Itzhak star

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Itzhak star.

Itzhak Stern (born January 25, 1901 in Krakow , Austria-Hungary ; died 1969 in Israel ) was a Polish- Israeli survivor of the Shoah who became known as a supporter of Oskar Schindler's rescue operations . The character played by Ben Kingsley in the film Schindler's List is named after him, although this representation is based in part on the biography of other people.

Life

Until 1942

Stern was the son of a well-to-do Jewish accountant from Kraków. In preparation for the same profession, he studied commercial science in Vienna and his hometown. He was later active in Zionist organizations in Krakow, including as Vice President of the Jewish Agency in western Poland. Stern was not religious, but interested in the Jewish religion and also very educated in these matters.

From 1924 onwards, Stern worked for the import-export company J. L. Buchheister in Krakow. At the beginning of the Second World War he was chief accountant there. After the occupation of Poland by the Wehrmacht , the Jewish owner was expropriated and the company was taken over by the Sudeten German Josef Aue, first as a "trustee", then as the owner. Aue hid the fact that he had a Jewish father. Compared to other owners of “ Aryanized ” companies, he treated his Jewish employees humanely.

In November 1939 Aue introduced Stern to his friend Oskar Schindler, who also wanted to gain a foothold in Krakow on business. On advice from Stern, who was very familiar with the economic guidelines of German occupation policy by means of secret documents provided by Aue, Schindler leased a run-down company. Continued under the new name Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik , it later employed hundreds of Jewish employees there and thus protected them from deportation and murder.

In addition to his work for J. L. Buchheister , Stern headed the Cracow activities of the “Society for the Protection of Health”, a charitable organization that was founded by the US Joint Distribution Committee to help the oppressed Jews in occupied Poland, shortly after the outbreak of the war . In this capacity, he, for example, organized a mass vaccination for the Jewish population in the outskirts of Krakow when the local epidemic of typhus broke out. After the establishment of the Krakow Ghetto , Stern worked there in a radio accessories shop. He also served the metal goods factory Progress and its German trustee as an accountant, which gave him a certain freedom of movement and thus also enabled him to continue his charitable work.

In the meantime, a relationship of trust had been established with Oskar Schindler because the latter distanced himself from the persecution of the Germans against the Jews. Although both aid measures for Jews ran independently of one another, Schindler supported Stern with occasional financial donations. When Stern was also threatened in the course of deportations and murders in the ghetto in October 1942, Schindler intervened and saved his life.

In Plaszow and Brünnlitz

After the liquidation of the ghetto in March 1943, Stern was sent to the Plaszow forced labor camp , where he initially continued to work for Progress . When Amon Göth , commandant of Plaszow, closed the plant, Stern moved to Göth's office. Like the other Jewish forced laborers in the immediate vicinity of Göth, he had to live in constant fear of being mistreated or killed by him.

In the late summer of 1943, rumors grew that the Germans intended to liquidate all camps in the Generalgouvernement that had no relevant war production. Stern and Mieczysław Pemper , another employee in the commandant's office, were concerned that this could also affect Plaszow and that it would mean certain death for most of the inmates. At her initiative, a list of the production capacities of the Plaszow affiliated companies was compiled, including the Schindler factory. The list was intended to convince the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) to convert Plaszow into a concentration camp and keep it that way. The figures in the report were embellished and in some cases greatly exaggerated, which Göth was probably also aware of. Nevertheless, the WVHA was apparently impressed and shortly after Oswald Pohl visited the camp, the conversion to a concentration camp was carried out in January 1944. This also enabled Schindler to continue his business and thus to protect the Jews who worked for him.

At this point in time, Stern, like Pemper, was already one of Schindler's most important contacts, whom he supported in his relief efforts. Stern provided Schindler with information about the conditions in the camp, which he passed on at meetings with Rudolf Kasztner and other representatives of the Jewish Agency in Budapest . Conversely, Stern helped distribute aid among the inmates that Schindler had received from the Jewish Agency. In individual cases, Stern intervened at Schindler to ensure that inmates from Plaszow were taken on as workers in the Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik (DEF) and thus escaped the harsher living conditions in the camp and the cruelty of Göth. In 1956, Schindler wrote that Stern had "made a significant contribution to the overall success of my rescue work".

In autumn 1944, Plaszow had to be evacuated in view of the advance of the Red Army . Stern was initially involved in drafting “Schindler's List”, i.e. the compilation (known in various versions) of the names of around 1,100 Jews who were transported there as workers when the German enamel factory moved to the Bohemian town of Brünnlitz in October and thus could continue to be protected not involved. The main responsibility lay with Marcel Goldberg, a clerk in the Plaszow warehouse administration, who was also bribed to put names on the list. However, Stern succeeded in influencing the composition of the list in individual cases. Stern's mother was one of the 300 women on the list who were brought to Auschwitz for a stopover at the end of October 1944 . There she fell ill with typhus and died. With a few exceptions, the remaining women were transported on to the newly established subcamp Brünnlitz on November 12th . In Brünnlitz, Stern and Pemper took over responsibility for the list of protected "Schindler Jews", which from then on was kept on a purely humanitarian basis.

post war period

At the end of the war, Stern was in Brünnlitz. He and his brother Natan were among the signatories of a letter dated May 8, 1945, in which Schindler was certified that he had done everything possible since 1942 "to save the lives of the greatest possible number of Jews". Like most of the “Schindler Jews”, Stern went back to Krakow after the liberation. In 1945 he married the lawyer Sophia Backenrot. In view of the resurgent Polish anti-Semitism , the two decided to emigrate to Israel in 1948.

