A Duffle Bag from Oskar Schindler

 
The duffle bag

Oskar Schindler was a businessman who protected Jews during the Holocaust and was honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations. He had an enamelware factory outside Cracow in which he employed  Jewish workers (some of whom were unfit for work). When his factory was transferred to Sudentenland, he used his contacts to take his workers with him. Shindler’s Jews, as they were known, were treated in the most humane way possible. In all, Schindler saved about 1,100 Jews from death. For more about Schindler, click here.

As the war was drawing to a close, Oskar Schindler prepared duffle bags for his 1,100 factory workers.  These bags contained various items designed to help them begin their lives anew – blankets, thread, sewing equipment and bottles of vodka, amongst other things.  The workers made clothes out of the blankets and bartered the vodka for food.   One of these duffle bags was given to a factory worker named Genia Wohlfeiler.

Genia Wohlfeiler Manor after the war ended

Genia Wohlfeiler had been living with her family in Cracow, Poland. Shortly after the war broke out, her brother Abraham, met a childhood friend in the Cracow Ghetto. The friend, who had become a member of the Jewish police, told Abraham that he may be able to help find him work in Schindler’s factory. The work could of course eventually save his life.

Abraham began working there and eventually succeeded in bringing the rest of his family to Schindler’s factory.  Genia, her mother and brother spent the reminder of the war as part of Schindler’s factory staff, and were liberated in Sudetenland.  Her father, who had become ill, was killed in the in the Plaszow camp hospital.  Genia’s future husband, Nahum Manor, was also one of Schindler’s Jews.  They married in Israel after the war.

Genia Wohlfeiler Manor gave the bag to Yad Vashem in the summer of 2002.   The duffle bag is all that remains from the items that Genia received from Oskar Schindler.