Schindler's Ark

CHAPTER 18

Dr. Sedlacek had promised an uncomfortable journey, and so it was. Oskar traveled in a good overcoat with a suitcase and a bag full of various comforts which he badly needed by the end of the trip. Though he had the appropriate travel documents, he did not want to have to use them. It was considered better if he did not have to present them at the border. He could always then deny that he had been to Hungary that December.

He rode in a freight van filled with bundles of the Party newspaper, Vólkischer Beobachter, for sale in Hungary. Closeted with the redolence of printer’s ink and among the heavy Gothic print of Germany’s official newspaper, he was rocked south over the winter-sharp mountains of Slovakia, across the Hungarian border, and down to the valley of the Danube.

A reservation had been made for him at the Pannonia, near the University, and on the afternoon of his arrival, little Samu Springmann and an associate of his, Dr. Rezso Kastner, came to see him. The two men who rose to Schindler’s floor in the elevator had heard fragments of news from refugees. But refugees could give you little but threads. The fact that they had avoided the threat meant that they knew little of its geography, its intimate functioning, the numbers it ran to. Kastner and Springmann were full of anticipation, since—if Sedlacek could be believed—the Sudeten German upstairs could give them the whole cloth, the first full-bodied report on the Polish havoc.

In the room the introductions were brief, for Springmann and Kastner had come to listen and they could tell that Schindler was anxious to talk. There was no effort, in this city obsessed with coffee, to formalize the event by calling Room Service for coffee and cakes. Kastner and Springmann, after shaking the enormous German by the hand, sat down. But Schindler paced. It seemed that far from Cracow and the realities of Aktion and ghetto, his knowledge disturbed him more than it had when he’d briefly informed Sedlacek. He rampaged across the carpet. They would have heard his steps in the room below—their chandelier would have shaken when he stamped his foot, miming the action of the SS man in the execution squad in Krakusa, the one who’d pinned his victim’s head down with a boot in full sight of the red child at the tail of the departing column.

He began with personal images of the cruel parishes of Cracow, what he had beheld in the streets or heard from either side of the wall, from Jews and from the SS. In that connection, he said, he was carrying letters from members of the ghetto, from the physician Chaim Hilfstein, from Dr. Leon Salpeter, from Itzhak Stern. Dr. Hilfstein’s letter, said Schindler, was a report on hunger. “Once the body fat’s gone,” said Oskar, “it starts to work on the brain.”

The ghettos were being wound down, Oskar told them. It was true equally of Warsaw as of Łódź and of Cracow. The population of the Warsaw ghetto had been reduced by four-fifths, Łódź by two-thirds, Cracow by half. Where were the people who had been transferred? Some were in work camps; but the gentlemen here this afternoon had to accept that at least three-fifths of them had disappeared into camps that used the new scientific methods. Such camps were not exceptional. They had an official SS name—Vernichtungslager: Extermination Camp.

In the past few weeks, said Oskar, some 2,000 Cracow ghetto dwellers had been rounded up and sent not to the chambers of Bełżec, but to labor camps near the city. One was at Wieliczka, one at Prokocim, both of these being railway stations on the Ostbahn line which ran toward the Russian front. From Wieliczka and Prokocim, these prisoners were being marched every day to a site at the village of Płaszów, on the edge of the city, where the foundations for a vast labor camp were being laid.

Their life in such a labor camp, said Schindler, would be no holiday—the barracks of Wieliczka and Prokocim were under the command of an SS NCO named Horst Pilarzik who had earned a reputation last June when he had helped clear from the ghetto some 7,000 people, of whom only one, a chemist, had returned. The proposed camp at Płaszów would be under a man of the same caliber. What was in favor of the labor camps was that they lacked the technical apparatus for methodical slaughter. There was a different rationale behind them. They had economic reasons for existing—prisoners from Wieliczka and Prokocim were marched out every day to work on various projects, just as they were from the ghetto.

Wieliczka, Prokocim, and the proposed camp at Płaszów were under the control of the chiefs of police for Cracow, Julian Scherner and Rolf Czurda, whereas the Vernichtungslagers were run by the central management of the SS Administrative and Economic Main Office at Oranienburg near Berlin. The Vernichtungslagers also used people as labor for a time, but their ultimate industry was death and its by-products—the recycling of the clothes, of remaining jewelry or spectacles, of toys, and even of the skin and hair of the dead.

In the midst of explaining the distinction between extermination camps and those for forced labor, Schindler suddenly stepped toward the door, wrenched it open, and looked up and down the empty hallway. “I know the reputation of this city for eavesdropping,” he explained. Little Mr. Springmann rose and came to his elbow. “The Pannonia isn’t so bad,” he told Oskar in a low voice. “It’s the Victoria that’s the Gestapo hotbed.”

