RUTH IRENE KALDER : MISTRESS OF NAZI WAR CRIMINAL AMON GOTH

OSKAR SCHINDLER

The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities,

and the True Story Behind the List

by David M. Crowe

Westview Press - A member of Perseus Books Group

(The primary reference for this month's subject)

RUTH IRENE KALDER

Ruth Kalder started out as a secretary to Oskar Schindler at a business he had in 1942.  He brought her along to one of Amon Goth's luxurious parties at the mansion in which he lived in above the death camp at Plaszow. Amon, married with two children, is said to have fallen in love with her at first sight but also told her he would never divorce.  His wife and the children remained in Vienna. She was an actress from Beslau (today Wroclaw, Poland).  Amon was from a well to do Viennese publishing family.  It's said that he had two personalities, one the Viennese gentleman.  His legendary temper could turn fast. 

Ruth loved her rich life at the mansion above the camp.  Her days were filled with horseback riding, tennis, and sunbathing on the balcony that had a view of the camp, a camp she claims to have never visited.  For two years she lived with Amon, and while she may have somehow been blissfully unaware of the killings and whippings that occurred at the camp, many of them carried out by the violent man who loved to kill that she slept beside, she was not innocent of the way he treated his two Jewish maid-slaves, one of whom is depicted in the film "Schindler's List."  She stopped him from raping one of them, Helen, when she came upon his tearing off the woman's clothes off.  It's unlikely this was the first time the woman was raped by him.  One witness depicted in the film, Itzhak Stern, said that the maid Helen was "the most unfortunate of all the inmates at the Plaszow Camp" and that she suffered under Amon Goth "more than ten lifetimes." (Page 261)

Ruth called Amon by his childhood nickname, "Mony,"and is said to have adored him.  She would tell the daughter they had together, Monica Christiane, that he was a ladies man with a beautiful singing voice.  He was hung when Monica was 10 months old, and the truth about her father was withheld from her in her childhood. It became a long painful struggle for Monica to come to terms with the monster her father really was, but since research was being done around Oskar Schindler, she did interviews in which she said that Schindler could never have saved Jews if it were not for the friendship and cooperation of her father.

Ruth told her daughter when she was about 12 that her father only killed Jews for "sanitation" reasons.

 * Along with his wife, this number goes to about 1300.

WHERE LIGHT and SHADOW MEET by EMILIE SCHINDLER, OSKAR's WIFE, ON THEIR MISTRESS ACCOMMODATING MARRIAGE

Written by Emilie Schindler with Erika Rosenberg  C 1996

 and translated from the original Spanish by Dolores M. Koch

W.W. Norton and Company Publishers

also

Editorial Planeta Argentina

EXCERPTS and NOTES:

(Pages 50 -51 About living in Cracow, Poland as a married couple beginning in 1941.)

"We lived in an apartment that Oskar had purchased from a very wealthy Jewish family.  The luxury was evident in the porcelain vases, Persian rugs, tapestries, and heavy velvet curtains. The windows opened on the Planty, a group of parks that followed the contours of the old city walls near the Wawel fortress.

Before I finally moved to Cracow, Oskar used to take his lovers to the apartment, especially two* of them:  Amelia and a Polish women Viktoria Klonowska. Amelia worked with him in counterintelligence, while Viktoria, thanks to her contacts with high authorities, improved Oskar's connections with the Gestapo."  *here I eliminate the name of one of them as in other books it's said that her memory was wrong),

"Before I moved in with Oskar again, I had visited his apartment many times.  Whenever I arrived, his lovers would vanish into thin air, although Oskar did not manage to conceal entirely what was going on during my absence. I had realized that he was not sleeping alone, but I chose to look the other way. I knew much more than he imagined, and even got to know some of his women personally." 

(Page 60 - About OSKAR and GOETH (i.e Amon Goth)

"Edith**, his lover, tried to appease him when he was in an indiscriminate killing rage, but she seldom succeeded in turning him away from this bloody practice.

It was Oskar who had introduced her to Goeth. They had a daughter, who has never admitted to her father's crimes.  Edith currently lives in the Unites States and has tried to distance herself from this part of history.  She remarried, then divorce, and now lives with another man."  **Here again the name of Goth's mistress is incorrect.  It should not be Edith but Ruth. I wonder about this name change since Ruth is a more "Jewish" name.

(Page 115  - after the war - during the five years in Regensburg, Germany where the Schindlers found themselves to be 2nd class Germans and unwanted.)

