Chapter 3: Schindler's Wife (novel) edited by Zhang Baotong

Anyone who has seen the American movie Schindler's List or the novel Schindler's Ark will know Oskar Schindler. This drunk, gambling, emotional, greedy, and luxurious Auschwitz concentration camp officer deceived the Nazis for months to build a non-existent munitions factory. Towards the end of the war, he was bent on saving "his" Jews. He saved 1,100 Jews from being sent to gas chambers and crematoriums by the Nazis. The rescued man later went to the newly founded Israel, and many of them became high-ranking officials and elites in the country, for which they and their country regarded him as a savior.

An hour's drive from Buenos Aires is the village of San Viseente, where former Argentine President Perón used to spend his holidays, and from here you cross two dusty paths to a small white bungalow. Here lives a white-haired old man who came to Argentina from Germany in 1949. She was Emily Schindler, the wife of Oskar Schindler, who rescued 1,100 Jews from the gas chambers.

She is 86 years old and has a severe back problem, but it can still be seen that she used to be a recognized beauty. She met Oskar Schindler at the age of 20 on a farm in North Moravia, Czechoslovakia. One day, Oskar Schindler came here with his father to sell agricultural machinery. He pulls Emily over and asks her father if he wants to buy a tractor. Emily said you better go ask him and do it yourself. Thus, this arrogant beauty charmed the well-dressed wanderer.

After their marriage, they moved to Oscar's hometown of Swito, where the rising Nazis had not yet attracted their attention and the Jews had not yet become a persecuted people. However, Oscar has begun to chase women. One of his lovers lived not far from their house with a child. When Thomas Kennelly wrote Schindler's Ark, he speculated that Oscar was infertile, as he had many mistresses and no children. Emily is very sad and resentful of this, because she has had many miscarriages.

After completing Schindler's Ark, a big, blue-eyed white man told Kenelli that he was Oscar's illegitimate child. "At first, I thought he was a liar, but he knew a lot of the truth and looked like Oscar. He said he and his sister were both born to his mother and Oscar. Their home is just a block away from Emily and Oscar's home in Swito. ”

In the Argentinian heat of 30 degrees Celsius, Emily wore a floral short-sleeved loungewear with no hand ornaments other than the wedding ring. When asked about the wedding ring, she smiled in a purely cruel way. "Schindler didn't want a divorce," she said, "and keeping the marriage would save him from being persecuted by his mistresses." And I don't want to remarry, I'm broken.

Emily left few traces of life in that era. She only has a few pictures of one of the Oscars' lovers. She laughed, "Look, this is the pretty Jew in the book, pretty?" she giggled, pointing to a chubby, bespectacled girl in a yellowed snapshot. But she maintained a good relationship with Oscar's other mistress, a woman named Ingrid. In fact, she, Oscar, and Ingrid lived in the same house in post-war Munich, but not from their families. The reason why two women get along amicably is because they both need the same man to provide for. Emily said, "I don't care about Oscar anymore because you can't care about people you can't rely on." Ingrid and Oscar lived together for a long time until their relationship ended. Now Ingrid in New York is resentful of putting Emily out of Schindler's story. "Emily played a huge role in feeding 1,100 Jews," she said. ”

In Creco, she was like a submissive housewife. "I'm like a trump card in a game of poker, I play whenever I need to," she said. If someone important or someone from the camp came to visit, they would call me to deal with it. For example, Lange, the inspector in charge of the Preszo labor camp in charge of Goss and the Berlin command. Emily was also a shopper and dealt with the head of the flour mill. The man was a large man, and always wore a fur coat when he came to her house, so that he could take the bribes in his clothes and take them with him. And she got the best thing from him: fine flour. It can be seen that everything she did was not visible to the prisoners in the factory. Therefore, in the story of saving the Jews, Emily's exploits are forgotten.

