, Madritsch was never able to arrange the large-scale transfer of his factory and Jewish workers to safety in the last year of the war. So perhaps Oskar’s close ties with Göth helped pave the way for his remarkable deed.

Helen Sternlicht Jonas Rosenzweig (“Susanna”), told me that Madritsch was never close to Göth and that she never saw him in the villa with women. On the other hand, Schindler seemed to have developed a relationship with Płaszów’s commandant based on something more than just business. We know he was comfortable around Göth and frequented the parties the commandant hosted regularly at his villa. Certainly Schindler’s behavior around Göth confused “Susanna,” though she thought he was essentially a good man. She often saw Oskar at the villa and came to distrust him because of his friendly attitude toward Göth, whom Oskar called “Mony.” She was also disgusted when she saw Oskar with women other than his wife. One evening, for example, a drunken Schindler showed up at Göth’s villa accompanied by several women. Occasionally, he would bring Emilie. Helen knew she was Oskar’s wife and said she always looked “very distinguished and refined.”⁸

Oskar described the parties he attended at Göth’s villa as increasingly bacchanalian. Schindler often supplied the liquor and the women for such occasions, which “were apparently very wild.” There were usually from ten to twenty SS and Gestapo officers at Göth’s parties, some of them of high rank. One party took place in the midst of a heavy snow storm. As snow drifts built up outside Göth’s villa, someone suggested that they throw all the naked women at the party outside in the snow.⁹

“Susanna” remembered an embarrassing incident that involved Oskar and one of his girlfriends. One day “Susanna” was in the kitchen when the upstairs bell rang. There were two rooms on the upper floor of Göth’s villa. One had exercise equipment in it and the other contained two beds. When “Susanna” entered the bedroom, Schindler was lying there naked. As she walked over to the bed, he grabbed her with his right hand and exclaimed, “Susanna, Susanna!” Oskar then tried to pull her towards him. “Susanna” was able to resist him by holding on to a nearby armoire. A naked girl was lying beside Schindler.¹⁰

Yet in fairness to Schindler, it is important to add that “Susanna” also talked a lot about Schindler’s kindness and his promise to save her. And at a distance it would seem as though Oskar’s special relationship with Göth was the price he had to pay to maintain some autonomy from the SS and protect his ever-expanding Jewish labor force. But was it really necessary for Schindler to go to such an extent to befriend Göth? Was Amon Göth a key figure in Oskar’s ability first to hire and protect his growing Jewish labor force in Emalia and later to transfer his factory, with his Jewish workers, to Brünnlitz? This must all be looked at in the broader context of the complexities of operating factories that used Jewish slave labor in the General Government after 1942.

By the time Göth had closed the Kraków ghetto and fully opened the Płaszów forced labor camp of the SS and Police Leader in the Kraków District (Zwangsarbeitslager Plaszow des SS- und Polizeiführers im Distrikt Krakau) in the spring of 1943, the SS was now in full control of the various factories in these camps, which were overseen by the SS’s German Equipment Works (DAW; Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke GmbH) as part of Oswald Pohl’s Office Group W.¹¹ The SS had always used forced labor in its growing network of camps throughout the Third Reich. However, the nature of this labor changed with the fortunes of war. This was particularly true after Albert Speer became Nazi Germany’s economic tsar in early 1942 as Reich Minister for Armaments and Munitions (Reichsminister für Bewaffnung und Munitionen). Walther Schieber, one of Speer’s closest advisers and an honorary SS-Brigadeführer, approached Himmler soon after Speer’s appointment about expanding armaments production in the concentration camps. In response, Himmler, driven by a desire to create more economic autonomy for the SS as well as a desire to help the war effort, decided to revamp the organizational structure of concentration camp administration by appointing Oswald Pohl the new head of WVHA.¹²

On March 16, 1942, after meeting with Himmler, Speer’s armament specialists met with Richard Glücks to work out the new arrangement between the Armaments Ministry and the SS. Himmler had earlier insisted that all armaments factories that used concentration camp inmates had to be located within the confines of the camps. Speer’s armaments specialists would be responsible for the design of these factories and their administration. The accord concluded “relocated armaments industries in the concentration camps will continue under the guidance of their individual firms, not only for production but under all economic considerations as well.”¹³

This was the core arrangement between the SS and the Armaments Ministry that governed the operation of armaments factories in the concentration camps for the rest of the war. According to Michael Thad Allen, “the ministry relied upon the SS to manage the prisoners’ bodies—getting rid of those who had been worked to death and supplying fresh replacements. Meanwhile, the Office Group D left technical management to industry.”¹⁴ This latter office was part of the SS’s Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA; Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt) in Berlin. Though technically under the incompetent SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Richard Glücks, Amtsgruppe D was really run by the head of Amtsgruppe D2, SS-Obersturmbannführer (later SS-Standartenführer) Gerhard Maurer, who oversaw all aspects of prison labor.¹⁵

After Maurer assumed his post in 1942, he began to implement policies designed to give a better idea about the number of prisoners in each of Amtsgruppe D’s camps. From Maurer’s perspective, the only way he could properly manage a camp’s prison population and get a better sense of its potential labor output was to have more detailed statistics on the health, good and bad, of its inmates. He also gave SS camp physicians a great deal of power periodically to “cull” inmate populations, even at factory sites, to weed out prisoners too sick, injured, or aged to work. The results of these inhumane reforms did see a decrease in slave laborer mortality rates of 10 percent to 2 percent to 3 percent from the end of 1942 until early 1944, though these figures should be put in the context of the rising slave labor population that continued to grow in the camps during the same period.¹⁶

But the use of slave labor proved problematic and, when combined with other issues, particularly the lack of SS managerial skills in the camps in question, it created serious production problems in the scattered SS armaments factories. Himmler blamed the Armaments Ministry for these failures and, by the spring of 1943, began to suggest more direct SS managerial control over these factories. Yet, months earlier, Speer had already begun to suggest an expanded role for the SS in armaments productions. In a meeting with Hitler, Speer suggested that the SS be given 3 percent to 5 percent of all arms production. He also told Oswald Pohl that the SS should consider dropping its insistence that all SS armaments work be done within the confines of established concentration camps. Himmler, Speer suggested, should consider expanding beyond these camps into “the open fields.”¹⁷ Pohl added: “We may put up an electric fence around it; then we can provide the necessary number of prisoners; and then the factory can be run as an SS armaments works.”¹⁸

But Amtsgruppe D was not the only WVHA office that Schindler, Madritsch, and Göth would have to deal with in planning the construction of any armament-related factory workshops at Płaszów. They would also have to work with Amtsgruppe C, which oversaw all SS construction projects. Office Group C was overseen by SS-Oberführer Dr. Hans Kammler, who brought the same ruthless professional skills to his job that Maurer had to Office Group D. Kammler put together a staff of civilian trained engineers who insisted on exacting standards when it came to the construction of SS facilities, whether they be in concentration camps or elsewhere. Over time, Kammler’s office gained a solid reputation for excellence not only in the SS but throughout the Third Reich’s armaments construction industry. In 1944, Hermann Göring appointed Kammler, with Hitler’s approval, as head of Sonderstab Kammler (Special Staff Kammler), which oversaw special construction projects for the SS. Kammler reported directly to Himmler, thus bypassing Pohl.¹⁹ Sadly, the admired standards of Kammler’s office cost Diana Reiter, a Jewish engineer, her life when she was shot by Albert Hujar in Płaszów for questioning construction standards on a particular building. She was killed by an SS man for trying to enforce SS building regulations.²⁰

The other element that Schindler, Madritsch, and other factory owners had to contend with was the Wehrmacht High Command’s (OKW; Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) Armaments Inspector in the General Government (Inspektor der Rüstungsinspektion im Generalgouvernement), General Maximillian Schindler, who was responsible for all aspects of armaments production. General Schindler’s biggest problems centered around labor shortages, which intensified with the transfer of large numbers of Poles to forced labor situations in the Third Reich and the mass murder of Jews. The labor shortage, in turn, affected production goals in factories throughout the region. General Schindler had been caught in the middle of the controversy that erupted between the Wehrmacht and Himmler over this issue in 1942. As a result, the SS had gained control over the supply of slave labor used in most armament works in the General Government.²¹

Gerhard Maurer of Amtsgruppe D2 now worked to stabilize the labor shortage crisis by reducing concentration camp mortality rates even though the shortages remained one of General Schindler’s principal concerns. General Schindler was also responsible for military production quotas and was the one who initially suggested that factories in the Reich producing uniforms and shoes be transferred to the General Government where they could be made by Jewish slave labor. And any owner, or, for that matter, forced or concentration camp commandant in the General Government who wanted to have his workshops or factory declared war essential, had to have the approval of General Schindler. Amon Göth, for example, could not have Płaszów declared a permanent concentration camp in early 1944 until he had received General Schindler’s stamp of approval.²²

What transpired was a complex application process for the opening, expansion, or building of armaments-related facilities that intended to use Jewish slave labor. It began with simultaneous applications to the Armaments Ministry, which would turn the matter over to General Schindler’s office in Kraków. His office would have to approve of the armaments-related goods produced in the proposed factory. The Armaments Inspectorate was not only concerned about labor resources but also the supply of raw materials for production use and the military value and production quotas of the goods proposed for production. If the workshop or factory was tied to a forced labor or concentration camp, the owner, after receiving the approval of the SS, would inform Maurer’s Office Group D2 of his labor needs. It would inspect all housing facilities to see whether they met SS standards and make certain that proper security measures were in place in the factory to prevent prisoners from escaping. Office Group D2 would then issue a permit that allowed the use of slave laborers. Representatives of the newly approved firm could then choose the workers they wanted in their factory or workshop. Depending on the situation, this meant the chosen workers would live in the concentration camp and be marched to and from the camp factory site or would be housed in an SS approved factory sub-camp. By the spring of 1944, Speer’s Armaments Ministry took over the entire application process and required all businesses to deal directly with it before final approval.²³

What further complicated all of this, particularly for Oskar Schindler and Amon Göth, was the fact that they never truly produced military essential items in the factories in Płaszów or Emalia. How did they get away with producing uniforms, enamelware, and other items of questionable military value to a German war machine struggling with a severe arms shortage? A large part of the explanation centers around the power of corruption and favoritism in the General Government, particularly in SS circles.

Yet it should be remembered that the SS was not just interested in the manufacture of weapons, which never became a big part of its burgeoning industrial empire. The SS got into the manufacturing business primarily to give it an economic base from which to supply its outposts in the newly occupied territories in the east, although Speer and the Wehrmacht suspected that Himmler wanted either to take over the war economy or to use its expanded role in war production to better arm the elite Waffen SS units. Occupied Poland and Russia were the new colonial areas of the Thousand Year Reich, the proposed breeding ground for a superior Aryan race that was slowly to eliminate the inferior races from the face of Europe. The SS needed every kind of manufactured good to maintain itself as Germany’s elite racial and spiritual organization. Consequently, though the SS did undertake modest though not overly successful arms production activities at some of its concentration camps, the WVHA often subcontracted its armaments production to maintain the façade that it was contributing to the total war effort while continuing to operate factories of lesser military value through its network of camps and sub-camps and thus insure its economic survival when peace came. And even after the adoption of the new Siegentscheidend (Decisive for Victory) theme after Stalingrad, factories under DAW continued to produce goods of questionable value to the desperate war effort. Consequently, when Oskar Schindler sought to add a small wing to his Emalia operations for arms production, it was something of a cover for the pots and pans that Emalia continued to produce throughout most of the war.²⁴

The illogic of such policies worked to Oskar Schindler’s advantage and enabled him to produce far more valuable black market trade goods than essential military items at Emalia. We know that Schindler considered his armaments work at Emalia an important, though not essential, part of his operations, yet we know little else about it. He stated in his 1945 financial report that he produced about RM 15,000,000 ($6 million) worth of enamelware in Emalia and only about RM 500,000 ($2 million) worth of armaments products.²⁵ Schindler’s interest in developing a small armaments operation at Emalia seemed to develop some time in 1943. Mietek Pemper said that whenever Schindler came to Płaszów during this period to order tools for his factory, he would stop by the camp office to talk to him and Stern. Pemper said that he urged Oskar to create a “sole armaments production, because you can’t win a war with kitchenware products.” On one occasion Oskar told Pemper that “he was already thinking about shifting production to armaments.” Pemper added that “Oskar still had close contacts with his former Abwehr colleagues and very good connections to the Armaments Inspectorate, whose highest boss was General Schindler.” Most people assumed that General Schindler was a relative of Oskar’s, who “never denied clearly” that he and the general were related.²⁶

The large, hangar-style factory building constructed by Siemens-Bauunion G.m.b.H. was not completed until the summer of 1944, and this could be one of the reasons Oskar produced little in the way of armament-related items at Emalia. But what was important here was not Oskar’s armaments production output but his intention to produce armaments once the large Siemens building was completed. The construction of the armaments factory building, and his use of Jewish labor to help build it, was the key to his success in increasing the size of his slave labor force during this period. Intention, in other words, was more important than reality.