Schindler surveyed the hallway once more, closed the door, and returned across the room. He stood by the windows and continued his grim report. The forced-labor camps would be run by men appointed for their severity and efficiency in clearing the ghettos. There would be sporadic murders and beatings, and there would certainly be corruption involving food and therefore short rations for the prisoners. But that was preferable to the assured death of the Vernichtungslagers. People in the labor camps could get access to extra comforts, and individuals could be taken out and smuggled to Hungary.

These SS men are as corruptible as any other police force, then? the gentleman of the Budapest rescue committee asked Oskar. “In my experience,” growled Oskar, “there isn’t one of them who isn’t.”

When Oskar finished, there was, of course, silence. Kastner and Springmann were not readily astounded. All their lives they’d lived under the intimidation of the Secret Police. Their present activities were both vaguely suspected by the Hungarian police—rendered safe only by Samu’s contacts and bribes—and at the same time disdained by respectable Jewry. Samuel Stern, for example, president of the Jewish Council, member of the Hungarian Senate, would dismiss this afternoon’s report by Oskar Schindler as pernicious fantasy, an insult to German culture, a reflection on the decency of the intentions of the Hungarian Government. These two were used to hearing the worst.

So it was not that Springmann and Kastner were unmanned by Schindler’s testimony as much as that their minds were painfully expanding. Their resources seemed minute now that they knew what they were set against—not just any average and predictable Philistine giant, but Behemoth itself. Perhaps already they were reaching for the idea that as well as individual bargaining—some extra food for this camp, rescue for this intellectual, a bribe to temper the professional ardor of this SS man—some vaster rescue scheme would have to be arranged at breathtaking expense.

Schindler threw himself into a chair. Samu Springmann looked across at the exhausted industrialist. He had made an enormous impression on them, said Springmann. They would, of course, send a report to Istanbul on all Oskar had told them. It would be used to stir the Palestinian Zionists and the Joint Distribution Committee to greater action. At the same time it would be transmitted to the governments of Churchill and Roosevelt. Springmann said that he thought Oskar was right to worry about people’s belief in what he’d say; he was right to say it was all incredible. ”Therefore,” said Samu Springmann, “I urge you to go to Istanbul yourself and speak to the people there.” After a little hesitation—whether to do with the demands of the enamelware business or with the dangers of crossing so many borders—Schindler agreed. Toward the end of the year, said Springmann. “In the meantime you will see Dr. Sedlacek in Cracow regularly.”

They stood up, and Oskar could see that they were changed men. They thanked him and left, becoming simply, on the way downstairs, two pensive Budapest professional men who’d heard disturbing news of mismanagement in the branch offices.

That night Dr. Sedlacek called at Oskar’s hotel and took him out into the brisk streets to dinner at the Hotel Gellert. From their table they could see the Danube, its illuminated barges, the city glowing on the far side of the water. It was like a prewar city, and Schindler began to feel like a tourist again. After his afternoon’s temperance, he drank the dense Hungarian burgundy called Bull’s Blood with a slow, assiduous thirst, and created a rank of empty bottles at their table.

Halfway through their meal they were joined by an Austrian journalist, Dr. Schmidt, who’d brought with him his mistress, an exquisite, golden Hungarian girl. Schindler admired the girl’s jewelry and told her that he was a great fancier of gems himself. But over apricot brandy, he became less friendly. He sat with a mild frown, listening to Schmidt talk of real estate prices and automobile dealings and horse races. The girl listened raptly to Schmidt, since she wore the results of his business coups around her neck and at her wrists. But Oskar’s unexpected disapproval was clear. Dr. Sedlacek was secretly amused: perhaps Oskar was seeing a partial reflection of his own new wealth, his own tendencies toward trading on the fringes.

When the dinner was over, Schmidt and his girl left for some nightclub, and Sedlacek made sure he took Schindler to a different one. They sat drinking unwise further quantities of barack and watching the floor show.

“That Schmidt,” said Schindler, wanting to clear up the question so that he could enjoy the small hours. “Do you use him?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you ought to use men like that,” said Oskar. “He’s a thief.”

Dr. Sedlacek turned his face, and its half-smile, away.

“How can you be sure he delivers any of the money you give him?” Oskar asked.

“We let him keep a percentage,” said Dr. Sedlacek.

Oskar thought about it for a full half-minute. Then he murmured, “I don’t want a damned percentage. I don’t want to be offered one.” “Very well,” said Sedlacek.

“Let’s watch the girls,” said Oskar.