"One evening while we were at the movies watching a romantic film, I felt a terrible pain in my lower abdomen.  At first I tried to pay no attention to it, but it became more and more unbearable, and I developed a high fever.  We rushed to the town hospital, where I was admitted right away.

An operation was performed the following day. I had a dead baby inside of me. As a result of that operation, I could no longer think of having children on my own.  (Note this was her fourth miscarriage. Oskar had two children after their marriage with another mistress, this one a woman he had once been involved with before as a teenager.)

Still in pain, and under the influence of anesthesia, I opened my eyes and saw Oskar's smiling face. To my surprise, he was not alone. His companion was Gisa, his lover, whom he would later drag along with him to Argentina.  In my condition I could not really grasp what was happening, but I felt a tremendous letdown in every fiber of my body.

I wept disconsolately. As I began to understand the real situation, I blamed myself for having believed that Oskar would ever change..."

(Pages 117-118 - MONEY and LOVE)

"I had often considered the possibility of leaving him, of starting a new life without him, without his lie4s, without his repeat deceits and constant insincere repenting.   But my religious ideas, my belief in God and the teachings of the Church, dissuaded me from doing so..... I had no choice but to adapt, to tighten my lips and close my eyes to Oskar's neglect and indifference.  I shed many bitter tears because of him, but in my time I toughened up.  I stopped crying and immersed myself in my work.

(Page 128 - in ARGENTINA - OSKARS LOVE AFFAIRS)

When I was walking in town or attending some get-together, I used to look at all the women and ask myself which ones and with how many of them had Oskar had affairs.  The answer became easier over time: surely with all those who would allow it.  The interesting thing was that these conquests required no effort on his part.  With his natural seductiveness, it was the women who were constantly after him.

(Page 129)

..." Oskar was aware that women noticed him, and he seemed to feel an obligation to play his part in these casual affairs. But once he got involved - and this he confessed to me more than once when, repentant, he came back to my arms - he did not know how to break free.

(Page 130 - GISA, whom OSKAR took to ARGENTINA with him, as well as Emilie!)

The strangest thing of all was that Oskar's infidelities had the approval and collaboration of some of our best friends.  When we passed through Munich after the war, we stayed with a Jewish family who had been with us at Brunnlitz.  The woman had a friend named Gisa, then a fairly common Jewish nickname.  Oskar quickly started a liaison with her. The affair flourished with the help of the lady of the house, who provided a room for Oskar and Gisa to enjoy their romantic union whenever my husband went to Munich with the excuse of having to take care of some business. What Oskar did not tell me when he brought the tickets for South America was that Gisa would be coming with us.  When I found out, just before packing, I did not have the energy for futile reproaches anymore.  As absurd as it may seem, I clung to the hope that once in Argentina., I would again be Oskar Schindler's only woman.  It proved to be a false hope.

Fortunately we moved to San Vincente , which offered its main advantage that it was quite far from the Belgrano neighborhood, where the inevitable Gisa lived.  She used my husband for all he was worth, made him give her jewelry and even an authentic otter coat.  When he returned to Germany for good (abandoning both wife and mistress in Argentina) Gisa felt forsaken and wrote letters to him full of reproaches. One day I received a few lines from Oskar asking me to speak to her and try to persuade her to stop her epistolary insults, and to tell her that if she kept threateing him, he would never come back to her.  (She did not.) 

NOTE: They lived about an hour away from each other.  Oskar in the capital with Gisa, who he spent most of his time with.  Obviously, in my opinion, the marriage had been long dead but there was no divorce.)

NOTE: Oscar continued to sporadically send his wife letters, often insensitive to her hard work and poverty in Argentina.  She began to throw them in the fire without reading them.  B'nai B'rith eventually bought her a house and sent her money, about $300 a month, to live out her old age in Argentina.  37 years after he left Argentina, due to the Spielberg film, she was able to visit her husband's grave for the first time. It's in the last scene when survivors and their descendants walk down the hill to his grave to put stones on it.

STEVEN SPIELBERG's FILM SHINDLER'S LIST : EMILIE CATCHES HER HUSBAND ONE MORE TIME

Shindler's List is the film called Steven Spielberg's Opus. 
If you haven't seen the film, it's a must. 

The original title of this post was STEVEN SPIELBERG's FILM SHINDLER'S LIST : EMILIE CATCHES HER HUSBAND ONE MORE TIME and the video is gone.