Yet once Oskar received permission from the Armaments Inspectorate and the SS to operate his factory, he could use SS regulations about maintaining low mortality rates among Jewish workers to help create better working conditions for them. Oskar kept them healthy, which in turn kept them out of the hands of the death squads at Płaszów and the transports to death camps. And the key to good health, beyond avoiding beatings and overwork, was food. To an extent, this can be seen as simply good business. The SS was always ready to take away workers deemed unfit for labor. But if a factory owner mistreated his workers to the extent that he had a high mortality rate, which the SS theoretically discouraged, he would have to replace them with unskilled workers who would have to be trained in various production skills. The operation of factories under DAW’s watchful eyes, at least from the perspective of the civilian owners, was all about making a profit; it followed that treating one’s workers, whether they be Jewish or Polish, was just good business.

Emerging from all this in the fall of 1942 were new opportunities and problems concerning Jewish forced and concentration camp labor. The agreement worked out between the Armaments Inspectorate and the SS about Jewish labor in the General Government left grey areas that Himmler and Pohl sought to take advantage of. Uniform production now became an area of exclusive SS control in the General Government, which explains why Julius Madritsch was forced to move his workers and sewing machines to Płaszów. Schindler, on the other hand, was helped by Himmler’s decision to open factories beyond the confines of the SS camps in “the open fields,” as Albert Speer put it. But Schindler knew he would need other things to insure the transformation of Emalia into an SS-approved sub-camp away from Płaszów, and that would be the support of Amon Göth, who had important SS connections, and Schindler’s ongoing friendship with important figures in the Armaments Inspectorate in the General Government.

The same thing could be said of Julius Madritsch, though his situation was more complex than Schindler’s because he needed SS approval not only to move his Kraków operations and workers to the new forced labor camp but also to do the same eventually for his factory in Tarnów. Evidently, SS-Hauptsturmführer Julius Scherner, the HSSPF in the Kraków district, opposed the movement of Madritsch’s factory in the former ghetto to Płaszów. It is possible that Scherner was aware of Madritsch’s considerable efforts to hide, save, and help Jews escape from his factories in Kraków and Tarnów. This could be the explanation for an incident that took place just before the SS began to close the Tarnów ghetto on September 2, 1943. The day before, Madritsch and his Kraków manager, Raimund Titsch, were invited to an 8:00 P.M. dinner at Göth’s villa. Both men accepted Göth’s invitation with mixed feelings. When they arrived, Göth told them “in a friendly way that tonight the evacuation of all Jews of the Kraków district [which included Tranów and Bochnia] would take place, and that [they] had to be his guests” until the next morning. Göth then left Madritsch and Titsch in the company of two SS officers who “just tormented” them because they could not show how they felt, “much less talk about how afraid [they] were.”²⁷

At 5:00 A.M. the next morning, Madritsch and Titsch were released and drove immediately to Tarnów, where they met Göth, who was overseeing the brutal closing of the ghetto there. Göth promised Madritsch that none of his “people” would be harmed. Madritsch said that as far as he could tell, none of his Jewish workers were killed in the closing of the Tarnów ghetto. He credited his factory manager, Dr. Adolf Lenhardt, for this. Evidently, Dr. Lenhardt had managed to smuggle some of Madritsch’s workers into columns of workers destined for the Kunzendorf forced labor camp at Trzebinia, about twelve miles northeast of Auschwitz. Later, Madritsch and Lehardt drove to Kunzendorf with a plan to help free some of their former workers and help them escape into Slovakia. Their plan was thwarted, Madritsch claimed, “because of the incomprehensible attitude of the Jewish police at Kunzendorf.”²⁸

Eleven days later, Madritsch received permission from Scherner to open his new factory in Płaszów, though he did not go into details in his wartime memoirs, Menschen in Not! (People in Distress), about the “fight” within the SS that broke out over his application to move his sewing factory. Madritsch’s new contract with the SS “was valid until the end of the war.”²⁹ Madritsch said that the principal reason for his success was the backing of Amon Göth, who supported the move “solely because [Madritsch and Titsch] were his fellow countrymen.”³⁰

There is no doubt that Madritsch had to bribe Scherner, Göth, and other SS men for their support. Unlike Oskar, who broke down the amount of money he spent (Zł 750,000; $234,375) for bribes to the SS and others, Madritsch cited only the money he paid the SS each month for subsistence (Zł 350,000; $109,375) and “food subsidies” (Zł 250,000; $78,125). The latter payments to the SS had “to be balanced through sales on the black market.”³¹ And though Göth and other SS officers undoubtedly skimmed as much of this as they could from the top, Madritsch said that other costs centered around “the constant little gifts for the ‘attention of the other side’ [which] amounted to considerable sums, since not only prominent persons but also a high number of little people needed to be satisfied.” He included in this list of “little people” a small group of Jews who had “friendly relations with the camp commanders.”³² Given the size of his operation, which was a little larger than Schindler’s, one would assume that Madritsch was forced to pay bribes that exceeded the estimated Zł 750,000 Oskar Schindler spent on bribes during his years in Kraków.³³

However, Raimund Titsch said after the war that Madritsch paid Göth far less money in bribes than Schindler. The reason, he explained, had less to do with Madritsch’s friendship with Göth, which was far less intimate than the one the commandant had with Schindler. Madritsch’s relationship with Göth was “enforced by the war” and influenced by the fact that Göth and Madritsch (and Titsch) were from Vienna. As Titsch later explained, Madritsch and Göth enjoyed a “Viennese rapport” that Schindler “was not able to take advantage of.”³⁴

Julius Madritsch had to wait six months for approval from the SS and the Armaments Inspectorate to move his sewing factory from the former ghetto to Płaszów. Schindler seemed to have gotten approval sooner, though his comments about this are confusing. In one of his most important postwar accounts about this matter, which he repeated elsewhere, he explained that in “1942 the systematic persecution of Jews began in the entire Polish territory [elimination of Jews from business life, liquidation of the ghettos, opening of death camps].” He went on: “I had to make a decision: Either I would do without the employment of Jews and therefore leave them to their fate, which is what 99 percent of the Kraków firms that had employed Jews did, or I would construct privately a factory camp and have the Jews live and work there.” He added that “within a few days a factory camp had been erected, and hundreds of Jews had been saved from deportation.” Several important details, though, are missing from this explanation. What is unclear from all of this is the time frame for the construction and opening of the Schindler Nebenlager (Schindler sub-camp).³⁵

We know from the testimony of Schindlerjuden such as Sol Urbach and Mietek Pemper that after the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in mid-March 1943, Schindler’s Jewish workers were housed in barracks at Płaszów and then driven in trucks each day to Emalia for their twelve-hour shifts. Soon, though, the SS decreed that the trucks were needed for the war effort and the prisoners were marched to and from the factory by SS guards. Itzhak Stern said that this changed on September 1, 1943, when Göth decreed that Jewish inmates could no longer work outside of Płaszów or its sub-camps and were to remain in the camps twenty-four hours a day. Poles, on the other hand, could still work outside the camps. But well before Göth issued this decree, Mietek Pemper said that Schindler went to the commandant and argued that the two-mile hike from Płaszów was tiring for his workers and made them less productive. He also told Göth that it would be too expensive to pay to transport them in civilian vehicles. And thus, concluded Pemper, “a few practical arguments—and hundreds of people were protected from the arbitrary actions of the SS people.”³⁶

This version of how Oskar got to know Amon Göth is quite different from the one that Schindler told Resz~e Kasztner and Shmuel Springmann, two Jewish Agency representatives in Budapest in November 1943. Schindler explained that he decided to befriend Płaszów’s commandant after Göth informed him that he would no longer supply Emalia with Jewish workers because they had “gone to work [at Emalia] without an SS guard.”³⁷ It is hard to imagine that Jewish workers were ever permitted to leave Płaszów without an SS guard contingent, though anything is possible. In my many discussions with Sol Urbach about his experiences at Emalia and Płaszów, he always emphasized the tight control the SS maintained over the Jewish workers, particularly as they were marched first from the ghetto to Emalia and from Płaszów to Emalia and back. The idea that a large unescorted group of Jews from the forced labor camp was permitted to walk the two miles to Schindler’s factory along one of Kraków’s busiest streets borders on fiction.

Yet when did this all take place? There are several clues and they do not really give us the precise date for the construction of Schindler’s subcamp. The first is the “Lageskizze” (camp sketch) dated May 6, 1944. It provides a detailed description, size-wise, of all of the buildings in Emalia including dates of construction. It does not provide such details for the sub-camp, but does note that the Arbeiter-Wohnlager (Workers Residential Camp) was constructed in 1942–1943, indicating that Schindler began construction of his sub-camp before the closing of the ghetto. But if that was so, why did he order his workers to remain in the factory when the ghetto was being closed in mid-March 1943 and not return to Płaszów, unless the sub-camp was simply under construction and not ready for occupation? The only clue we have comes from a document from the Żydowski Institut Historyczny (Jewish Historical Institute) in Warsaw dated May 25, 1943. It is a four-page Verzeichnis (list) of 191 male Jewish workers who were being transferred to four of the factories that would comprise the Schindler Nebenlager (sub-camp): Emalia, N.K.F. (Neue Kühler- u. Flugzeugteile-Fabrik; New Radiator and Aircraft Parts Factory), Kistenfabrik (Box Factory), and Chmielewski’s Barackenwerk, which produced barracks for the Military Garrison Management (Heerestandort-Verw.). Oskar said that he ultimately housed 450 Jews from these factories in his sub-camp, so this is only a partial list of the Jews who lived in the Schindler Nebenlager. There were only seven Schindlerjuden on this list, so we can presume that most of the Jews on it worked for the other factories that surrounded Emalia. It is reasonable to assume that, by the late spring of 1943, Schindler’s sub-camp was under construction.³⁸

But what motivated Amon Göth to agree to Schindler’s plan to open a sub-camp at Emalia? It is hard to imagine that he was swayed by Oskar’s concerns about his workers being tired out by the daily march to and from Płaszów. Sol Urbach, for example, told me that as the inmates left their barracks each day to be marched to Emalia, their SS guards made them pick up a heavy rock in front of their barracks and carry it to the camp’s gate. Each night when they returned to the camp, they had to pick up an equally heavy rock and take it back to the front of their barracks. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Göth was aware of Himmler’s recent move away from insistence that all factories using Jewish slave labor be housed in SS-run camps. More than likely, it was this shift in SS policy combined with hefty bribes from Oskar Schindler that convinced Göth to go along with Oskar’s plan. Göth knew that such a scheme would be well received by his SS superiors, many of whom were also being bribed by Schindler.³⁹

The Schindler Nebenlager in Kraków

Today, there is nothing left of the former Schindler sub-camp site and one doubts whether anyone in the complex of workshops and studios now housed in Emalia’s former buildings even knows an SS camp was located there during the war. To build his sub-camp, Oskar bought a former garden shop from a Polish couple, the Brilskis, just behind the Emalia complex. SS standards were strict when it came to the construction of a camp site, and Emalia was no exception. Moreover, the SS expected the owner who proposed to build a sub-camp on his factory grounds to pay the full cost of construction. Oskar estimated that it cost him Zł 600,000 ($187,500) to build the facilities for his Jewish workers and those from surrounding factories. He stated after the war that this involved building “fences, watch towers, numerous barracks, canalization, wash rooms and toilets, emergency rooms for doctors and dentists, ‘hospital rooms’ for sick men and women, camp kitchen, laundry rooms, barber, food-storage place, office rooms, and watch quarters for guard troops.” Schindler also had to pay for the “necessary interior furnishing of the living/sleeping rooms, kitchen and dentistry.”⁴⁰

