Brünnlitz labor camp

Using much of the money he had earned from his enamelware business, Schindler bribed SS and Nazi officials in order to gain permission to move his labor force to the Sudetengau and set up a munitions factory.

A token front gate and a perimeter fence were the only measures put in place to prevent escapes; however, every Jew at the complex was grateful to be there and hoped to survive the war under Schindler's protection.

The inmates at Brünnlitz, many of whom had suffered harshly under Göth, remarked that he was a physically changed man and looked feeble and pathetic compared to his early tenure when he was a figure who commanded absolute fear and terror.

The factory produced no usable armaments of its own, a strategy deliberately chosen by Schindler in the hope of hastening the war's end by contributing nothing to German military efforts.

A few days prior, the SS guards had deserted and Schindler had escaped to American lines with the help of his Jewish workers, carrying a letter written by them that attested to his rescue activities.

[3] A total of 42 Jews died at Brünnlitz during its time of operation and were buried in a mass grave behind a cemetery in Bělá nad Svitavou shortly before the end of the war.

[4] As of October 2016, Jaroslav Novak [cs] and the Endowment Fund for the Memorial of the Shoah and Oskar Schindler has purchased the site where the camp was located and plans to convert it into a museum.

SS-Ostuf Josef Leipold
The ruins of the factory in 2004.