Schindler’s List: Chapter 33 Summary & Analysis

As with Emalia, Schindler equips his Brinnlitz camp at his own expense. Among his expenses are all the facilities he has to provide for 100 SS personnel. Hassebroeck has also taken his own share of what he pleases from Schindler’s camp, including alcohol, tea, and porcelainware. Inspectors coming from Oranienburg come expecting their own tribute. Combined with everything Schindler must pay to keep his workers, he is making a terrible business decision, yet he still appears to be celebrating.

Emilie comes over from Zwittau to live in Schindler’s apartment. Some prisoners fear what Emilie’s opinions are, but in fact, she will make her own hidden contributions to Schindler’s effort. Ingrid also comes with Schindler, although she won’t ever live with him again. Klonowska stays behind in Cracow, apparently with no hard feelings.

Schindler tells the men that he’s confident the women will be coming soon. The women are taking a different route, however. When the women get out, they realize they are at Auschwitz-Birkenau. SS men and women sort the Płaszów women into different groups. They are stripped and led to a delousing plant. Though they fear the showers will contain poison gas, they are relieved to find it’s just water.

At Birkenau, the Nazis tattoo Jewish people whom they intend to use but don’t tattoo those they intend to get rid of immediately. Bau’s wife and Bau’s mother (who aren’t on Schindler’s list) are comparatively lucky enough to be tattooed, which helps them survive. The Płaszów women on Schindler’s list are told to get dressed after their shower without getting tattooed, however. They go back to uncomfortable lodgings in the camp. Even with the rumors, they cannot imagine how many people are gassed daily on a day when things are running at full capacity. The Commandant Rudolf Höss will put the number at 9,000.

The former Płaszów women also don’t know about negotiations between Himmler and the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte. After invading Russians excavated the Lublin camp, news of Germany gassing Jews with Zyklon B was suddenly published around the world. Himmler was secretly trying to make himself a successor to Hitler, and this involved making a promise to stop the gassings. Even after the order went out, some, like General Pohl in Oranienburg and Adolf Eichmann, decided to ignore the new directive, meaning many Jews from Płaszów and elsewhere are still being gassed up until November.

All of this means that for their first eight days in Auschwitz, the “Schindler women” are at great risk of being gassed. They are separated, with some sent to huts for the terminally ill. Doctors at Auschwitz, like the infamous Josef Mengele, sometimes inspect them at roll call. Even Schindler may not be enough to protect them, because there is precedent of other skilled Jewish workers being gassed by the trainload, as was the case with the chemical company I. G. Farben. The living conditions of the “Schindler women” at Auschwitz are dire, with many getting dysentery. Some begin to doubt Schindler’s promises, while other keep faith in him.

In Brinnlitz, the men arrive to a mostly empty camp that doesn’t even have bunks yet. Still, they eventually get things up and running. The workers move at a leisurely pace, just fast enough to please the SS men watching, sensing that Schindler has no real intention of contributing to the war effort. The men begin to become increasingly concerned that the women haven’t arrived yet. One day, the men gather around Schindler, and he tells them simply, “I’m getting them out.”

One hopeful bit of news is that the SS men guarding Schindler’s factory seem to be middle-aged men who are content to lead a peaceful existence. The one potential problem is that their commanding officer has not yet arrived.

Amid all the preparations for the new factory in Brinnlitz, Schindler is arrested for a third time. Gestapo show up after a truck from Cracow arrives with cigarettes, vodka, cognac, and champagne. The volume of goods suggests that Schindler intends to make a living on the black market.

In Schindler’s office, the two Gestapo men ask Schindler about his connections with Goeth and Goeth’s loot. Schindler says he has a few of Goeth’s suitcases and shows them to the men. They find nothing but arrest Schindler anyway. Those who knew Schindler will later suggest that this arrest scared him more than any of the others.

Schindler is taken by train back to Cracow. At the station, he is approached by a man named Huth, who had been a civilian engineer at Płaszów. Huth’s motivation is unclear—he used to act subservient toward Goeth—but it seems that Huth may have been working with Klonowska (who is once again trying to get Schindler off the hook).

Schindler is locked in a room on Pomorska Street like he was during a previous arrest. He knows there are torture rooms that they could use on him if they are desperate enough to get dirt on Goeth. Huth comes to Schindler and confirms for him that Klonowska is rallying his old friends. A panel of 12 SS investigators interrogates Schindler the next day. They ask if he ever gave Goeth money to “go easy on the Jews,” which Schindler denies. He says the money was simply a loan. He maintains that his goal was to keep up his body of skilled labor so that he could continue contributing to the war effort.

The interrogation goes four days, and though there’s no torture, it is still very intense. Schindler denies being any friend of Goeth’s, at one point saying, “I’m not a fairy,” bringing up rumors about Goeth and young orderlies. Goeth himself mistakenly believes Schindler wants to help him and will vouch for him. In the end, Schindler is helped by three things: his lack of actual business connections to Goeth, his natural charm (whether lying or telling the truth), and the fact that his credentials check out. Colonel Lange and Sussmuth are among those who testify to Schindler’s importance in the war effort.