There are several architectural diagrams of the Schindler Nebenlager, or Judenlager, as it is described in the sub-camp’s plans, in the Schindler collection in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz that gives a better sense of what the sub-camp looked like. To visualize Schindler’s factory complex and sub-camp, think of a collection of buildings that narrowly fronted on ul. Lipowa and ran in a perpendicular line from the factory complex in front with its fabled gate and glass stairway and ended with the fenced-in Judenlager. The principal factory buildings were just behind the front gate. As you entered the factory grounds, the first thing you saw was a large brick smokestack (this was torn down in the late 1990s). Just behind it and to the left was the Emailwerk (enamel works) and to the smokestack’s right was the Stanzwerk (metal press works). The enamelware that was made in Emalia was first pressed out in the Stanzwerk and then carried across to the Emailwerk, where the raw pots and pans were dipped in enamel and then dried. In the fall of 1943, Siemens-Bauunion G.m.b.H. began work on a large hangar-like Neue Halle, which was intended to house a new stamping plant. After the war, Siemens estimated the cost of construction of the new building at RM 1 million ($400,000). Siemens completed the new and largest building in the Emalia complex in the summer of 1944. The Siemens factory building sits at the back of the former Emalia complex today.⁴¹

It was no accident that Siemens built Schindler’s largest factory building. Siemens, like other prominent German companies during the Nazi era, contributed heavily to the Nazi Party and the SS, which insured that they would receive lucrative SS contracts. Siemens-Bauunion G.m.b.H., headquartered in Munich, was one of the subsidiaries of Siemens & Halske. In 1971, Siemens & Halske’s postwar successor, Siemens AG, today one of the world’s largest electronics and engineering companies, sold Siemens-Bauunion to Dyckerhoff & Widman. Though Siemens-Bauunion was certainly not in the same league as Krupp and I. G. Farben when it came to the use of Jewish slave labor, it was active in the Kraków area, where it used Jewish workers from the ghetto, the Kraków Judenlager, and Płaszów to build a railroad network around the city that involved constructing seventeen bridges across the Vistula River. Siemens-Bauunion stopped using Kraków’s Jewish workers in the spring of 1943 after a typhus epidemic broke out in the Płaszów Judenlager. Siemens also built the transformer for Płaszów’s electric fences.⁴²

Immediately after World War II, 6,000 former slave laborers made claims against Siemens and the company ultimately paid DM 7,184,000 ($1,710,460) in compensation. All total, the payment to each Jewish claimant was worth about DM 3,300 ($785). Between 1958 and 1966, Siemens AG, along with I. G. Farben and Daimler-Benz, paid the Claims Conference (Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany) DM 75 million ($17.9 million) for slave labor claims. But in the late 1990s, spurred by the Swiss bank scandal, which underscored not only Switzerland’s significant industrial and financial support of the Third Reich and the failure of Swiss banks to do no more than token searches for Holocaust era assets, German companies, fearing new lawsuits, began to consider doing more to settle decades-long slave letter claims. In 1998, Siemens AG set up a $25 million fund to pay further slave labor claims; a year later, in response to several law suits, twelve of Germany’s largest companies, including Siemens, now the second largest electronics company in the world, agreed to set up a Holocaust fund worth $3.3 billion to compensate the 230,000–250,000 former slave and forced laborers eligible for such payments, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.⁴³ Some Schindlerjuden were eligible for payments from one of these compensation funds for their slave labor with Siemens-Bauunion at one of Kraków’s Judenlager, at Płaszów, or at Emalia. However, the amounts were usually so small that they were either not worth mentioning to me or were refused because, as some Schindlerjuden told me, no amount of money could compensate them for their suffering and losses.

Schindler’s Judenlager at Emalia was built just behind and to the right of the Siemens factory building. Schindler’s factory was wedged in between a number of other factories, so there was limited space for the Jewish camp. It was surrounded by double rows of barbed wire fencing with two watch towers just beyond the fence at either end of the small camp. Two guardhouses were located at either end of the camp just opposite the watch towers. There were three main barracks in the Nebenlager, two for men and one across the small courtyard for women. Several smaller Neue Baracke (new barracks) stood just behind these to house the other camp facilities. Sol Urbach told me that the barracks, which were prefabricated and probably built next door at Chmielewski’s Barackenwerk, were put up pretty quickly. Schindler bragged to Kasztner and Springmann that he could build a barracks in seven to eight days. Schindler’s detailed financial claims after the war do not provide many details about the Judenlager, probably because most of his efforts to secure reparations centered around the lost factory buildings in Kraków and Brünnlitz.⁴⁴

Some confusion remains about the number of inmates housed in Schindler’s Judenlager. Oskar claimed in his 1945 financial report, which became the basis of much of what he said later about his Jewish workers in Emalia, that 150 Jews were working for him in 1940; 190 in 1942; 550 in 1943; 1,000 in 1944; and 1,100 in 1945. Oskar used the final number of Jews transferred from Płaszów to Brünnlitz as the basis for his 1944 and 1945 financial reports. In the latter case, this included those Jews transferred to Brünnlitz from other camps during the last eight months of the war. From these estimates we can conclude that he used annual year-end figures for the number of Jews he employed at Emalia. But Oskar also said in the same report that he “saved another 450 Jews from deportation” who worked in neighboring factories and were housed in Schindler’s Judenlager.⁴⁵ This means that before he was forced to move his Jewish workers out of Emalia in the late summer of 1944, Oskar Schindler had 1,450 Jews living in his sub-camp. Because about a third of his Jewish workers were female, we can conclude that he housed about 450 women and 900 men, each gender in separate barracks. It is difficult to determine the size of the barracks and how crowded it was in each Judenlager housing unit.

Hans Kammler’s WVHA D3 construction office set the standards for the construction of concentration and forced labor camps and oversaw the building of Schindler’s Judenlager. Comparatively, there were eighty-eight barracks at Płaszów; they ultimately housed 25,000 inmates, most of them Jews. Most of the prisoner barracks in Płaszów were built by the Chmielewski firm just next to Emalia. Each barrack held about 300 inmates though the statistics provided by Aleksander Bieberstein in his detailed study of Płaszów indicate that they varied in size according to SS housing needs. If we used Oskar’s estimates for the number of Jewish workers he housed in 1943, it seems as though his barracks were built to house 300 workers apiece. But if we add the 450 other Jewish inmates from surrounding factories, it seems as though Oskar had ultimately to cram 450 workers into each of these barracks. Actually, this was not all that uncommon in SS-run camps. Karl Bischoff, the director of central construction at Auschwitz, initially planned to house 550 inmates in the barracks he built in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, but later changed the number to 744 inmates.⁴⁶ When Gerhard Maurer asked Amon Göth in the spring of 1944 whether he could house 10,000 Hungarian Jews temporarily until Auschwitz was ready for them, Göth said he could only do this if Maurer permitted him to do two things, “clean the camp out of the elements who were… unproductive, people who were old, sick, weak, unable to work, as well as children” and permit him to double the bunk capacity in each barracks by having the Jewish inmates share the bunks in twelve hour shifts.⁴⁷ So it was not unheard of to crowd inmates into the standard SS three or four tiered bunks with three to four inmates squeezed into a tiny 4-by-5-foot section. According to Sol Urbach, the barracks in Emalia were identical to those in Płaszów and just as crowded.⁴⁸

But what distinguished Emalia from other sub-camps was the food and safety from SS abuse and murder. Jewish inmates in Płaszów even used a code word, “Paradise,” when they wanted to refer to Emalia. Both Oskar Schindler and Julius Madritsch spoke of the money they spent to purchase extra black market food rations, particularly bread, for their workers. Madritsch estimated, for example, that he “brought into the camp about 6,000 loafs of bread, jam, and even cigarettes each week” for his workers as well as “other things that made it possible to fulfill small wishes to simply make life a little easier.”⁴⁹ Oskar was even more precise. He said after the war that he had to buy all the food for his Emalia workers from 1942 until 1944 on the black market. Oskar wrote that the SS rations from Płaszów amounted to only 40 percent of what his workers needed to remain healthy. There were also occasions when Schindler and Madritsch got some food from Dr. Michał Weichert’s Jewish Self-Help Society, which continued to operate in Płaszów until the summer of 1944. Oskar estimated that he spent about Zł 50,000 ($15,625) a month on black market food between 1942 and 1944, though he admitted that this estimate was probably too low. His total cost for extra food for his Jewish workers in Emalia during this period was more than Zł 1.8 million ($562,500).⁵⁰

Dr. Aleksander Bieberstein had a lot to say about food rations when he testified in Amon Göth’s trial. Since SS-rationed food for the Schindler Judenlager came from Płaszów, his observations tell us a lot about food conditions in both camps. During the construction of Płaszów, Dr. Bieberstein, who worked as a physician in the camp’s hospital, treated the SS noncommissioned officer who was in charge of food for the prisoners. He showed Bieberstein the list of food, in grams, that each prisoner was to receive daily and weekly. The list included “meat, fat, marmalade, sugar, cheese, potatoes, gruel, salt, and bread.” Soon after he read the list, Dr. Bieberstein got together with another Jewish physician, Dr. Otto Schwarz, and they transformed the food details on the list into calories. According to their calculations, each prisoner was to receive from 2,200 to 2,500 calories per day from the SS. This might sound like an adequate number of daily calories, but Dr. Bieberstein added in his testimony that it was barely enough for someone to survive doing hard manual labor. Inmates in Płaszów, he testified, needed from 4,500 to 5,000 calories a day to survive.⁵¹

In reality, the inmates in Płaszów received only about 700 to 800 calories from the camp’s food rations, which consisted of black coffee without sugar at breakfast, a light, watery soup at lunch, and “vegetable water” in the evening. They also received a daily bread ration of 390 grams (13.6 ounces). Other than bread, the principal food item for the inmates was “sago,” a dish made from barley. So if the SS allotted each worker a daily ration of 2,200 to 2,500 calories, and they got only 700 to 800 calories, where did the food go? It was kept for the SS in several large food storehouses in Płaszów. One of the storehouses was located in the Jewish prisoners’ complex. But the best foods, which included the finest cuts of meats and fancy liqueurs and vodka, were kept elsewhere for the SS. Göth used some of the extra food that he kept from his prisoners for his parties and to sell on the black market. It is quite probable that some of the food that Schindler and Madritsch bought on the black market in Kraków originally came from the SS storehouses in Płaszów. Dr. Bieberstein stated in Göth’s trial that the “money coming from these exchanges [black marketeering] of sugar and other products like fat, was used for maintaining a beautiful horse and cattle breeding, and generally for the accused’s [Göth’s] private use.”⁵²

But Emalia’s Jewish workers did not rely solely on the black marketeering skills of Oskar Schindler, or, more particularly, of Abraham Bankier, for sustenance. There was also active illegal trading with Emalia’s Polish workers, who were able to bring in food and items for barter with the factory’s Jews. Schindler Jew Herman Feldman (Hermann Natan Feldmann) always made sure that his sister, Lola Feldman Orzech, had a little extra money each day to buy extra food from the Poles. But after September 1, 1943, when Göth ordered that all Jews remain in Płaszów or its sub-camps twenty-four hours a day, the cost of black market goods, particularly bread, skyrocketed in cost. A loaf of bread that once cost Zł 10 ($3.12) jumped to Zł 90 ($28.12) a loaf. And even if you did have money, the Poles now demanded a pair of shoes for a loaf of bread.⁵³ Sam and Edith Wertheim remembered trading “bread for cigarettes or the other way around, or socks, or a shirt.”⁵⁴ But not all of Schindler’s Jewish workers had money or goods to trade, so it is difficult to gauge how many of Emalia’s workers were able to supplement the rations they got from the SS and Schindler with their own black marketeering. On the other hand, work in Emalia was less rigorous than that in Płaszów and the daily caloric needs were lower than those estimated by Dr. Bieberstein in the main camp.

