Leopold Page explains why rescue was so difficult during the Holocaust and how Oskar Schindler used his position to save Jews.
Leopold was a teacher in Kraków, Poland, when World War II began in 1939. Shortly after Germany invaded Poland, he met Oskar Schindler, a businessman who had come to German-occupied Kraków to get rich. The two became friends. In 1941, Leopold and his new wife Ludmilla were forced to live in the Kraków ghetto. In 1943, after the liquidation of the ghetto, the couple was imprisoned in the Plaszow labor camp. There they were subjected to grueling conditions and arbitrary violence. In fall 1944, Schindler helped save some Jewish forced laborers by relocating them and his munitions factory from Kraków to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland. Because of Leopold's previous relationship with Schindler, the couple was included in this group. Leopold survived the Holocaust and was liberated in early May 1945. After the war, Leopold and Ludmilla remained friends with Schindler and shared the story of their rescue.
It's very hard to answer the question. Because when I would like to put myself in the position of Schindler and I don't consider myself a pretty honest guy, I don't know that I will do it. You have to have the guts to do something like this. Because the penalty for helping a Jew–even giving him a cigarette, or piece of bread, or shelter him overnight, and he got caught–is a penalty of death. Not only to the person who did the helping–give the helping hand–but to all his family, and even a village. When this happened in a village, the whole village was burned. When they, they caught the person, the whole family was executed. So there was a tremendous responsibility on the person, on the side of the person who want to help the Jew and put themselves in a position that he can lose his own life, but also endanger the family lives. So this was a very, very hard question to answer. He [Schindler] was in a position that he knew how to handle the, the Germans in power. He became a friend. He bribed them. He dined them, he wine them, you understand? And using this type of method, bribing this person, particular person, he got their confidence. When he got in trouble. They found out they better take him out, other way he will say something not so nice about us. And maybe we can lose a life. And this was his power.
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