Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg (20 March 1913-9 March 2001) was a Polish Jewish army officer, black market smuggler, and businessman who worked for German industrialist Oskar Schindler during World War II.
Biography[]
Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg was born on 20 March 1913 in Krakow, Austria-Hungary to a Jewish family, and he gained a master's degree in philosophy and physical education from the Jagiellonian University before joining the Polish Army. He was wounded on the San River in September 1939 during the war with Nazi Germany, and he was carried to a field hospital. As an officer in the Polish Army, he decided not to head east into the Soviet Union, as he would have been executed in the Katyn Forest with several other Polish officers. He instead entered the Krakow Ghetto and became involved with the black market, smuggling shoe polish and other goods to the Wehrmacht. In late 1939, he met German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who recruited him to supply him with goods for his new enamelware factory. Poldek would work with Schindler and help him in saving the lives of over 1,700 Jews, and he survived the Holocaust, unlike his parents, sister, brother-in-law, and several other relatives.
After World War II ended, Pfefferberg lived in Hungary and Germany, and he moved to the United States in 1948. He opened a leather goods business in Beverly Hills, California, and he used the name "Leopold Page" for years. He would write a book, Schindler's Ark, about how Schindler saved hundreds of Polish Jews from certain death, and he died in Beverly Hills in 2001 at the age of 87.