But the Schindlerjuden in Emalia could never forget that they were ultimately under the control of the SS. Each of them was tattooed with the letters “KL” (Konzentrationslager; concentration camp) on the left wrist. Dr. Stanley Robbin (Samek Rubenstein), a Jewish physician at Emalia, would often perform the tattoo work. But some of the workers, such as Rena Fagen, defiantly began to suck the ink out of the tattoo soon after it was put on. She once told Elinor Brecher, the author of the invaluable collection of Schindler survivor testimony, Schindler’s Legacy, that she “wouldn’t even find a spot where it was now.”⁵⁵ Such acts greatly annoyed the SS, who resented the special treatment that Jewish workers got at Emalia.⁵⁶

In fact, keeping the SS at bay was one of Oskar’s greatest challenges. Edith Wertheim said that Oskar installed a bell to warn the workers when a Wehrmacht or SS inspection team came into the factory. Henry Slamovich added that when the SS visited Emalia, Oskar “wined them and dined them” when they arrived and then took them on an inspection of the facilities. He added that the SS “never bothered to hit anybody.”⁵⁷ Dr. Stanley Robbin described what happened when a group of SS visitors from Płaszów visited the small room with three bunks that served as the inmates’ hospital. The SS men saw sixteen-year-old Sam Soldinger lying on one of the bunks complaining of a headache. They immediately wanted to know why he was in the hospital and wanted to kill him on the spot because he did not look ill. Oskar was able to talk them out of murdering Sam, who later settled in Phoenix, Arizona.⁵⁸

And though Oskar usually did not have a lot to say after the war about his humanitarian efforts, he did go into some detail about a few of his deeds in a 1955 report he wrote in Buenos Aires about his experiences. The most famous story, which Thomas Keneally discussed in some detail in his novel, centered around a Schindlerjude named Lamus. One day Göth and a group of SS officers from Płaszów were inspecting the facilities at Emalia. Göth spotted Lamus pushing a wheelbarrow across the factory yard and thought he was moving too slowly. He ordered his bodyguard, SS-Rottenführer Franz Grün, to shoot Lamus on the spot. Grün began to position Lamus against an outside factory wall for execution while Göth and his entourage continued their inspection of the sub-camp. In the meantime, someone from one of the factory buildings who had seen everything rushed up to Oskar’s office to tell him of the coming execution. Oskar said that he rushed down stairs and “bought his [Lamus’s] life for a liter of vodka, literally one minute before the intended shooting.”⁵⁹

On another occasion, two Gestapo officers showed up to arrest Ignacy and Chaja Wohlfeiler and their three children for purchasing illegal Aryan papers. Oskar met the two agents and showed them upstairs to his office, where he wined and dined them. Oskar said that “three hours later two tipsy Gestapo men left the factory without the Wohlfeilers and without incriminating documents.”⁶⁰ Chaja Wohlfeiler lived to play a modestly important role at the end of the Schindler saga. On May 8, 1945, it was she who embraced the first Russian soldier who helped liberate Brünnlitz.⁶¹

One Friday, Eduard Danziger and his brother, two Orthodox Jews, accidentally damaged one of the presses at Emalia. Oskar was away at the time and one of the sub-camp’s spies reported the accident to Göth. He decided to hang the two brothers at Płaszów that evening to serve as an example to the other inmates. News of the planned execution spread quickly through the camp. In the meantime, Oskar had returned to Emalia and learned of the incident and the planned hangings. He immediately drove the two miles to Płaszów and somehow persuaded Göth to grant both men clemency, who were immediately returned to Emalia and safety.⁶²

But there were also other stories from Schindlerjuden that were not as frightening and underscored the uniqueness of life in Schindler’s sub-camp. Julius Eisenstein remembered, for example, the time he was playing soccer at Emalia and Oskar came up and asked, “How come you didn’t give the ball to this guy?”⁶³ Julius added that by the time Emalia was finally closed in the fall of 1944, we were “spoiled and felt… liberated.”⁶⁴ He thought that life in Emalia was heaven compared to the hell of Płaszów: “We ate a little better and we didn’t get a beating every day.”⁶⁵ And though he was not on the final list for Brünnlitz, he felt that it was the physical strength that he had been able to preserve at Emalia that helped him survive his forced march to the Flossenbürg concentration camp at the end of the war. These sentiments were shared by other Schindler Jews who did not make it to Brünnlitz.⁶⁶

The inmates even found time for romance. When Irene Hirschfeld (Irena/Irka Scheck) arrived at Emalia, she was given a job carrying heavy metal pots on boards for drying after they had been dipped in enamel. She soon lost this job because she kept dropping the pots and was assigned to a nighttime floor sweeping detail. But she never forgot her femininity. Irene had a sheet and pillow case, from which she made a uniform and dyed it blue. She also had a pair of shoes and asked an inmate to make sandals for her from an old pocketbook. She said she “felt so dressed up, you have no idea!”⁶⁷ The reason for her attention to her looks was her new husband, Milton Hirschfeld. The couple had been secretly married in the ghetto and were able to walk and hold hands together in an enclosed yard at Emalia. Milton, who worked in the machine shop, made a comb and a signet ring for Irene. She later lost the ring at Auschwitz. Irene always thanked Oskar Schindler for the special times she had alone with Milton in Emalia. “The towers were full of Germans with machine guns, but they never used them.” After the war, the Hirschfelds settled briefly in Paris, where they became reacquainted with Oskar Schindler; they ultimately settled in Oceanside, New York, on Long Island.⁶⁸

Lola Feldman Orzech had a boyfriend at Emalia who worked at the N.K.F. factory next door. She said she was able to spend about half an hour each day with him. She added that though she was usually not hungry at Emalia, she was always “dead tired” and only had the energy to “smooch” with her boyfriend. Afterwards, she “went to bed,” or, as she put it, “to hay.”⁶⁹ But Lola also remembered the flirtations of a friend at Emalia, Herta Nussbaum. Herta’s husband worked at Kabelwerk and when Oskar Schindler began to flirt with her, she flirted back, hoping to get her husband transferred to Emalia. According to Lola, Herta spoke fluent German, “was blond, zaftig [Yiddish; well rounded], busty, but she had good legs.” And her harmless flirtations with Oskar worked, because he soon found a job for Herta’s husband at Emalia.⁷⁰ This is not the only time Oskar flirted with his female Jewish workers. One Schindlerjude made a point of telling me that Oskar made serious advances towards her, though out of respect for her I will not reveal her name.

Schindler Jew Barry Tiger (Berl Teiger) offers a different twist to Schindler’s life at Emalia, where he had an apartment. Barry had various jobs at Emalia, including cleaning up after Oskar’s parties. “They left a mess, but those were some good parties.” As Barry told Elinor Brecher: “There were bottles all over the place—they did a lot of boozing—and SS uniforms. And you could find some leftovers there, too: cake and sandwiches. I saw [Schindler] with women. He was a lady-killer.”⁷¹

But when Oskar invited Amon Göth to a party, it was usually at his apartment on Straszewskiego 7/2. It was more luxurious and away from the factory. Oskar was well aware of Göth’s murderous ways when he was drunk and he did everything possible to keep him away from his Jewish workers. Emilie Schindler, who despised Göth, remembered one evening of heavy drinking with Göth and other SS officers. As the evening wore on and the SS guests got drunk, there was a knock on the door. It was an army major whom Oskar had invited to the party. Göth, drunk as usual, staggered over to the officer, who was much shorter than he was, and asked scornfully, “Who are you, you ridiculous midget?” The atmosphere changed quickly from one of friendly banter to tension and many guests began to leave, fearing Göth’s rage. “You army types,” Göth screamed at the major, “You think your hands are clean. You are such aristocrats, you fight with gallantry… you don’t stick your noses into the carrion… . You cowards, you claim to keep your souls clean while we have to act as your guardian angels and watch your backs.”⁷²

But Oskar had to put up with Göth’s tirades and other murderous flaws because he desperately needed his support to maintain his protective cocoon at Emalia. To a point, though, one could argue that the positive, moderate atmosphere that Oskar Schindler created at Emalia for his Jewish workers was simply a good investment in better production. And there is no doubt that this was true. Well fed, modestly secure workers performed much better than those who lived in constant fear for their lives. And if they produced well, Schindler would make more money. But something happened in 1943 that put Schindler’s efforts into a different light: his decision to begin to work first as a courier for the Relief and Rescue Committee of Budapest (Va’ada; Va’adat ha-Ezra ve-ha-Hatsala be-Budapest), which had been created two years earlier to help smuggle Jews out of Poland and Slovakia, and later for the Joint Rescue Committee (JRC) of the Jewish Agency of Palestine, an organ of the Yishuv, or Jewish community of Palestine that had absorbed Va’ada in early 1943. This involved not only dangerous trips to Budapest to meet with JRC representatives but also work with its representatives, who came to Kraków to try to gain more information about the fate of Jews in the General Government. Oskar also helped smuggle money, goods, and letters for Jews in Płaszów.

Abwehr, the Jewish Agency, and Schindler’s Missions to Turkey and Hungary

The link between Oskar Schindler’s growing sense of humanity towards his Jewish workers and his ties to Abwehr, particularly as they related to his later work with the Jewish Agency, is intriguing. It is difficult to determine the impact, if any, of his trip there for Abwehr in the fall of 1940 on the Jewish Agency’s decision to approach him about a similar trip later. But his trip to Turkey for Abwehr did seem to secure his reputation as someone who was decisive and willing to take some chances for Admiral Canaris’s organization. It also got him into trouble with German authorities in Kraków. Janina Olszewska, who ran Oskar’s Emalia sales room in Kraków, said that the Gestapo arrested him in late 1941 in part because of “his strange contacts with the attaché in Turkey… and his dealings with the Polish and Jewish people.”⁷³

Oskar provided some details about his Abwehr mission to Turkey in 1940 in his 1951 letter to Fritz Lang. In addition, Josef “Sepp” Aue, Oskar’s Czech Abwehr colleague, also mentioned his 1940 mission in his interrogation statements to the Czech secret police after World War II. Schindler told Lang that he was approached by Colonel Reiche, the head of Abwehr operations in Breslau, about a problem the Abwehr chief was having in Turkey. He asked Oskar to go to Ankara to see whether he could do something to resolve the conflict between the Reich diplomatic corps, the Wehrmacht, the SD (Sicherheitsdienst der Reichführer-SS), the Nazi Party’s counterespionage and intelligence service, and the Reich Propaganda Ministry (ProMi, Propagandaministerium, shortened title of Joseph Goebbels’s Reich Ministry for Volk Enlightenment and Propaganda, Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda). Reiche was concerned that the conflict between these organizations was affecting the gathering and flow of intelligence information from Turkey, a vital field of Abwehr operations, to Canaris’s headquarters in Berlin. Abwehr’s difficulties, though, were much more complex than this.⁷⁴

According to Oskar, the real problem centered around reserve Abwehr officers attached to the embassy in Ankara who were interested only in protecting their comfortable life style. They were affected by the “diplomats disease” and ran Abwehr operations in Ankara like “vegetable traders.” Protected by their diplomatic immunity, these Abwehr officers paid for news in their favorite cafés regardless of its value to Admiral Canaris’s organization. They were driven by a desire to “keep up the good life of diets of Edelvaluta (hard currency) and a career far from all fronts.” But Abwehr’s agents in Turkey were also hurt by conflicts with other German intelligence gathering organizations. Oskar told Lang that by the time he arrived in Ankara, Abwehr’s operatives in Turkey were either dead, back in the Reich, or working for the SD, the SS intelligence service. There were almost no Abwehr transmissions coming from Ankara via Hamburg to Berlin. Previous efforts to straighten out Abwehr’s problems in the Turkish capital had fallen prey to local Nazi Party infighting. So Abwehr sent Oskar Schindler to Ankara to straighten out the mess.⁷⁵

Yet there was more to Abwehr’s failures in Turkey than lazy agents. Abwehr intelligence operations abroad often overlapped, and Turkey was no exception.⁷⁶ In addition, there were conflicts with various Nazi Party organizations that not only affected Oskar Schindler’s attitudes towards the SS, the Gestapo, and other Nazi groups, but also helped explain their own suspicions about him. In 1943, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer noted that spies in Ankara working for the Nazi Party’s Auslandsorganisation (AO; Foreign Organization), which oversaw and coordinated Nazi Party organizations abroad, were “dilettantes lacking completely in know-how and experience.”⁷⁷ In the field, the difficulties between Abwehr, the SD, and the AO centered around efforts by these agencies to win over each other’s agents to their foreign intelligence gathering operations, which caused security lapses.⁷⁸