In the film Oskar Schindler's wife comes to visit him and his Mistress is there with him and quickly leaves.  All he has to say to his wife is how embarrassed the woman must be.  For the purposes of the film the Mistress is seen as a sexual being, as if she is only there for sex with Oskar. Is Emilie Schindler accepting or long suffering her husband's infidelities?

June 2021 

RIGHTEOUS GENTILE OSKAR SCHINDLER's MISTRESSES : AURELIE SCHLEGEL, EVA "MARTA" KISZA, and GISELLA SCHEIN

OSKAR SCHINDLER

The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities,

and the True Story Behind the List

by David M. Crowe

Westview Press - A member of Perseus Books Group

(The primary reference for this month's subject)

 

That list of women's names up there on the title needs an explanation. 

 

OSKAR SCHINDLER, the man who is credited with saving about 1100* Jews from certain death during the Holocaust, by having them work for him at his factory and insisting they move with him to another, the subject of a film called "Schindler's List," often called director Steven Spielberg's Opus, was a womanizer.  He never took his marriage vows to Emilie Pelzl seriously.  (I don't think most men who have a Mistress are also having one-nighters, flings, quickies, affairs, or are as insensitive to their wives as this man!)  He had a whole lot going on at all times. Oskar Schindler was complicated.  He was possibly addicted to risk.  He somehow made the time for several Mistresses, women with whom he had long relationships with, and his wife, whose book I will include this month, knew it all along. 

 

EMELIE PELZL was 20 and Oskar was a little younger when they met and were married quickly, her farm family more prosperous than his, but both households effected by the terminal illnesses of a parent. Other than attraction and the innocence of youth, it's difficult to know what was behind the marriage really, perhaps pragmatism.  Oskar's father was alcoholic and so was he, a lifelong ailment. I have to wonder if he was self medicating a mental illness. As a new husband, Oskar used most of Emilie's dowry to buy an exotic car manufactured originally for the Shah of Iran, without consideration for her, a car that would be the one they escaped from their factory in when the War, World War II, was over.  

 

From the very beginning of their marriage, and for the rest of their lives, Oskar Schindler had the pattern of a charming sociopath, apparently sexually gifted and attractive, a "Whatever it takes," and "Where's the money?," kind of man who changed his side to the side that was winning more than once.  This is important because there is controversy over if he should have been judged to be a Righteous Gentile (1962 in Israel), ultimately selfless, or not.  Officially, he is, as there were many survivors who spoke up for him.  I do believe it's possible that the atrocities that he witnesses created a profound change in him.  Yet when it came to women, his was a never-ending series of adventures and misadventures.

 

These last few sentences are my opinion, my take, on this perplexing man, rooted in this book, and the author, David M. Crowe, researched extensively, and was eager to let us readers know how the truth and the film varied. In fact, the film did what it was meant to do, got much right, and took artistic license as screen writers and film directors and movie studios almost always do.  I've personally watched it a half a dozen times.  In fact, it was watching the film again, and seeing the scenes in which Oskar Schindler, and his associate, the certifiably evil Amon Goth, who headed the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, where he indulged himself in daily indiscriminate killing, interplay and have their mistresses, that inspired this month's topic.

 

I wanted to know "Who were those Mistresses?  We're they all really spies? How involved in the murder of Jews and other people taken prisoner were they? Is this another story about powerless women who are trapped in the role society expects of them?"  And so I began to read around the subject, many articles on the internet, as well as some book recommendations.  I'll include the Mistress of Amon Goth, Ruth Irene Kalder, in this month's reading.  Additionally, there are a couple women whose names would not fit on the title bar above who Oskar Schindler is known to have had as girlfriends and Mistresses.. 

 

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In somewhat of a chronological order here are the MISTRESSES of Oskar Schindler that we know about and a little background for each:

 

Oskar and his wife Emilie met in the fall of 1927 and married March 6, 1928.  At the time he was a traveling salesman. They moved in with his parents and younger sister where Emilie was overburdened with family care while he was gone for business. In 1928 Oskar was racing motorcycles. Emilie would spend her life being the dependable, responsible, hard working, and stable one.

  

*************

 

AURELIE SCHLEGEL : After Oskar Schindler married, he went back with a teenage love, Aurelie, a local girl in Czechoslovakia, who he proceeded to have two children with, a boy and a girl.  The boy, named Oskar Junior, may have ended up a mentally ill street person.  It does not seem as if Schindler took any responsibility for the children. This second family and the use of her dowry to buy the expensive car was not enough for the young newly married Emilie to leave him.

