In memory of the millions we lost and in honor of the billions who find them worth remembering.
And dedicated to a couple who saved one and so saved them all.
Oskar Schindler is the only businessman I have ever heard of whose goal was to lose all of his money. A man who initially employed Jews because they were the cheapest labor, he would later do the exact opposite, buying as many Jews as he could (some of them paying their way) for his fake factory, which supposedly produced metal goods such as pots and bombs, and turned out precious little that could be used to hurt anyone:
The Jews who arrived at Schindler's new factory at Brunnlitz numbered over a thousand. Schindler also rescued an estimated 85 Jews who had been sent from Auschwitz-Birkenau to a nearby Nazi labor camp at Golleschau. The Jews were put to work at the factory producing munitions, but it is said that Schindler sabotaged the production line so that little of any value ever left the factory.
In later years, he would attempt commercially successful enterprises, and they would fail. They would also be fueled in significant part by Jews he had rescued.
One Jew Schindler had rescued, Leopold Page (born Poldek Pfefferberg), was a Polish citizen and high school teacher who joined the Polish army as a lieutenant when Germany invaded Poland and shut down the school he'd been teaching at.
Page was wounded in action and, after being arrested and escaping arrest, sent to a hospital near where he eventually ended up: in a concentration camp at Płaszów.
There he met Oskar Schindler, who saved him and his wife (they'd met as a result of Page's hospitalization) by marking them as necessary workers.
Schindler saved the lives of the Pfefferbergs and around 1,194 other Jews (and two non-Jews) by spending basically every pfennig his family had (his father had been a successful businessman) and selling his wife’s jewels and most anything that would fetch any money. He also had the help of some seed money from some of the Jews he saved in exchange for their savings — which may seem shady, but shouldn’t. He needed money, and they had it.
Various reports say Schindler spent 4 million Reichsmarks keeping his Jews safe. Those various reports also note what a huge sum of money that was in 1945. For some context, consider that in 1945, the federal minimum wage in America was 40 cents per hour, and a German or foreign unskilled worker (which Schindler's Jews were) "[earned] about 64.1 pfennig per hour or [Reichsmark] 38 to 60 per week," which plausibly gives us an exchange rate of one penny per one and a half pfennigs (and yes, those words should look similar). A Reichsmark was worth 100 pfennigs, so that's $3 million Schindler spent keeping his Schindlerjuden alive. $3 million, in 1945 in America, would have been enough to buy 600 houses.
(Sidenote: One Reichsmark equal to 100 [Reichs]pfennigs ... a small wonder we didn't start calling our pennies Freedom Pieces or something similarly hate-mongering.)
For his heroism, Schindler was basically banished from Germany. His citizenship was revoked. "He couldn't go to America":
Threats from former Nazis meant that he felt insecure in post-war Germany, and he applied for an entry permit to the United States. This was refused as he had been a member of the Nazi party.
(Read everything at that last link. Everyone — at DKos and everywhere else — needs to know about Emilie Schindler.)
Two years after the Schindlerjugen were liberated, Page and Schindler were playing cards in Munich. Page promised Schindler that he "would make him a household name for his heroism."
Schindler, his wife and his mistress then moved to Argentina. Eight years and various failed businesses later, Schindler moved back to Germany without his wife or mistress. He went to Israel "[e]very spring for the rest of his life [...] for several weeks to bask in the admiration of the Schindlerjuden and their offspring, whom he regarded with great affection as his own family."
Oskar Schindler died in Germany in 1974 and was buried in Jerusalem.
Six years after Schindler died, an Australian novelist was in Beverly Hills by complete chance:
[Thomas] Keneally was in Italy for an Australian film festival, and was scheduled to return to Australia through the Persian Gulf and Singapore. Instead, his publisher called him to the United States for a book tour. He wound up in Los Angeles, and in those days there were only two flights per week to Australia, for adventurous space travelers.
He happened upon Page's leather goods store while searching for a store where he could buy a new briefcase. More than a few minutes (blessed Australian credit card in 1980) and a tremendous discount later, "just to keep him listening," Page had sold Thomas Keneally on something far more important than a briefcase: the story of Schindler's Jews. Oh, and delaying his flight back to Australia.
Page's diligence — lots of facts get reported differently depending on the site, but everyone talks about how Page would not let die the name of the man who had kept him alive — resulted in an award-winning book two years later whose dedication reads thus:
To the memory of Oskar Schindler, and to Leopold Pfefferberg, who by zeal and persistence caused this book to be written.
But Page's job was not done. He called Steven Spielberg weekly until Spielberg finally relented (based on Page's calls and some other factors -- including, according to film historian Joseph McBride, Roman Polanski's refusal because his mother had been gassed in Auschwitz) and agreed to make the movie.
Taking on the project took everything Spielberg had. According to McBride's biography of Spielberg, the director refused to be paid for making the film, which was shot documentary-style, as previous Holocaust movies had been. Spielberg also tossed his normal bag of tricks for Schindler's List, saying he "got rid of the crane, got rid of the Steadicam, got rid of the zoom lenses, got rid of everything that for me might be considered a safety net" (McBride).
After everything was done, Spielberg didn't think the film would be financially successful. Six months later, he found out just how wrong he was. The film would earn $321 million at box offices worldwide and earn critical acclaim at the Oscars, Golden Globes and Grammys.