These developments, however, only mirrored another issue that affected German intelligence gathering world-wide, the struggle between the SD and Abwehr for control over Germany’s intelligence gathering apparatus. Reinhard Heydrich, backed by Heinrich Himmler, had fought for years to gain control of the Reich’s foreign intelligence gathering network. After the creation of the RSHA in the fall of 1939, the SD’s old Branch III, Ausland, now became RSHA Branch VI, Foreign Intelligence. By the time Oskar Schindler was sent to Ankara, the struggle was in full bloom. The situation in Turkey was particularly sensitive because of efforts by Germany and the Allies to draw Turkey into their respective camps militarily. Moreover, Turkey’s geographic and strategic location made it a vital source of information gathering for the Balkans, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East.⁷⁹

Walter Schellenberg, an SD officer who later came to head RSHA VI, said in his memoirs that by 1940 Heydrich had grown deeply suspicious of Canaris and Abwehr. From Heydrich’s perspective, Canaris and Abwehr were unreliable for counterintelligence work. Heydrich thought that Canaris had revealed the date for the German invasion of Western Europe to the Allies and thought that the admiral would ultimately pay a price for this. Oskar Schindler’s mission to Turkey in the fall of 1940 should be seen in this competitive light. And based on his statements to Fritz Lang in 1951, Schellenberg’s assessment of Canaris was correct. Heydrich and Schellenberg had nothing to worry about, at least from Abwehr.⁸⁰

The intense conflicts in Turkey between the SD, Abwehr, and other German intelligence-gathering organizations not only reflected the struggle between Himmler, Heydrich, and Canaris but also underscored the importance of Turkey to Hitler and Germany. Its strategic position and chrome resources kept it at the forefront of German efforts to keep neutral Turkey from aligning itself with Great Britain. Hitler had sent the veteran diplomat Franz von Papen to Ankara because he thought he possessed the necessary “finesse and intrigue” to keep Turkey from drifting into the Allied camp.⁸¹ Von Papen complained that AO and Abwehr agents, though, were constantly “getting in each other’s way” and on occasion “denounced each other’s agents to the Turkish police.”⁸² Ultimately, Abwehr learned it could best protect its foreign operatives if they resigned their Nazi Party membership and stopped contacts with AO’s agents abroad.⁸³

This was the complex world that Oskar Schindler unwittingly entered in the fall of 1940. Oskar’s trip took a few weeks. He took the journey in his beloved blue Horch, traveling “8,000 kilometers through the area.” Oskar was not much of a typist and he certainly meant 800 kilometers (671 miles). He told Lang that he “saw much… not designated [on maps]” and noted three points that were not even mentioned in the Baedeker travel guide he carried with him. This was an interesting comment on the nature of intelligence gathering at that time but also on Oskar’s earlier Abwehr training and activities before World War II. Schindler probably used Baedeker’s Konstantinopl und Kleinasien, Balkanstaaten, Archipel, Cypern as his guide, which he could buy in any German book store in Kraków. More than likely, his route took him from Kraków southward to Budapest and from there through Belgrade in Yugoslavia and then to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Oskar probably entered Turkey at Edirne, which was only a two- to three-hour drive from Istanbul.⁸⁴

Oskar traveled on a diplomatic passport, which required him to present his credentials to Ambassador von Papen upon his arrival and departure. Before the war, Canaris and Ribbentrop had agreed to use the German diplomatic service as a cover for Abwehr agents abroad. The soldiers in the KO units were attached to embassies and consulates and always wore civilian clothing. This afforded Abwehr agents diplomatic immunity and other diplomatic privileges, though it also meant that as “diplomats,” they could be expelled from the host country. This proved to hurt Abwehr’s efforts later in the war.⁸⁵

Schindler’s meeting with von Papen must have been a special occasion for Schindler, given von Papen’s past. The former German chancellor, politician, and soldier had served in Hitler’s first cabinet as vice chancellor and brought considerable expertise in Turkish affairs when he assumed the ambassadorship in 1939. Yet Oskar was unimpressed with him. He evidently discussed the nature of his mission with the German ambassador, but found that “he only knew of a fraction of the intrigues and incidents among his collaborators.” Oskar added that von Papen was “one of the primary objects of the SD.” Yet, according to Schindler, the SD seemed more interested in von Papen’s “church visits and tennis matches” than facts about “a new Russian-armour piercing shell.”⁸⁶

Oskar evidently caused a bit of a ruckus at the German embassy and told Fritz Lang that Reiche had received protests about Schindler’s “methods and arguments.” He also claimed that his methods, whatever they were, were only momentarily successful. Schindler noted that within months of his departure, Heydrich had effectively neutralized Abwehr operations in Ankara by having some of Colonel Reiche’s agents transferred to active fighting units or having their diplomatic passports lifted while they were back in Germany for the Christmas holiday. In fact, these Abwehr officers were even denied temporary visas to return to Ankara to clear out their offices and tie up loose ends. Oskar concluded that “in the long view, the SD was already stronger than the OKH in 1940.”⁸⁷

Technically, Oskar’s 1940 mission to Turkey was his last official assignment for Abwehr. However, three years later he would undertake another mission that was partially set up by Major Franz von Korab, Schindler’s old Abwehr friend who commanded Canaris’s operations in TZšín and Kraków and had, at least according to Emilie, helped Oskar find his first factory in Kraków. This time, Oskar did not travel on a diplomatic passport but on a visa arranged for him by Abwehr. While there, Oskar met with other Abwehr operatives in the Hungarian capital. There was also some talk of Oskar returning to Turkey to meet with the American ambassador and Jewish Agency representatives there, but this never took place.⁸⁸

By late 1942, Oskar Schindler had already gained a reputation as someone who treated his Jewish workers well. This prompted Va’ada and the Jewish Agency to recruit him as a courier who would smuggle letters and money into the Kraków ghetto and later Płaszów to help buy needed food, medicine, and other goods on the black market for Jews. Oskar told two versions of his initial contact with Va’ada. In his 1945 report, he said his first meeting with a Va’ada representative took place in 1942 when a Viennese dentist and Abwehr agent, Dr. Rudi Sedlacek, walked into his office at Emalia and told Oskar that he was working with the Joint in Budapest. Dr. Sedlacek wanted to know whether Oskar could help him get letters that he had just brought from Palestine to inmates in Płaszów. Oskar told Sedlacek to see his close friend, Major Franz von Korab, “who had the same attitude towards Jews” as he did.⁸⁹

But in another report to Yad Vashem a decade later, Oskar stated that he first met Dr. Sedlacek when Major Franz von Korab, a half-Jew who headed Abwehr operations in Kraków, brought Dr. Sedlacek with him to Oskar’s office. Given his friendship with von Korab, the second version of this story seems more probable, since Schindler would probably have been more receptive to a proposal to help Va’ada if it had been initiated by his close friend, von Korab. According to Joel Brand, the head of Tiyyul, Va’ada’s program to smuggle Jews out of Poland and Slovakia, Sedlacek “was an intellectual and was ashamed of the colleagues [in Abwehr] with whom he worked. He wished to appear better than they, and in conversation… he always stressed the contempt he felt for the other Abwehr agents.”⁹⁰

In his 1955 report, Oskar said that he did not know that Dr. Sedlacek was working with Va’ada. It was only during his second visit that Dr. Sedlacek revealed his true intentions to Oskar. By the time Schindler became seriously involved with these efforts, Va’ada had already been taken over by the Jewish Agency’s JRC and became its Aid and Rescue Committee (Va’adah; Vaadat Ezra Vehatzala) in Budapest. Va’adah was headed by three men: Otto Komoly, a decorated war hero, engineer, and prominent Zionist, who served as its chairman; Resz~e (Israel) Kasztner, his gifted but controversial vice chair; and Shmuel Springmann, a jeweler and diamond merchant with strong ties to Budapest’s diplomatic and intelligence community. Springmann served as Va’adah’s treasurer. During his trips for the JRC to Budapest, Oskar met with Kasztner and Springmann, though Sedlacek was his principal JRC contact in Kraków.⁹¹

The decision to approach sympathetic Abwehr agents about helping rescue Jews in Eastern Europe came after the founding of Va’ada in late 1941. Joel Brand, one of the new organization’s leaders, was its most flamboyant member and perhaps the most daring. In 1941, he paid Josef Krem, a Hungarian intelligence officer, to help rescue Brand’s sister and husband from Kamenets Podolskiy, a Ukrainian city designated by the SS as a mass murder site. This triggered Brand’s interest in rescue efforts, particularly from Poland into Hungary. Hungary, a German ally during World War II, adopted strong anti-Semitic policies towards its 825,000 Jews that limited their civil and economic rights. Yet until Germany invaded Hungary in the spring of 1944 to prevent it from shifting sides in the war, it remained a fairly open country where Jewish groups such as the Jewish Agency could operate with some degree of openness. Hungary also became a haven for thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland, Slovakia, and other Central European states.⁹²

By the fall of 1942, Va’ada was having to deal with a flood of Jews from Poland and it desperately needed funds to help them. Springmann got in contact with an old school friend and jack-of-all trades, Andor (Bandi) Grosz, who went by the name André György, and asked him to help Va’ada establish contact with Zionist organizations in Istanbul. Springmann’s efforts dovetailed with the request of the Istanbul office of the Jewish Agency to organize an “aid and rescue committee” and create a “courier service.”⁹³

Grosz would be one of the principal figures in the courier service though he did not work for the JRC for free. He always took 10 percent of any money he carried for Brand and Springmann from Istanbul. But Grosz was more than just a courier. He also helped Va’ada and the Joint Rescue Committee establish important contacts in Budapest with Abwehr, the Wehrmacht’s military counterintelligence service. According to Brand, “these people [Abwehr] not only restored… contacts with the neutral countries, but also established channels of communication with the Jewish communities in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Germany proper, and in the other German-occupied territories.”⁹⁴

Such contacts were an integral part of the Jewish Agency’s efforts in Turkey to do whatever it could to help the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. According to Stanford J. Shaw, neutral Turkey became the “Bridge to Palestine” for Europe’s desperate Jewish population.⁹⁵ Opened in late 1942, the Istanbul branch of the Jewish Agency was headed by Chaim Barlas, who had previously run its Geneva office. By the time Oskar Schindler became involved with the Va’adah and the Jewish Agency, Jewish organizations from Palestine, the United States, and other countries had moved to Istanbul to help Europe’s Jews, though the Jewish Agency was the dominant aid organization. Its JRC had delegates from several of these groups, including the influential Joint. During the Holocaust, about half the funding for JRC activities in Europe came from Jewish groups in Palestine and the other half came from the United States and other countries.⁹⁶

One of the JRC’s principal goals was to try to maintain contact with the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe. Moshe Shertock, who would become a foreign minister and a prime minister of Israel, spent time during the war looking at JRC operations and called its operations in Istanbul “a peep hole to the other side.”⁹⁷ Soon after the Jewish Rescue Committee opened its office in Istanbul, its office staff began to write hundreds of letters to Jews in occupied Eastern Europe asking them about conditions there and what it could do to help them. Initially, these letters went through the regular Turkish postal system, though soon the JRC used couriers to carry the letters into Nazi-held territory. Often the couriers were Turkish truck drivers and businessmen, though some diplomats and even representatives of the Papal Legate to Ankara (the Turkish capital), Angela Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, worked with the JRC. When the JRC learned of the increasing murders in the Nazi concentration and death camps, the JRC’s staff sent letters of condolence to those who survived in hopes that they would continue to supply the Jewish Rescue Committee with information about conditions there. They supplied this information to the British government and hoped that London would lower its restrictions on the number of Jews permitted to enter Palestine. But couriers such as Schindler did more than carry letters in and out of Nazi territory; they also brought food, clothing, and money with them, which the JRC hoped would be used to help purchase more food and clothing or to bribe German officials to help Jews.⁹⁸

The JRC was particularly interested in recruiting German and Hungarian spies as couriers in hopes that these double agents could provide aid to Jews in Germany. And one of the spies they tried to recruit was Oskar Schindler.⁹⁹ It did not take Dr. Sedlacek long to size up Oskar and determine that he would be a willing courier for the Va’ada and later the JRC. As a test, Oskar was given RM 50,000 ($11,905) as well as some letters and other messages to distribute to JRC representatives in Kraków. Schindler did exactly as he was told, and the JRC now knew they could trust him.¹⁰⁰