On the fourth day, the interrogators spit on Schindler and call him a “Jew-lover.” He can’t be sure whether this is part of the process, or if this is why they actually brought him in. Finally, after a week, Schindler sends a message through Huth and Klonowska to Scherner. Scherner comes and says it’s an outrage how Schindler is being treated, but he says Goeth deserves what he gets.

On the morning of the eighth day, Schindler is finally let out on the street. He walks back to where his old factory was located and sends word to Emilie that he’s free.

Meanwhile in Auschwitz, the “Schindler women” move about carefully, knowing that they are presided over by Rudolf Höss (who will infamously be depicted in the novel Sophie’s Choice). Despite his fearsome reputation, Höss hasn’t murdered any Auschwitz prisoners by hand, preferring instead to rely on more clinical methods like Zyklon B gas. The story goes that it was Höss himself that Schindler had to negotiate with in order to protect his 300 women, though there were other camp officials he also had to deal with.

Though a lot of mythology surrounds Schindler’s dealing with Auschwitz, one certainty seems to be that he sent a young woman to Commandant Höss with his list, as well as with a suitcase full of valuable goods, including alcohol, meat, and diamonds. As Stern tells it, Schindler picked one of his secretaries for the job, warning her that Höss had a thing for pretty women but saying that she’d get a big diamond ring for her efforts if she pulls it off. The identity of the woman and the exact terms of the deal, however, remain a point of contention among the survivors.

The officers at Auschwitz try to convince Schindler to abandon his quest, claiming that his 300 women have become sickly and worthless in the camp, and that there are plenty of other women he could use instead. Schindler continues to insist that he needs his specific women for their skilled munitions labor. Some question his need for 9- and 11-year-old children, but Schindler replies that he needs their long fingers to polish narrow shells (which is, in fact, a lie).

It is true that the women have been worn down by their time in Auschwitz. Clara Sternberg is one who gets separated from the main group and ends up in a separate hut where she’s under constant inspection from doctors. She takes care not to cough and even puts clay on her face to make her complexion seem healthier. At one point, she becomes so desperate that she looks for an electric fence to commit suicide, but a fellow prisoner urges her to hold on a little longer.

Something terrible happens while Schindler is away from Brinnlitz. The new Commandant of Gröss-Rosen, Josef Liepold, comes to visit the workshop with an inspector. The inspector has been ordered to look for children who can be used for Dr. Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz. Several children, including Olek Rosner and Richard Horowitz, are spotted and rounded up. The parents of the children (including Henry Rosner and Dolek Horowitz) are also rounded up, and they’re all taken by train to Auschwitz.

The SS officer taking the men and children is surprisingly polite—he tells them that after he takes them to Auschwitz, he is bringing the women to Brinnlitz. At one point, the officer even appears to have tears in his eyes. He tells the prisoners, “I know what will happen. We’ve lost the war. You’ll get the tattoo. You’ll survive.”

On the very same afternoon that Clara Sternberg considered suicide, she gets word that they are finally being loaded onto trains. Unfortunately, however, she and a 60-year-old woman named Mrs. Krumholz are on the wrong side of a fence (which isn’t electric but is built with 18 strands of wire). Although there are gaps in the fence of less than a foot, somehow both Krumholz and Sternberg make it through to rejoin the other “Schindler women.”

The trains are horrifying, even as the “Schindler women” begin to feel hopeful. Inside a train car, Niusia and Regina Horowitz, along with Manci Rosner, are horrified to see Olek Rosner and Richard Horowitz standing there in Auschwitz. They are concerned for the children, but Olek holds up his arm to show that he has the tattoo, and Richard does the same. Olek then shows some potatoes to prove he won’t starve. Their fathers, Dolek and Henry, are away working at the rock quarry—but when Henry Rosner comes back, he shows that he also has the tattoo. When Dolek gets back too, he and Henry try to be cheerful so that the women won’t feel like they have to stay for the children.

Finally, the train rolls out. After two days, the “Schindler women” are ordered to get out at dawn, unsure where they are. They’re marched to a large gate in front of a factory, with a crowd of SS men in front of it. Though they fear the worst, they notice Schindler among the men in front, again wearing a Tyrolean hat. Next to him is Commandant Liepold. Schindler has discovered that Liepold is still a firm believer in the so-called “Final Solution.” But though Liepold is technically in charge, Schindler goes to greet the women.

Schindler makes a grand speech, saying “You have nothing more to worry about. You’re with me now.” He says all this in front of Commandant Liepold, who is furious but seems incapable of doing anything for the moment. The men figure out what’s happening and are overjoyed to be reunited with the women. For the moment, however, they must remain separated, with the women quarantined to avoid bringing diseases from Auschwitz.

Emilie gets involved with the clinic where she tends to the many sick. Some claim that the good work she did there may have been obscured by Schindler’s greater fame and absorbed into his legend instead.