Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 6, 1994 TAG: 9402060033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
The German businessman saved Jonathan Dresner twice. He chose the Jew for his factory, then insisted the Nazis allow him to punish Dresner for supposed sabotage rather than letting them take him to a concentration camp.
Schindler found Dresner guilty of damaging a factory machine, kicked him a few times, then sentenced him to night shifts. Otherwise, "I would not be speaking to you today," the 70-year-old retired dentist said.
Both Dresner and Bau appear briefly, along with other survivors, in Steven Spielberg's award-winning film, "Schindler's List," about the man who saved over 1,000 Jews by bribing the Nazis to get Jewish workers for his factories.
The movie, winner of the Golden Globe for best dramatic picture, will debut in Israel on March 3. Some of the estimated 150 survivors who are now Israelis worry that it will smooth over the horrors of the Holocaust, which killed six million Jews.
"I'm really afraid it won't turn out like it was," Bau said.
In the movie, survivors walk past Schindler's grave along with the young actors who recreate their lives. Schindler was brought to Jerusalem for burial after he died in 1974.
Israeli survivors were not consulted on the filming of the movie, based on Thomas Kenally's book about the Jews at Schindler's factory at the Plaszow Nazi concentration camp in Poland. The factory was later moved to Brentze, in former Czechoslovakia.
Bau, a 73-year-old grandfather of four, has qualms about the recreation of his wedding, when he snuck into the women's barracks at Plaszow masquerading as a woman.
Bau traded half a loaf of bread for a piece of silver and another half to have it worked into two rings. There were no invitations, no traditional Jewish wedding canopy and no nuptial night - Bau fled after Nazi guards shot two other men breaking the rules barring mingling in the barracks.
Bau has heard that the scene in the movie includes using sheets and broomsticks to make the canopy, plus guests. "Where on earth would we have gotten sheets? We covered ourselves with a few rags," snorted Bau.
But Dresner said friends from the United States offer enthusiastic reports about the film.
"If it revives the pictures of the Holocaust, I think it is a very great thing," said Dresner, whose mother, father and sister were all saved by Schindler.
The German practically bribed himself into bankruptcy by paying the Nazis to move Jews from the regular concentration camps to employ them as forced labor in his arms and kitchenware factory.
"He was a good guy, that Schindler," Bau said. "The Germans got nothing out of him."
by CNB