During the next year, he made six or seven trips to Kraków to meet with Oskar. According to Schindler, on three occasions Sedlacek brought money to help Jews in Płaszów as well as personal letters for them from Palestine. On one visit, Dr. Sedlacek gave Oskar RM 50,000 ($11,905); on another trip RM 75,000 ($17,857), and a smaller amount on a third trip. These figures differ somewhat from those cited by Dr. Resz~e Kasztner in his 1946 Der Bericht des Jüdischen Rettungskomitees aus Budapest, 1942–1945 (A Report on the Jewish Rescue Committee in Budapest, 1942–1945). He said that Sedlacek brought Schindler “several hundred thousand Reichsmarks” during his three trips to Kraków.¹⁰¹ Oskar, in turn, gave the money to Dr. Chaim Hilfstein, a Jewish physician at the sub-camp in Emalia, Abraham Bankier, Itzhak Stern, and Leon Salpeter, a prominent prewar Jewish leader and member of the former Kraków ghetto’s Judenrat, for medicine and food in Emalia and Płaszów. Each of these prominent Jews went with Oskar to Brünnlitz and became some of his staunchest supporters after the war. Dr. Hilfstein told Joel Brand “that this money was always punctually delivered” by Schindler to Jewish representatives in the concentration camp.¹⁰²

Once the JRC determined that Oskar was honest and trustworthy, they invited him to Budapest to give them information on the plight of the Jews in occupied Poland. The Jewish Rescue Committee’s leadership saw Schindler as a leading German industrialist in Kraków and an important contact person in the capital of the General Government. Thomas Keneally said that Schindler’s trip to Budapest took three days in a “freight van filled with bundles of the party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter,” where Oskar was “closeted with the redolence of printer’s ink and among the heavy Gothic print of Germany’s official newspaper.”¹⁰³ The implication that Oskar was somehow smuggled into Hungary in a newspaper truck is far from the truth, though sometimes the JRC did smuggle couriers into Nazi territory this way. According to Oskar, Dr. Sedlacek got him a visa to travel to Budapest.¹⁰⁴

Oskar met with the JRC delegation in November 1943 in the Hotel Hungaria in Budapest. There is a detailed transcript of this meeting prepared by “Schmuel” (Springmann) and “Israel” (Resz~e Kasztner) in the Schindler “Koffer” files in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. It is titled Bekenntnisse des Herrn X (The Confessions of Mr. X). Oskar also provided details of his visit with Springmann and Kasztner in his 1945 and 1955 reports. The report written by Kasztner and Springmann provides an insightful, and at times surprising look into the mind of Oskar Schindler. The authors stated that they had met with Oskar Schindler to try “to discover the truth.” They said they tried to write down the conversation exactly as it had taken place and added no editorial comments. They also tried to capture the tone of the lengthy conversation with Schindler. They described “Mr. X” as a “tall, blond man with broad shoulders” who was from forty to fifty years old. What they wanted from Schindler, who, they explained, came “from the other side,” was details on what was really happening to Jews in the General Government. “What does this terrible world look like behind the walls, viewed by one who at best could only be called an ‘objective’ spectator?” The two Jewish leaders were “excited and self-conscious” about meeting with Oskar, who “jovially invited” them to take a seat. There was a third person in the room, a Schaliach (Hebrew, emissary or courier), who gave Oskar a large package that contained “clothing, special brands of cigarettes and toiletry items.” According to Kasztner and Springmann, these items were to be handed over to the SS leader on “whose good will the lives of 20,000 Jews currently depend[ed].”¹⁰⁵

Oskar began the meeting by handing Springmann and Kasztner several letters from Abraham Bankier, Itzhak Stern and Dr. Chaim Hilfstein for people in Palestine. After a brief discussion about the difficulty of getting goods to Jewish prisoners in Poland, Springmann and Kasztner began to question Oskar about conditions there. Oskar was quite open about “the magnitude of the tragedy,” which he described as a chapter of the political mistakes the Germans committed in Europe.” He added that “crushing the skulls of infants with a boot [was] not proper military behavior.” He thought that Germany’s current problems centered around these mistakes and felt that the Wehrmacht had “accomplished great things and could have won the war.” He added that German policies “regarding the defeated nations was a wrong one” and made the point of telling the two JRC representatives that he considered himself an Austrian, and was “not responsible for these ‘mistakes.’ The Prussians [were] to blame instead.”¹⁰⁶ Perhaps Schindler forgot that Adolf Hitler was also an Austrian.

At this point, Kasztner and Springmann interrupted Oskar and wanted to know why the Germans were murdering the Jews. Oskar said that the Prussians had been “breeding militarism for two hundred years.” During this period, they had no time to “develop their intellect.” Now they were playing catch up with other countries that were ahead of them in intellectual development. They had already destroyed the intellectuals in many of the countries they had occupied and added: “You have to admit that the Jews are the most dangerous competitors in the realm of the intellect.”¹⁰⁷ Needless to say, Schindler’s comments about Jews upset Springmann and Kasztner, but they restrained from responding because they were not there “for the sake of polemics.” They noted in the report that they were only interested in the psychological and political reasons for the catastrophe engulfing Europe’s Jews. And they seemed to sense that Oskar knew a lot, though he seemed a bit hesitant to tell everything he knew.¹⁰⁸

The JRC representatives then asked Oskar how many Jews were still in Poland. He replied that there were about seventeen camps in Poland that contained between 220,000 and 250,000 Jews. In addition, he said that there were just as many Jews in hiding, living on Aryan papers, or working for the partisans. Springmann and Kasztner then wanted to know whether there was a universal order to annihilate Jews. If that was true, then why were so many still alive? On the other hand, if there was no such order, why had the Germans already killed so many Jews? Oskar replied that he did not think such an order existed: “I rather assume that each SS leader wanted to outperform the others with annihilation numbers. None of these wanted to risk his career.”¹⁰⁹ But, Schindler added, these SS men did not act on their own. “A higher authority most likely gave them the order to destroy dangerous or useless Jews. They executed this order with the brutality they had already used at home.”¹¹⁰ Schindler then described these SS leaders as “primitive people with bestial instincts” who had served previously in internment camps such as Dachau, where they had become “dull, bestialized.”¹¹¹

But Oskar, who tended to ramble, had still not answered their question about a “universal decree.” Springmann and Kasztner had difficulty believing that mid-level SS leaders could initiate such crimes without orders from above. Oskar said that there was no doubt that someone from above “ordered the annihilation,” though he doubted that their goal was “total annihilation.”¹¹² The two JRC representatives then wondered whether the Jews still alive in Poland had a chance to survive the war. Oskar told them that he was sure that those still alive would survive the war and mentioned Himmler’s decision several weeks earlier to halt the murderous assault against Jewish workers in forced labor situations throughout occupied Poland. Oskar interpreted this to mean that the tendency was obvious: “One wants to preserve the Jewish work force.” He noted that over the past few months, the “smaller camps were liquidated and able Jewish workers from the province were concentrated around industrial centers.”¹¹³

Christopher Browning, in his comments on this shift in policy, wrote that the camps designated for preservation “continued in operation until the approach of the Red Army forced closure, and even then the inmates were not killed on the spot but rather evacuated westward. Moreover, within at least some camps, the murderous regimen was significantly moderated over time. The massive selections and gratuitous killings were curtailed, and death from exhaustion, malnutrition, and disease dropped significantly.” Browning called this a new period of “precarious stability.”¹¹⁴ Oskar Schindler had better insight into this matter than anyone imagined at the time.

Oskar went on to explain that Himmler’s decision to stop the liquidation of the slave labor camps was brought about by the intervention of the Military Economics and Armaments Office (Wirtschaftsstellen; Wehrwirtschafts- und Rüstungsamt). He told Springmann and Kasztner that he had informed the Military Economics and Armaments Office in Kraków that his Jewish workforce produced “40 percent more than Poles.”¹¹⁵ He added that Germany’s military needs had placed a heavy burden on the entire Reich and millions had been drawn from the labor force to fight. Himmler’s recent decree halting the destruction of Jewish workers in the forced labor camps had, according to Schindler, addressed this issue. Kasztner and Springmann were skeptical, and wanted to know whether Himmler’s new order would be respected. Oskar replied, “Somewhat.” He went on to explain that some SS leaders had some problems breaking the habit of shooting from ten to one hundred Jews a day, an obvious allusion to Amon Göth. He said that the situation regarding the Jews that worked in military factories was somewhat different than those in the ghettos because they, to a certain degree, were protected by the military inspectors of each factory. He added that the military had not “identified themselves with the methods of the SS.” Oskar added that he knew of many instances where German soldiers had saved Jews. The Wehrmacht, he stated, had not wanted to submit to the order [Commissar order of June 6, 1941] to shoot Jewish POWs. The SS then insisted that these prisoners be turned over to them, and then shot them. But before the SS did this, they “tested them: if they were circumcised, they were executed.”¹¹⁶

Oskar, unfortunately, had already bought into the myth that became so prevalent among the German public after World War II: that the Wehrmacht had played no role in the mass murders of Jews and other war crimes. This has been substantively disproved by any number of scholars, though some diehards still cling to the myth that the Wehrmacht was an ageless German institution that had been above the horrors committed by the SS. To them, “after the war, the Wehrmacht became every [German] man’s bill to a clean conscience.”¹¹⁷ But for anyone who has spent time investigating the implementation of the Final Solution, particularly in occupied parts of the Soviet Union, the role of the Wehrmacht in the mass killings of Jews and others should come as no surprise. The SS and its Einsatzgruppen could not have murdered the hundreds of thousands it did without the help of the military.

Springmann and Kasztner then asked Oskar whether he knew how many Jews had been killed since the outbreak of the war. Schindler said that this was difficult to answer and the only figure he could give them was one that he got from the SS: from 4 to 4.5 million. Oskar stated that he thought these figures were exaggerated because the SS seemed to take pride in these numbers. He told them that he had heard one SS officer brag about the murder of 18,000 Jews in one afternoon. Another officer quickly tried to “top this with a different or similar story.”¹¹⁸ But the most deadly phase of the Holocaust was already past; it is therefore quite possible that the Germans could have murdered as many as 4 to 4.5 million Jews by the time Schindler met with the JRC representatives in Budapest.

Oskar did not want to let these gruesome details interfere with social matters, so he tried to ease the tension of the moment by ordering liqueurs for everyone in his hotel room. This led Kasztner and Springmann to admit their “inward anxiety” about the meeting. They asked Schindler’s forgiveness as they explained their feelings to him. “Mr. X, forgive us. We sit here and listen to you with apparent calmness. But would you believe that we are not all so calm inwardly.” Oskar was taken back by their comment and took it to mean that they did not trust him. He tried to reassure Springmann and Kasztner that they could trust him and took out his passport and his identity card, which had his photograph on it. He told them that it was “issued by the highest military office in Poland,” which declared him to be the “manager of a military factory.” According to Oskar, his identity card gave him “full freedom to travel across the entire occupied territory.”¹¹⁹ But Oskar failed to grasp the fear both men had of being in German allied territory. Their fears were compounded because they were Jews dealing with a German spy whom they knew little about; Schindler’s impressive credentials probably only increased their anxiety.