Oskar's many jobs included running a driving school. Then spent 18 months in the Czechoslovak army, went back to the sales job he had when he first met his wife, and during 1931-1932 was arrested for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, assault, and other misdemeanor charges several times. 

 

In 1938, now about 30 years old and just out of prison, Schindler applied to be a member of the Nazi Party. He was accepted as a provisional member February 2, 1939. They overlooked his character and arrests apparently, though he told the truth about having been. He had to prove he had no Jewish blood and that Emilie was not of Jewish blood. From this point his paid work and party affiliation seem to be intertwined. It is thought that Oskar Shindler's assignments lead to the Nazi invasion of Poland in September of 1939.

 

*************

 

1939 - Oskar and Emilie moved to Moravska Ostrava but he kept a separate apartment. Emilie lived in their house from 1939-1941 and then joined him in Krakow.

 

IRENA DVORZAKOWA lived in the separate apartment, which Oskar paid for, though she did work for a steel manufacturing company.  April 1945 was the last he came there, probably the end of their relationship, but she did not move out until late 1945 or early 1946.

 

During this period of time, it's possible that Oskar was a spy.  (In my opinion he could have been a double agent, maybe even a triple agent.) 

 

 **************

 

 

EWA "MARTA" KISZA  (aka EVA KISCH and later EVA KISCH SCHEUER)  Eva is the person depicted in the scene in Shindler's list in which she and Oscar are on horseback and from Lasota Hill and see the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto.  The scene is fiction, but the history happened and it's believed that it was about this time that Oskar realized that the Nazis were committing genocide, that this wasn't just a typical war.  It's possible he believed as most people did that the Jews were being taken to work camps, not systematically murdered.

 

Ewa , the Polish form of Eva, was a Czech from Silesia, an area that had been taken over by Poland in 1939 ( Pg 121)  She lost her job as a teacher and then made her living smuggling goods across the Polish - Czech border. Though she was engaged to be married, in about 1943, she became Oscar's Mistress.  The Polish authotires were suspicious of all the trips she and Oskar made.  She decided to flee to Czecholosvaliea with her fiancée, but the police shot him and killed him when they tried this escape.  She was put into prison in Lvov.  When she was released she went to live with Oskar.  Called "His Wartime Mistress," he set her up in a small shop selling the enamelware that he made such as kettles and bowls.

 

Called Marta, she was complicit in a maneuver in which Oskar took advantage of his Nazi Party affiliation and contacts and in October of 1939, he decided to take over the business of Shlomo Wiener, the owner of the largest kitchenware, ironware, and cutlery businesses in Poland, which he and his brother Julius ran. What Oskar did was premeditated.

 

He had the business signed over to him, returned the next day to tell them he was the Trustee of the business and Marta his representative.  He told Shlomo not to show his face, and had Julius teach him how to run the business.  He paid the two men a monthly salary a bit less than they had paid themselves, and showed up with Marta every day to talk the business with Julius.  (Julius would later call Marta "a soulless puppet, necessary only for official purposes" (Page 128)

Then, the day came in which the generally respectful Oskar, changed, and became verbally abusive and even physically abusive.  Julius was beaten severely by the Gestapo, and black and blue and bleeding, was afraid to leave his house. Soon Oskar cut the brothers off financially, and so they no longer had the means to live.  The Weiners later believed that Oskar helping Jews live in 1944 and 1945 was only to create an alibi for himself! (Page 126)

Marta went to parties with Oskar that Amon Goth threw, lavish parties where there was plenty of food and alcohol, with the death camp he ran down the hill.   (The scenes in the film "Schindler's List" don't begin to reveal his depravity, for which he was eventually tried as a war criminal and sentenced to hanging.


EVA "MARTA" and her brother, along with 7 Jewish workers hoping to find relatives in France or Switzerland, along with Oskar and his wife, escaped when the war ended from the factory, using the car he had bought from his wife's dowry years before, and a truck.  (Page 467)  On the road the women feared being raped by Russian soldiers.  Eventually the party separated.

 

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GISELLA SCHEIN 

AKA GISA

Watch for the upcoming review of the book Where Light and Shadow Meet by Emilie Schindler, Oskar's wife, on the mistress- accommodating marriage.  Oskar took both his wife and Gisa out of the country. But did he take either of them back to Europe with him?







Overall, Oskar Schindler seems to have been out of control of his life in so many ways, I have to remind myself that it is possible that beneath all this personal chaos, he had a heart, and eventually a deeper understanding of his life and times.



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