Szpilfogel

Rochelmeyer, after oxidation experiments on acetylsolanidine with chromic acid, concluded that the heterocyclic residue could not be attached to the homocyclic portion of the molecule at one point only as in formula (II). The first positive evidence as to the nature of the heterocyclic residue was provided by Prelog and Szpilfogel, ° > who investigated... 

Until one day late in 1939, Maurcy Szpilfogel had himself used quotation marks according to the traditional rules. He d had no reason to believe anyone thought he was a bad scholar in that or any other respect. He had graduated with honors from the Polytechnic Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany. He had earned his doctorate at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Then he had worked in Vienna for two years. But he loved Poland and went back, as he had planned, to Piotrkow, where he was bom. 

In Piotrkow, Szpilfogel had formed a company called "Wola" which began to sift the Polish earth. While the Farben scientists were still trying to conquer coal, water, and air as raw materials, Szpilfogel was making yeast, alcohols, and dextrose from potatoes. He became the first chemist in Europe with a dyestufFs-and-drugs business independent of the outside world. 

His independence did not last many years. In 1939, soon after the Nazis invaded Poland, the Farben director Wurster "happened to pass by Wola" and wrote up his impressions for the other Farben directors. "The owners," said Wurster, "are three gentlemen named Szpilfogel, Goldfisch, and Augenblick."... 

Now, as Szpilfogel waited to testily, from the dock the Farben directors hastened to praise his character. "Herr Szpilfogel was a man of caliber who, for the first time, introduced naphthal dyestuffs in Poland. He was, no doubt, a highly respected personality."... 

Today Maurcy Szpilfogel had no fatherland and no family. His two partners had been killed in the Warsaw ghetto. It was the custom of the court to swear each witness according to the oath of his own country. No one in this court knew the Polish oath. Dr. Szpilfogel could take his choice between the German and American. 

It was all a matter of form. An international trial, an American oath why not He had already told the story in English "I, Dr. Maurcy Szpilfogel, now living at No. 18 Avenue Pierre Odier,... 

Geneva, Switzerland, was bom in the Polish town of Piotrkow in 1872." (The town had been spelled in Russian then Petrokov had been the capital of a province in the Russian empire.) And for the investigator, who hadn t understood Polish, he had told it in German. "I, Dr. Maurcy Szpilfogel was bom in the Polish town of Petrikau. The war brought my work to a sudden stop."... 

Soon the allowance was stopped altogether, and Szpilfogel and his families were shunted from one place to another in Warsaw. In the first year of the occupation, they were not in constant mortal danger, though "even so, street raids took place and even then there were interrogations which consisted in shooting the Jews."... 

But Schwab had done nothing, and in 1940 when the infamous Warsaw ghetto had been established, Szpilfogel and his family were moved there ... 

The letter trembled on Szpilfogel s lap in his hands was Von Schnitzler s letter to Schwab ... 

Dr. M. Szpilfogel has sent me the enclosed letter dated 16 January. This constitutes a part of the duties which fall on you as a result of your appointment as a trustee. I must, therefore, leave it entirely up to you to do what you see fit in this matter, t refrain from taking any position on my part. You will be good enough to advise Dr. Szpilfogel directly of your decision. 

Szpilfogel was more than a rare survivor of the Warsaw ghetto. The Farben robbery had been mysteriously intertwined with the Nazi invasion, and his family and his partners had been murdered as a result. In a querulous voice, Dr. Szpilfogel led the way back to the days before the Nazi armies struck. 

Still, the Ministry of Economics would not appoint Von Schnitzler. On September 29 they did appoint two less powerful Farben men as commissars of the three dyestuffs companies. The Ministry made it clear that these men were hired to act as "Reich trustees," but immediately the I.G. Vorstand referred to the two as "Farben trustees." These were the men, Schwab and Schoner, who had come to call on Dr. Szpilfogel. 

Dr. Szpilfogel was tired. The proof was overwhelming, yet quite suddenly the defense was asking him questions that had nothing to do with the charges. The court let it go on ... 

Sprecher repeated his objection, but Szpilfogel answered anyway ... 

While Szpilfogel was on the stand, I had been pondering again just how the Farben robberies could be considered part and parcel of international conquest. 

The defendants had threatened all the Polish industrialists. That was clear. Even before they stole Szpilfogel s Wola, they had planned to steal the firm of Winnica at the point of a gun, and they had used that threat before the armies marched. 

It was no good, he said, developing pertinent theories while the court remained interested in political and military situations quite beyond the evidence. I didn t take this so seriously. "It doesn t matter to this case what happened to Szpilfogel s property later. 

I laughed. After all, the Tribunal may have been just curious. You could not overlook the flexing of Communist muscles in Prague every day for the past week, there had been agitation there. It would be natural for the judges to be curious about what had happened, under the Communist regime, to Szpilfogel s land. 

HCA1306 V. Prelog and S. Szpilfogel Helv. Chim. Acta, 1942,25, 1306. 443... 

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