In his acceptance speech at the Oscars, after opening by noting that he had never held an Oscar before, Spielberg said:
This never could have happened, this never could have gotten started, without a survivor named Poldek Pfefferberg, who Oskar Schindler saved from Auschwitz, from Belsen. He's the man ... he's the man who talked Thomas Keneally into writing the book. I owe him such a debt — all of us owe him such a debt. He has carried the story of Oskar Schindler to all of us. A complete — a man of complete obscurity who makes us wish and hope for Oskar Schindlers in all of our lives. I have to thank — I want to thank — Sid Sheinberg for giving me the book — thank you, Sid. I want to thank Steve Zaillian for a screenplay of inordinate restraint. I have great actors in this movie — Liam, thank you; Ralph, thank you; Ben Kingsley, thank you. I want to thank my wife, who's here with me tonight, for rescuing me 92 days in a row in Krakow, Poland, last winter, when things got just too unbearable. And my mom, who's here, who is my lucky charm, whom I love very, very much. And ... and to the 6 million who ... who can't be watching this among the 1 billion watching this telecast tonight. Thank you.
In any story like this, the most powerful words come not from a humble researcher looking for hard facts in a story about a soft-hearted man but from those who lived through the reign of terror of a man with no love lost for hearts or facts. So I leave you with this quotation from the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, on April 21, 1994, in remarks to the House of Representatives:
In the words of Rabbi Levertow: 'I, as a Rabbi should believe only in one God. But, I have to admit, for me there are two Gods; the second one is Oskar Schindler.'
Schindler's List in 9-minute promotional clips, starting with this one, on YouTube. Donate to the Shoah Foundation.
(Diarist's note, comments and links for further information:
Part of the difficulty in writing this diary has lain in securing firm dates and facts. Research on the liberation of Brněnec gives May 9-11 as the date of the liberation and between one lone cavalry officer and many more than one. Internet postings on the end of Spielberg’s filming give between 71 and 74 days, starting from March 1, and do not say if he took any days off. In his acceptance speech at the Oscars in 1994, Spielberg said his wife saved him 92 days in a row, which could be a reference to the time taken to film the movie or something else. This site's reference to a late May ending date is consistent with Spielberg's speech.
Sources differ on what Schindler’s plant was supposed to be making: enamelware, pots and pans, weapons. One source says kitchenware and munitions were supposed to be made. I have seen enough references to each, and enough entries for Metallarbeiterin (metal female worker) and various factory positions (lots of mechanics), to believe that Oskar Schindler was serious about looking like he was operating a lot of equipment that used a lot of metal.
Sources differ on the number of Jews the Schindlers took with them as bodyguards. This site says six accompanied him, and it gives their names. Other sources say eight accompanied Schindler.
Sources differ on the number of Jews Schindler saved — between roughly 900 and 1300. This is one easily perusable list I have found of the people (whose codes can be translated here), and it contains 1092 names, by my count. This is consistent with the 1096 claimed here; as mentioned above, some of them died despite Schindler's every effort.
Sources differ on the presence of an official typed list at any time. I think the evidence for such a list is fairly strong. This site says Schindler wrote two lists: one with the names and jobs of 1,196 Jews (I counted), the other with a number that has been reported variously as 900, over 1000, 1100, 1200 and nearly 1300. This list contains brief personal stories of some of the Jews Schindler saved. Truly, I say to you, read it and weep. Weep for the hundreds upon hundreds saved and the millions upon millions of Jews and others lost.
While looking for related information, I found one more survivor's account. He was not a Schindlerjude, but this is my diary, and I'm including him. Hey, you outlive the man trying to exterminate you, you get this much. Who's complaining? And here is a letter detailing yet more humanitarian work done by Schindler during World War II.
This site says there was no original list as indicated in the movie, and what list did exist was compiled by Schindler's longtime accountant, Isaac (Itzhak) Stern. This site has scans of pages that look like they could have come from Schindler's factory. The names are listed by ID number, and subtracting the smallest (minus 1, for fairly obvious mathematical reasons) from the largest yields 996 people, which may reflect some 10 percent of Schindler's Jews dying (despite the on-site hospital he kept as stocked as he could) between the time he paid for them and the time the camp was liberated. I have found enough sources disagreeing so generally about the number of Jews Schindler saved that I do not think I will find a more specific answer without digging that I really do not know how to do.
Many sources have detailed Oskar Schindler's personal faults. He was generally a poor businessman, very fond of alcohol (which arguably served him well in World War II Germany), and very fond of women he was not married to. For this diary, at least, I don't really care. The focus should be on the good he did when so many people were doing bad or doing nothing, not the things he did that plenty of other people were also doing.
Were this a diary meant for amusement rather than education, the dates would be conflated, the facts fixed or changed to heighten the storyline. As a researcher, I find such unannotated creative license unjustifiable in work meant to educate, even given the incredible poignancy of having the filming finish on the 48th anniversary of its subjects' liberation. I have thus noted where accounts differ on details of varying importance.
Lastly, my diary title indicates that the liberation occurred on May 11. Some accounts present the liberation date slightly earlier in the month.
The reader is invited to contemplate the importance of the exactitude of these facts and to submit additional information to help solidify them.)
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