But then Oskar took out a letter with “Jewish Forced Labor Camp at Z [Płaszów]. Leader of the S.S. and the Police” printed on the top. The letter, which was signed by “Mr. Y,” [Göth], stated that SS regulations required that all Jewish workers must be accompanied by guards with guns ready to fire whenever they go from Camp Z to their workplace. “Mr. Y” went on to say in the letter that he had personally discovered that Mr. X’s workers had gone to work [at Emalia] without an SS guard and, as a result, Mr. Y would no longer provide him with Jewish workers. Schindler told Kasztner and Springmann that the day he received this letter, he began his “friendship with this S.S. leader [Göth].”¹²⁰ Schindler somehow thought the letter and his explanation about the nature of his “difficult and costly” relationship with Amon Göth would reassure Springmann and Kasztner. Yet, as we have already discussed, it is hard to believe that Schindler’s workers had somehow managed to walk the two miles from Płaszów to Emalia and back without SS escorts. The SS maintained rigid control over their inmates, particularly those who worked outside the camp.¹²¹

Oskar then told them that whenever he went to see Mr. Y after this, he would always bring him five or six bottles of French cognac, Göth’s favorite, which cost Schindler Zł 2,000 to Zł 3,000 ($625–$937.50) apiece on the black market. Schindler, who never mentioned Göth or Płaszów by name, added that Mr. Y had “at least 300,000 Jews on his conscience.” Oskar told them that he hunted with Göth and got drunk with him in an effort to try to make it clear to him that “the murder of the Jew [was] actually senseless and superfluous.” Oskar said that he thought his entreaties had made an impact on Mr. Y because since he had gotten to know him “not even 10 percent of the prior number [were] being shot in the camps overseen by him.” Oskar considered it a “great achievement” that he had convinced Mr. Y to let him use Jews in his factory again because SS leader Y was “famous for the fact that no Jews [left] his hands alive.”¹²²

Schindler then lapsed into another criticism of the SS before Springmann and Kasztner steered him back to a question about what could be done to help the Jews in German-occupied territory. Oskar said that there were three possibilities: “to make money available, [to] send packages with food and medicine, and [to] try to influence the S.S. leaders.”¹²³ To illustrate his first point, Schindler told Springmann and Kasztner that one of their Schaliachs (couriers) came to Kraków and wandered around for two days before discovering that Schindler was at Emalia. If he had not found Oskar there, he could not have delivered the Mantana (Hebrew, gift). Oskar sent the courier to Abraham Bankier, whom Oskar said had “a clear overview of the whole business.” Oskar added: “I can, without worrying, go away for four weeks, and know that he will faithfully substitute for me.”¹²⁴

According to Schindler, Bankier then took care of the matter and turned it over to Dr. Hilfstein, who got it into Płaszów. Oskar went on to explain “how utterly complicated and dangerous it is to carry out such an operation.” It began with the courier’s demand for a receipt, something the Jewish Agency and its couriers always insisted on to insure that the funds were properly delivered. In this particular instance, Schindler and Bankier asked one of their office workers, Ms. Chawera, to witness the signing of the receipt, which she did not want to do because she was afraid it might be a trap. But there were other complications. For example, Schindler wanted to know what would happen if the courier was stopped by a guard, searched, and the receipt was found on him? The police or the SS would then want to know who gave the courier the money. Oskar said that everyone involved in the transfer of the Jewish Agency funds were “gambling with their lives.”¹²⁵

He added that Bankier (“meine Jude”) was the only one at Emalia who knew about the funds from abroad. This is a bit contradictory; after all, Schindler had already mentioned that Dr. Hilfstein and Ms. Chawera knew some details about the illicit funds. It was, Oskar added, essential that only one or two “absolutely dependable people be let in on the secret, but only with the greatest of care, because among five Jews at least two [were] Konfidenten [Polish, konfident; agent or informer].”¹²⁶ He was particularly suspicious of anyone involved with the “Hilfstelle,” evidently a reference to Dr. Michał Weichert’s controversial Jewish Aid Center (jüdische Unterstützungsstelle), the only Jewish aid agency permitted by the Germans to function in Kraków until the summer of 1943 and again during part of 1944.¹²⁷ Oskar reported that on one occasion a “certain Dr.” from the “Hilfstelle” was given special permission by the SS to look into hygienic conditions of Jewish prisoners in surrounding camps and asked permission to visit Schindler’s sub-camp. Schindler called the Gestapo to see whether he should let the physician into the sub-camp. The Gestapo officer said of course he should because the physician in question was “a better Gestapo man” than himself!¹²⁸

Finally, Oskar noted, very little of the money sent by Istanbul through Budapest ever reached Kraków, the implication being that much of the money somehow disappeared along the way. Consequently, Bankier, Hilfstein, and others involved in its receipt wanted to be certain that it was distributed by “competent people.” Schindler assured Springmann and Kasztner that he did not mean to imply that people in Kraków were unappreciative of the Jewish Agency’s funds. It was, in fact, “a great blessing for the people.” They had bought flour with the money and on several occasions 3,000 to 4,000 loaves of extra bread. This not only meant extra food rations for the inmates but also forced the black market price of bread to drop from Zł 130 ($40.65) to Zł 40 to 50 ($12.50–$15.62) a loaf. Schindler, Bankier, and others were also able to buy eighty pairs of shoes for barefoot workers who were forced to get coal from the black market in winter.¹²⁹

The conversation then shifted to a much more sensitive subject: the fate of Jewish children in the General Government. Springmann and Kasztner simply wanted to know whether any children were still alive there. Oskar replied: “Only a very few. They have indeed been exterminated.”¹³⁰ Oskar estimated that about 90 percent of the children up through fourteen years had been “shot or gassed.” Some children, though, were still alive “by accident” because, until six weeks ago, there were still two children’s camps open. There were also children who remained alive because they had “special protection” or were “the children of the police or the Jewish OD men [jüdischer Ordungsdienst].”¹³¹ He knew, for example, of one Jew, “the protegé of an inspector” in Płaszów’s business office, who was able to save his two children because he was an OD man. “Thus only the children who belong to the Jewish police are in the Jewish camps.”¹³²

Oskar said that the fate of the elderly was the same as that for children, particularly those older than fifty. Older inmates did everything they could to look younger, including dying their hair and wearing makeup. But most of those still alive in the camps were between ages fourteen and fifty.¹³³ Schindler was quite sensitive to the question of age and survival. He noted in his 1945 report that he gave in to the requests of his workers to save their parents “even though many of them were not able to work.”¹³⁴ In 1942 and 1943, he employed from two to three hundred “new workers,” even though he had no work for them. He paid the SS Zł 5 ($1.56) a day for these workers because he had to “maintain the reputation that [his] firm did not have enough laborers.” He estimated that it cost him Zł 720,000 ($225,000) to maintain this group of unemployable workers throughout the war.¹³⁵

Kasztner and Springmann then wanted to know the location of those Jews still alive in Poland. Oskar said mainly in Auschwitz. He estimated that there were about 80,000 Jews in Auschwitz but did not know how many of the hundreds of thousands who had been deported there were still alive. His figures were remarkably accurate. Auschwitz records show that on December 31, 1943, there were 85,298 (55,785 men and 29,513 women) prisoners in Auschwitz I, II (Birkenau), and III (Buna-Monowitz). Springmann and Kasztner told Schindler they had heard that Auschwitz was an “extermination camp.” Oskar said that was possible, particularly for the “elderly and children.” He added that he had also heard that Jews were “gassed and burned there.” The Germans, he thought, had “perfected a scientific system there in order to avoid more Katyns,” a reference to the Soviet murder and burial of 4,143 Polish officers in Katyv forest in the spring of 1940.¹³⁶

Another issue raised by the Jewish Agency’s representatives was the question of Tiyyul or escape. Oskar said this would be very difficult because the camps are “very strictly guarded.” He explained that the Jewish OD did not want “to endanger their own positions” and, to prevent escapes, called roll two or three times a day to make sure that every inmate was accounted for. A more serious problem was the Jewish Konfidenten, or informers, who were the “most dangerous.” Oskar noted that one had to deal with five levels of police authority in the General Government: the Gestapo, the German police, the Polish police, the Ukrainian militia, and the Jewish OD men, and you could not bribe them all. But what if you did manage to escape and tried to reach Slovakia or Hungary? “But what if,” Oskar asked, “along the way you are stopped by a Polish police officer who was suspicious of you.” He earned Zł 150 ($46.87) a month and a third of his income came from money he found on Jews trying to escape. Consequently, the Polish police were constantly looking for Jews trying to escape or hide as Aryans to fill their own pockets.¹³⁷

Oskar explained that the only Jews able to escape from Poland were those living outside of the camps. He knew, for example, of one instance in which eighteen extremely wealthy Jews bribed the driver of a German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront) truck, who took them to the Slovak border. The driver hid them in a double floor in the truck. It was stopped at the border, searched, and each of the Jews detained. Sixteen were executed on the spot and two others were returned to Poland. Oskar said that the two Jews who survived were informers. And he knew of hundreds of similar cases of escape attempts.¹³⁸

Schindler was particularly critical of the Jewish OD men in the camps. “You know,” he told Springmann and Kasztner, “I lived in the old Austria and had more respect for Jews then than now.” He explained that the Jewish OD men in the camps “walk around elegantly dressed, almost like the people from the SS.” He added: “They beat their brethren with such devotion that I could not have imagined it.” He recounted a story he had heard about a women’s camp in Lemberg (today: Ukrainian, Lviv; Polish, Lwów), in which a female Jewish camp leader bashed in “fifty to sixty skulls” a week with a piece of wood. He went on: “As a German, I do not know if I would have been capable of conducting myself [like this] in a camp of Germans.”¹³⁹ The camp Oskar was referring to was the Janówksa forced labor camp in the suburbs of Lviv, where 30,000 to 40,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.¹⁴⁰

It is difficult to know how Kasztner and Springmann reacted to Oskar’s criticism of other Jews because they tried to keep their own emotions out of their report. But his remarks did prompt them to ask again whether he thought a “Tiul” (Tiyyul), or rescue, was possible. Oskar said that you could rescue some people, but only individuals or groups of two or three, and then only after a great deal of preparation. If this was so, the two JRC representatives asked, did the Jews in the General Government have any money they could use to help themselves or could they “help themselves in other ways”? Oskar explained that some Jews had hidden a lot of money. He noted, for example, that during a recent body search at Emalia, which was made under threat of death, the SS discovered “six large laundry baskets with gold, dollars, diamonds, gold watches, złoty, etc.”¹⁴¹ These goods were seized without receipts and taken to Göth’s house, where a third of it “turned to dust,” meaning it disappeared into Göth’s pockets. The rest was turned over to the general SS camp fund. But Schindler admitted that there were only a few Jews with “hidden wealth” and it was often hidden in places now inaccessible to them. So it was important for the Jewish Agency to supply financial resources to help Jews in Płaszów and Emalia.¹⁴²

Springmann and Kasztner then wanted to know whether it was possible to influence SS leaders in Poland to help Jews. Oskar never really answered this question. Instead, he lapsed into an overview of his own career. He mentioned that it disappointed him when the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, which was one of the reasons he went to Poland. He was proud of the life he had built there, where he earned more than Zł 100,000 ($30,769) a month. He added that he “hoped to carry on” his business in “peace time as well.” This is the first hint Oskar gave of his postwar plans.¹⁴³

At some point in this part of the conversation, at least according to Oskar, Dr. Kasztner told Oskar that his efforts to help Jews were well known in “Israel.” Oskar said in his 1955 report to Yad Vashem that Dr. Kasztner suggested that he should try to “take even more Jews into [his] protection without shying away from material sacrifices.” When Oskar returned to Kraków, Dr. Kasztner sent him lists of names of prominent Jews, “who, upon the wish of Israeli organizations, should be looked for in the camps and brought to [his] factory and be placed under [his] protection.” Oskar was proud of his success in fulfilling Dr. Kasztner’s wish, and had managed to find sixteen to eighteen people on these lists, whom he brought to Emalia.¹⁴⁴

Kasztner and Springmann ended their lengthy meeting with Schindler by asking questions about the Jewish Warsaw ghetto uprising that took place from April 19 to May 16, 1943. Oskar said he had heard that a Jewish self-defense organization had been created that “had let wagons with cement derail, built themselves bunkers, bought guns from Italian and German soldiers, and executed suspicious Jews that might betray them.”¹⁴⁵ He estimated that 120,000 to 150,000 Jews were still living in the ghetto when the uprising took place. The uprising, Oskar said, lasted two to three weeks. He described it as a “heroic chapter in [the history] of Polish Jewry.” He added: “In their desperation they wanted to salvage the honor of the Polish Jews, when everything else already seemed hopeless.”¹⁴⁶ He told Springmann and Kasztner that 50,000 Jews escaped from the ghetto along the canals of the Vistula river during the fighting. He did not know what happened to those who escaped. Oskar had heard, though, that Jewish girls had fired at tanks using 0.8 caliber revolvers. Tens of thousand of Jews died in the uprising and the ghetto was burned to the ground, along with “an immense amount of valuables.” He noted that an international commission [Polish Red Cross] on its way to Katyv to investigate the Soviet massacre reported that it could hear the shootings in the distance and see the fires from the ghetto.¹⁴⁷

