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Stella Müller is considered to be the polish Anna Frank. She is the 169th entry on Schindler's list

Biography

Stella Muller was born in Krakow in 1930 in the assimilated family of Berta and Zygmunt Muller. She lived on 3 Szymanowskiego Street opposite the Cracovian Park. Her father ran the glass wholesale company on Stradom Street. They used to go to Rabka for summer holidays. Their wellfurnished and spacious flat was requisitioned by Germans already in November 1939 and they could not take anything from there. They moved to their family on Bosacka Street and later on 16 Czarneckiego Street in the ghetto. Stella went through Ptasz6w and Auschwitz (where she almost died as she was seriously ill). Together with her parents and brother Adam she lived to see the liberation in Brunnlitz. They came back to Krakow in 1945 and Stella graduated from the Junior High School in 1952. She left for the USA in 1959 to Norbert Muller, her father's brother (who lef Poland in 1918). She worked there and maintained her familv in Poland for three years. In 1991, she decided to publish - under her own imprint - the memoirs of the occupation period: "The girl from Schindler's list. From the perspective of a child" which was translated to many languages, among others German, English, Dutch, Danish and Japanese. In the USA, the value of her memoirs is frequently compared to Dial) Anna Frank fro Holland. During the occupation period all three bro- .. thers of Stella's mother- Bleisweis: Ignac, J6zef, Adolf M - perished. I did not think much of being a Jew actually. I learnt my Jewishness - the language, customs - in the ghetto. I found myself there with my family when' was nine years old only after an elegant German had thrown us out of our marvellous flat on Szymanowski ego Street.

It is amazing that Oskar Schindler is so little known in I Poland, in Krak6w, where his mission began. He came to Krak6w as early as in September 1939 as an Abwehr agent, the member of NSDAP. He became the plenipotentiary of Rekord, a Jewish bankrupt company located on 4 lipowa Street. He renamed it for Deutsche Emalwaren Fabrik (DEF) and he started to produce, among others, mess tins and cartridge cases. He employed about 1100 Jews from the Krakow ghetto and when it was liquidated - from the ptaszow camp. He even managed to build the ready barracks in Zabtocie for them. He convinced Jewish industrialists and bankers that their wealth could not be saved; and if they trusted him he would spend it on saving the Jews. Indeed, he managed to do so, with their approval.

"For the good of the Reich' will run those Jewish pigs ragged!" he shouted, taking "the cheap labour force, essential workers" out of the ghetto and later from the ptasz6w camp.

I was also the essential worker - a turner ... that produced cartridge cases (which were never sent to the front). My age was falsely increased, I was 15 years old.

He was an incredible gambler. He used to hold the banquettes for Nazi barons. He made them drunk into a stuor and gave them various letters to sign - permissions for the food and medicines purchase. Leipold, the cruel commandant of the Brunnlitz camp, signed his own "request to be moved to the front" in such a way. The request was fulrilled and that is how Schindler freed the camp from a man who had worked on "the final solution" (he had ordered in secret to dig holes in the forest next to the factory).

I saw Schindler for the first time at the siding of the Brunnlitz railway station. He was walking accompanied by a German camp commandant (because he had to) and a few Sturmmans. He was well-build, very mighty, in an elegant suit. He stood out because of everything: his manner, look, furtive blinking of an eye and a smile at those whom he knew. I remember him very well: a blonde, tall and broadshouldered, with a smile in the corners of the mouth, with such a flat nose like the boxer's.

say this not because I live thanks to him.

There was a huge factory in Brunnlitz with a shop floor downstairs and two living quarters upstairs (which were divided into two parts with the wire) - one for 800 men and the other for 300 women - and a latrine which was extended later. When the war ended, it turned out that there were boxes with cartridges "manufactured by us" stored in the warehouses on the other side of the camp. Schindler used to buy the cartridges in a real arms factory and Schindler confidants repacked it at our area and stamped with a seal of Schindler's factory. Before, he had sent a letter to Berlin that he employed the best experts. However, there were no experts among the prisoners actually. Such a swin· die could have been done only by Oskar Schindler.

Until Spielberg's arrival in Krakow Schindler actually had not existed in the collective memory. And if anybody had a bad opinion about him, it meant that he was unaware of what Schindler had done. I can say this not because I live thanks to him. Schindler was a wonderful, absolutely marvellous man. He was a ladies' man and a gambler by nature. He might have come to Krak6w with a vision of becoming quickly rich. When he arrived in Krak6w, he palled up with Jews who had great movables brilliants and gold. So they entrusted him with their wealth not with a gun held to their head, but of their own accord, as they !w what Was going on. They wanted him to do something with that, to rescue, to organJze something. Reportedly he said that as long as he lived he would not disappoint them. He never let them down, indeed. He an enormous black market in his socalled factory, he engaged the traders to double the wealth. He started to employ more and more Jewish prisoner ners in his factory. Later, on seeing that those Jews who came from the Ptasz6w camp were beaten and tortured on the way to work, he reported to the commandant that he needed efficient people, not wrecks. So he built some barracks and created the strict discipline of the camp. And his politics, more than cunning, began at that moment. From time to time we heard some news that there was some Schindler who had his people placed, that their lots were different, that it was forbidden to beat them and they were n n to be and they were not hungry. ld they were not hungry. People talk nonsense even today that it pay him with diamonds to be put on the lis~. We were in Ptasz6w camp for two years and we had nothing except for pieces of rags on us. We were able to pay onhl Il\lith 1 rags on us. We were able to pay only with I dirt and lice. Ne were able to pay only with during the German action, women - every during the German action, women - every action of dentists took place just before action of dentists took place just before the money from?

Schindler had the most beautiful villa in Brunnlitz, but he ordered to build I flat at the factory building so that he ould have the factory building so that he could have everything under control as the Germans were able to come even at night and do the strangest things. Money was essential for that as he had to maintain the factory, feed 1100 people, even by giving them only one potato and half a slice of bread a day. And

cartridge cases purchase? To manoeuvre among all of that, to do incredible swindles, to invite dignitaries and give them cognac to trick them out of something. Nobody would have respected

him as a poor person begging at the church in Brunnlitz. He had to have sources to save us, how could he do it without them? How can it be denied? And the brilliants? The gold? They gave it to him voluntarily. Schindler neither swallowed it, nor bought a private airplane and went somewhere in 1944. But he easily could.

I remember Emilie Schindler as a very pleasant person. Although she rarely stayed in Krakow, the Schindlers lived together in Brunnlitz. She was kind towards Jews, very kind. There were people in hospital that needed oatmeal, grits - she gladly gave those things to them, any time she had something in her supply she shared it with them and did not stint.

I come from an assimilated family and I had not known that I was a Jew until the ghetto. But, above all, I am Polish as my father was a fanatic Pitsudski supporter, legionnaire and a soldier of the Polish army. We came back to Krak6w only because it was a great craving of my Daddy who wanted to tou~h the Cracovian ground without which he was not able to live.