Emily can remember many scenes, but she can't be remembered. One night near the end of the war, she delivered food to some prisoners who had come to Schindler's factory from a concentration camp. A Jew who was rescued by Schindler recalled, "I watched her prepare semolina for the prisoners, and brought it out in two large pots. She knew that letting the prisoners eat something else might lead to their death. Moreover, Michelle Crain ate semolina and did not remember Emily. Mike is now 60 years old and lives in Boston. When he was 15 years old, in the final months of World War II, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of the concentration camp by enclosing some of the detainees in two carriages, without food or water, and sending them out of Auschwitz. When Schindler learned of this, he made a deal with the prisoners in the car to exchange diamonds for his life. As a result of eight days and eight nights in the car, 60 of the 94 people in the car have died. The semolina food they brought to the people in the car, Mike said, "Maybe that was the food Emily brought to us." I remember the food, but I can't remember if it was brought by a woman. After that, I worked in the Schindler's factory. ”

Mack first met Schindler on the day the war ended. On May 8, Schindler announced that the armistice had been signed. He said, "I know what we have done to your parents, your children, your brothers and sisters. We killed them. But I want you to remember that I was still a German. Michelle Crain was going to take his Israeli grandson to Jerusalem to see Oscar's grave, and he wanted to take his grandson to visit Emily. "They saved my life, saved my children and future generations," he said. ”

You'll never let Emily call her husband a hero. According to her, the Nazis wanted to keep him going because no one was interested in stopping him. "The factory wasn't destroyed because no one wanted it to be destroyed. They have long since become corrupt, keen on giving and taking bribes, and think that their bribe and bribe relationships will continue. "I think he was completely deactivated after the war." He had been hit once and had not been able to recover. In the '70s, Oscar lived with her in New York. "Eventually he became very depraved, but whatever happened, his only interest was in the Jews whom he had saved, where did this man live, and what was that man doing?"

Oscar escaped from the camp with Emily, and seven rescued Jews volunteered to vouch for the Americans on his behalf. In Munich, Emily and Oscar are going to Argentina. Oscar received $17,000 from the Joint Distribution Committee. This committee is a Jewish aid organization. During the war, he reported to the organization about the situation in the concentration camps, regardless of his personal safety.

Oscar plans to set up an otter farm, but Emily says, "When he came to Argentina, he spent most of his time in bed, and when he got up in the afternoon, he went to meet his girlfriend." In 1967, Oscar decided to return to Germany to try his luck. And leave me alone to face the debt of 500,000 pesos and the rough cries of the creditors. His nephew also said that in Germany he would bring the girl with him and send her away. He spent all his money on the young girl. And let me pay my debts alone. They exchanged several letters, but soon after, they broke off. "Everything doesn't interest me anymore." Those boring things just annoy me. ”

In Germany, the Oscars spend money like water. He was facing bankruptcy and was going to be sentenced at the time. So he called a man in Jerusalem who he had rescued, named Moshi Berjeski. This man had been a master of forgery in a concentration camp and is now a judge of the Supreme Court of Israel. Together with Izkhak Stern, who had worked as an accountant at Schindler, he raised 165,000 Deutsche marks to save Oscar from prison and remitted him $2,000 a month. "He always ran out of money soon after it was sent to him." But I always say to my colleagues, listen, if it weren't for this spend-paying Schindler, we wouldn't be alive today. He supported the Oscars until his death in 1974.

Emily, meanwhile, lives a hard and poor life in Argentina. She lived in the mud-pasted hut of St. Wiseente. She raised some cows and used a scythe to cut the weeds around the villa Peron to make food for her livestock. Later, in the '60s, a Jewish organization in Buenos Aires learned of her whereabouts and situation in a newspaper, and although they were not Schindler's rescuers, they bought Emily's current house and sent her money and medical bills every month.

For 30 years after the war, Berjeski chaired the Israeli Committee for Remembering the Righteous and built the Holocaust Memorial. The trees are named after the non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust during World War II, including Oskar and Emily Schindler.