Needless to say, Oskar’s account of the uprising is not completely accurate, though it does show that he continued to have good contacts with the SS and the Wehrmacht. It is possible that he got his information on the Warsaw uprising from a security conference held in Kraków on May 31, 1943, where the Jewish revolt was discussed. Evidently, there were those in the General Government who were concerned about the loss of the Warsaw ghetto’s sizable work force. The Warsaw ghetto was the largest in the General Government and at its peak in the spring of 1941 contained 450,000 Jews crammed into an area of about 760 acres. In the summer of 1942, the Germans began clearing the Warsaw ghetto of Jews and between July and September shipped 300,000 of its residents to nearby Treblinka and death. By the time the uprising took place the following spring, there were only about 60,000 Jews left in the Warsaw ghetto. The uprising was led by the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB; Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa), which drew its membership from twenty-two other Jewish groups. Seven hundred to 750 Jewish young people, armed with pistols, ten rifles, a few machines guns, 2,000 Molotov cocktails, and unbridled courage, took part in the rebellion. They faced the best military power the SS could throw at them, and they kept Himmler’s best troops at bay for almost a month. The commander of the SS operation, SS-Gruppenführer Jürgen Stroop, a specialist in antipartisan warfare, said in his final report on May 24, 1943, to the General Government’s HSSPF Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger, that his units had apprehended 56,065 Jews, which included 7,000 who had been killed in the uprising and a similar number sent to Treblinka. More than likely, these estimates are exaggerated, as were Stroop’s estimates of the number of Germans killed and wounded in the ghetto’s rebellion. Stroop added that his units had destroyed 631 bunkers, and captured eight rifles, fifty-nine pistols, a few hundred hand grenades and Molotov cocktails, some homemade weapons, and a large amount of ammunition.¹⁴⁸

At some point in the lengthy discussion about ways to help the Jews in Poland, Springmann and Kasztner asked Oskar about the prospect of going to Turkey to work with the Jewish Agency there and “informing prominent people about the situation of the Jews in Poland and the terrible consequences of the SS policies (liquidation of ghettos, opening of death camps) [on them].”¹⁴⁹ In particular, they mentioned a possible meeting with the American ambassador to Turkey, Lawrence Steinhardt, himself Jewish. Though Steinhardt, American’s wartime ambassador to Ankara, “had been rather hesitant on Jewish matters before 1944, once President Roosevelt ordered the creation of the War Refugee Board (WRB) in early 1944,” Steinhardt became a “staunch supporter of any serious rescue plan put forward” by Jewish organizations interested in rescuing Jews.¹⁵⁰

Oskar said the trip to Turkey never took place, though he fretted because Dr. Sedlacek had taken his passport to get him a visa but had never returned it. Given the time frame of the invitation in relation to the creation of the War Refugee Board and increased American efforts to do more to aid Europe’s Jews, Oskar’s trip probably became less valuable than originally thought, particularly considering the risks involved to the entire Jewish Agency network across Central and Eastern Europe. And it was not as though there was not already ample evidence about the atrocities being committed by the Germans and their collaborators against the Jews. In his Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and the American Knew, Richard Breitman has provided documentation showing that a steady flow of such information to the American and British governments took place well before Schindler met Springmann and Kasztner in Budapest in late 1943. The failure of the United States and Great Britain to give these reports serious consideration is a matter unrelated to Oskar Schindler.¹⁵¹

Yet one always wonders a little bit about the veracity of some aspects of Schindler’s accounts of his wartime activities. There is no doubt that Oskar, often at the instigation of those Schindlerjuden closest to him, tried to put the best light possible on his actions during the war. For the most part, though, his accounts hold up pretty well to what historical documents we have that relate to his activities. Itzhak Stern talks about Oskar’s relationship with Dr. Sedlacek, and even remembered the latter’s visits to Kraków. Joseph Brand and Resz~e Kasztner also mentioned Schindler’s visit to Budapest in their postwar accounts. And there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of their report, “The Confessions of Mr. X,” particularly in light of some of the blunt statements made by Oskar during their meeting. “The Confessions of Mr. X” does not try to sugarcoat the ideas and feelings of Oskar Schindler, no matter how insensitive they might have been. But the report also showed how well connected Oskar was to the SS, particularly when it came to policies towards Jews in the General Government.¹⁵²

The meeting with Kasztner and Springmann was not the only one that Oskar had during his brief stay in Budapest in late 1943. One evening, Dr. Sedlacek took Oskar to meet one of Abwehr’s more infamous agents in the Hungarian capital, Dr. Schmidt, the head of Admiral Canaris’s operations there. Joel Brand had first met Dr. Schmidt in a private room in the Moulin Rouge, a well-known night club in Budapest. Joseph Winniger, another Abwehr agent in Budapest, introduced Brand to Schmidt. “So you are Herr Brand, are you?” Schmidt said when he met Brand. “You want to help the ‘children,’ and I am ready to work with you in this. But we’ll always refer to them as ‘children’ and nothing else. You understand?”¹⁵³ “Children” was often the word Oskar Schindler used to describe his Jews.

But Schmidt and his agents did not work for nothing; in fact, according to Brand, money was all they were interested in. They “paid scant heed to humane considerations.”¹⁵⁴ But Va’ada, and later the JRC, would pay the Abwehr agents only for results, which often created problems. When Oskar met Dr. Schmidt on one of his visits to Budapest, he came away with the same negative impression of him as Joel Brand. In fact, Joel Brand’s memoirs and the “Confessions of Mr. X” suggest that Oskar was not considered part of Dr. Schmidt’s greedy Abwehr entourage. This was because Dr. Sedlacek, Oskar’s contact with JRC representatives in Budapest, was ashamed of Dr. Schmidt and men like him. He appealed simply to Oskar Schindler’s humanity, and this became the key to Oskar’s willingness to work with the JRC.¹⁵⁵

Oskar said that Dr. Sedlacek told him that Schmidt, a journalist, was an Austrian emigrant who had settled in Hungary. Schindler, Sedlacek, and Schmidt had dinner one evening in the Gellert Hotel in Budapest. All Schmidt wanted to talk about was “construction parts purchases, housing projects, and horse races.”¹⁵⁶ To Oskar, Schmidt “seemed like an imposter.” He said that Dr. Sedlacek told him that Dr. Schmidt had already made a lot of money exchanging money from Jewish aid agencies in Turkey and Palestine. The Gestapo finally caught up with Schmidt and arrested him. The Gestapo found “various quarter-kilo blocks of platinum and jewelry,” all derived from the “embezzlement of Jewish money,” in the apartment of Schmidt’s girlfriend.¹⁵⁷

Oskar Schindler’s first visit to Budapest during the war had not gone well and he returned to Kraków in a bad mood. According to Itzhak Stern, he was “furious because the Jews he had negotiated with did not yet believe what was happening in the camp.”¹⁵⁸ But this did not keep him from continuing to work with Dr. Sedlacek and the Jewish Agency. Oskar made several trips to Budapest to visit Dr. Sedlacek and others working with the Jewish aid organization. Dr. Sedlacek, in turn, visited Oskar six or seven times in Kraków. According to Thomas Keneally, on one of these visits, Oskar managed to bring Sedlacek and a companion, Babar, who openly carried a small camera with him, into Płaszów. They were escorted by Amon Göth. Oskar did not mention this visit in any of his postwar accounts. Keneally got his information from Itzhak Stern’s 1956 report to Yad Vashem. It makes fascinating reading.¹⁵⁹

According to Stern, in July 1943, an OD man told Stern that Oskar Schindler wanted him to see him at his office in Emalia. Stern said that he had an SS contact who periodically let him visit Schindler at his factory, so this request was not unique. But on this occasion, Stern had a high fever and told the OD man that he could not make it. Soon, though, word came back that Oskar desperately wanted to see him. When he arrived at Oskar’s upstairs office in Emalia, Stern was introduced to two men. Keneally said it was Sedlacek and the mysterious “Babar,” though Stern never identified them by name in his report. The two agents asked Stern about conditions in Płaszów, which made him suspicious of both of them. He took Oskar aside and asked who they were. Oskar told Stern that they were spies from Hungary and Turkey “working for both sides.”¹⁶⁰ Stern said that he then gave them details about conditions in Płaszów.¹⁶¹

Oskar then called Amon Göth and told him that he was hosting guests for a few days and wanted to invite him to a party for them. During the party, which included, according to Stern, drunken women, Göth invited Oskar and his two mysterious guests to Płaszów to show them his workshops. Göth told Stern and others that it was important that everything worked well during the visit. The implication here is that somehow Göth thought Oskar’s guests were important dignitaries. Göth met the Schindler party at his office and escorted them as they walked through the camp. But before they left the administration building, Schindler told Göth that he needed to talk with Stern about one of his orders. Schindler and Stern decided that as soon as the visiting party walked out of the administration building, Stern would follow. At the point where Jewish gravestones had been used to pave one of the camp’s roads, Stern was to stop and tie his shoes. One of the visitors, who had a small camera, would then take pictures of the broken tombstones. In fact, “Babar” took pictures throughout the camp. Stern reported that both men were caught at the border as they tried to return to Hungary and the film was seized and destroyed, though he added that “some of the pictures did get through.”¹⁶²

There is no reason to doubt Stern’s account of the visit of these mysterious guests to Emalia and Płaszów, though his dates do not coincide with Schindler’s initial contacts with Abwehr and the Jewish Agency. Possibly Stern was off a year and the visit took place in 1944 instead of 1943. Then there is the question of the identity of both men. If they were stopped at the border and discovered to have sensitive film or photographs on them, one would assume they were arrested for carrying such contraband. If this took place in the summer of 1944 instead of 1943, we cannot be certain that one of the visitors was Dr. Sedlacek because we can trace his activities in Budapest only through the spring of 1944. According to Joseph Brand, after the German occupation of Hungary, Sedlacek and other Abwehr agents tried to inject themselves into Brand’s negotiations with Adolf Eichmann in the spring of 1944 over the exchange of Jewish lives for 10,000 trucks, food, and selected war matériel. Brand said that Sedlacek and his cronies did this because they were “afraid they would be completely eliminated and unable to earn any more money if [their] group were to bargain directly with the security service of the SS and with Istanbul.”¹⁶³ Brand, who had become frustrated with Abwehr, now considered them worse than the SS. His negotiations with Eichmann never bore fruit in part because of German insincerity and Allied opposition to any scheme that might strengthen the German war effort. In the meantime, Dr. Rudi Sedlacek disappeared.¹⁶⁴

Oskar’s Schindler’s decision to become more directly involved in efforts to save his Jewish workers coincided with the decline of Germany’s military fortunes after the Battle of Stalingrad. By the time he made his first trip to Budapest for talks with Jewish Agency representatives, the Red Army had captured Kiev, the capital of the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Big Three, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, were about to meet in Teheran to approve plans for the invasion of France the following summer. By early 1944, Soviet forces had breached the old frontier with Poland. And though it would be another seventeen months before the war in Europe ended, Germans such as Oskar Schindler had to confront the likelihood of the collapse and defeat of the Third Reich. Most factory owners ultimately abandoned their operations in Kraków and made plans to return home with the money they had made in Poland. Oskar Schindler, though, followed a path that ultimately cost him his wartime fortune. As he slowly began to make plans in 1944 for the war’s end, he chose to flee, though not with Emilie or one of his mistresses. Instead, he decided to return to his homeland with as many Jewish workers as he could. If his efforts to help and protect his Jewish workers until this period were remarkable, what was about to happen in 1944 bordered on the miraculous; indeed, the idea that one person could save almost 1,100 Jews in the heart of the Holocaust’s principal killing fields can be seen in no other light. Yet the events leading up to the transfer of almost 1,100 Jews from various camps to Oskar Schindler’s factory camp in Brünnlitz near his hometown of Svitavy were neither simple nor purely moralistic. In fact, events, and the people who pushed Schindler’s Jews along the path to salvation, were often driven by less than ideal motives. The reality of the story of the famous “Schindler’s List” is very different from the one that has entered the popular history of the Holocaust.