Uphill battle for group that wants to save Oskar Schindler’s factory
With costs for a museum in the millions, and locals’ recollection of Holocaust hero as pro-Nazi womanizer, Czech plant’s future is in doubt
A Czech foundation is seeking to preserve and restore the factory where Oskar Schindler saved some 1,200 Jews from the Nazis, but the initiative has faced some pushback from locals, many of which have a far from positive view of the industrialist.
Jaroslav Novak, a local writer, set up the Shoah and Oskar Schindler Memorial Endowment Memorial Foundation to fight for the establishment of a museum at the derelict plant in the village of Brněnec, in Bohemia.
Though Novak’s foundation now owns the historic site, he lacks the funds to carry out the plan. He is hoping that the European Union and Jewish organizations will enlist to assist him.
“This is the only Nazi concentration camp in the Czech Republic that is still standing in its original building,” he told the Guardian. “You cannot allow it and the whole history of Schindler to disappear. I have been fighting for this for 20 years.”
Schindler was an industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who saved Jews by employing them in his factory during World War II.
In the winter of 1944, as the war neared its end and the Nazis rushed to destroy concentration camps and prisoners, Schindler moved some 1,200 Jews from his enamelware factory in Krakow, where they faced near-certain death in Auschwitz, to Brněnec.
He is widely regarded as a hero (not least thanks to Steven Spielberg’s 1994 movie Schindler’s List, based on Thomas Keneally’s 1982 book Schindler’s Ark), and was recognized by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1993 — the honor bestowed upon non-Jews who courageously saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust.
But in the Czech Republic, some view Schindler wholly differently.
Many locals remember the entrepreneur chiefly for his pre-war espionage on behalf of Nazi Germany — Schindler was a Czechoslovakian who was born in the separatist Sudetenland before its annexation by Germany. Others recall him as a gambler, drinker and womanizer.
Jitka Gruntova, a former Communist MP, described Schindler as “a traitor and a war criminal” in a book.
Gruntova also claims Schindler’s work to save Jews was “a made-up legend” and that any testimonies in his favor were fabricated.
“I have found no evidence of Schindler saving prisoners,” she told the Guardian. “I’ve come to the conclusion he was only saving himself — mostly by writing a postwar synopsis of his alleged activities. I don’t doubt there are certain witness statements in his favor but these are, as far as I can tell, made by people who belonged to the inner circle around him.”
Historian Radoslav Fikejz responded to the British newspaper: “Yes Schindler was a Nazi, a war criminal and a spy. But I have met 150 Jews who were on his list and were in the Brněnec camp and they say that what’s important is that they are alive.”
The Schindler buildings were last used by a company called Vitka, a once-thriving textile manufacturer. But after Vitka went into bankruptcy in 2004, a series of corporations sold off its machines for lump iron and stripped the buildings of anything of value.
Novak has said he is hoping to persuade the Czech culture ministry to deem the site worthy of protection, after securing some funds from the local authority.
“Our main goal is to restore the building and the surrounding area back to its original historical condition, including the watch towers and the hospital,” Novak told the Pravo newspaper.
He estimated that restoration work would cost around $5.5 million.
“The money’s not here yet,” he said, adding hopefully: “That doesn’t mean that it won’t be.”
JTA contributed to this report