As early as 1947, Stern had been one of those who campaigned for public recognition of Schindler's rescue service during the Second World War. He did so in later years with increasing determination. While the relationship was previously purely pragmatic, a deep friendship now developed between the two. Stern advised Schindler on legal issues, repeatedly organized support if he ran into financial difficulties, and campaigned for Schindler to be recognized as Righteous Among the Nations , which was also achieved in 1962. Two longer reports by Stern from 1956 and 1964 rank historians among the most important sources for reconstructing the history of Oskar Schindler and the people he rescued.

When Itzhak Stern died in 1969, Schindler attended to his funeral and wept in public for his friend.

Representation in Schindler's list

Actions and experiences of the character named after Itzhak Stern and portrayed by Ben Kingsley in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List (1993) only partially match the biography of the historical person. In fact, the film character was designed after three people who had supported Oskar Schindler: Itzhak Stern, Mietek Pemper and Abraham Bankier. This was a dramaturgical decision by the screenwriter Steven Zaillian , who wanted to create the character as a complete Jewish alter ego of the German Schindler. The portrayal in Thomas Keneally's novel on which the film is based is more historically correct in this regard.

In the film, After his (historical) first encounter with Schindler, Itzhak Stern becomes his accountant, who heads all of the German's financial affairs, including those on the black market . In fact, it was the banker who fulfilled this role at Deutsche Emaillewarenfabrik and who, through his skill, raised the funds that enabled Schindler to keep his factory running. In contrast, Stern never worked directly for Schindler up until the time in Brünnlitz. A key scene in the film, in which Schindler succeeds at the Kraków train station in saving Stern from deportation to the Belzec extermination camp at the last minute , is also based on an experience by Banker.

The portrayal of the origin of the eponymous list in the film, on which Schindler and Stern specify the names of the Jews to be rescued, is also not historical. Stern was hardly involved in the process, and Schindler was only able to establish a few general criteria according to which the selection in the Plaszow headquarters should be made. The decision of Spielberg and Zaillian to treat the historical processes freely here is probably mainly due to the person of Marcel Goldberg, who was actually responsible for drawing up the list and who applied questionable principles, in some cases including the names of people on it who bribed him. To portray this in the film would have been in conflict with the wish of its makers to show the moral maturation of Oskar Schindler through the influence of Stern, which makes the creation of the list a work of absolutely good. In the words of the film character Itzhak Stern: “The list is the good, the list is life, and beyond it lies the abyss.” Schindler's biographer David M. Crowe writes: “If he [Spielberg] had linked Schindler with Goldberg, then if he had encouraged the view that it was money that really moved Schindler in all this. "

Itzhak Stern's widow Sophia also appears in the last sequence of the film, in which the "Schindler Jews" who are still alive, together with the actors who played them, place stones on Schindler's grave in Jerusalem - Ben Kingsley's arm is carried on.

literature

  • David M. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. The biography . Translated from English by Klaus Binder and Bernd Leineweber. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8218-0759-8 .
  • Mietek Pemper : The saving way. Schindler's List - The Real Story. Recorded by Viktoria Hertling and Marie Elisabeth Müller. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2010 (first time 2005), ISBN 978-3-455-50183-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. David M. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. The biography. Translated from English by Klaus Binder and Bernd Leineweber. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8218-0759-8 , p. 127.
  2. Robin O'Neil: "Schindler". Stepping stone to life. A Reconstruction of the Schindler Story. Chapter Four. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 21, 2010.
  3. ^ A b c O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Thirteen. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 21, 2010.
  4. O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Four. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 20, 2010. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 82-83.
  5. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 120-125.
  6. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 126.
  7. O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Thirteen. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 21, 2010. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 125.
  8. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 125-126.
  9. O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Thirteen. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 21, 2010. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 297-306, especially pp. 300-301.
  10. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 285-297.
  11. Quoted from: Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 126. O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Thirteen. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 21, 2010.
  12. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 409-454, especially pp. 409-413, 426-427, 435, 442.
  13. Quoted from: Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 504.
  14. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 514. O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Four. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 20, 2010.
  15. Photo: Stern and Schindler on sueddeutsche.de
  16. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 559-560, 569, 573-557, 670.
  17. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 123. O'Neil: "Schindler". Chapter Four, footnote 12. jewishgen.org, 2007; Retrieved September 20, 2010.
  18. a b Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 119-120, 125.
  19. Crowe: Oskar Schindler. Pp. 217-218.
  20. Quoted from: Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 360; see also pp. 359, 409-415.
  21. Quoted from: Crowe: Oskar Schindler. P. 412.
  22. Interview with Ben Kingsley. ( Memento of the original from May 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. British Film Institute website , September 17, 2003; Retrieved September 21, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bfi.org.uk