While at a dinner with his grandfather he met 'Reinhard Heydrich', chief of the Nazi SS special police and a principal designer of the “final solution” to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
Beitz heard Heydrich discussing the strategically important oil fields in what was then Poland and expressed interest in the work.... Then in his late 20s, Beitz soon received a military commission to serve as business manager of the 'Carpathian Oil company in Boryslaw', Many of the company’s workers were Jews.
In 1942, he saw babies tossed from windows during the liquidation of a Jewish orphanage, an experience that left him deeply scarred.
Beitz used his connections with Nazi officials as well as what he described as “self-assurance” and “incredible luck” to carry out a daring and risky rescue effort...... Permitted to review transports of Jews before they left for Nazi death camps, Beitz pulled from the trains his employees and others.... In August 1942, Beitz removed 250 Jews from a transport to the Belzec camp by calling them “professional workers.”
“I should have employed qualified personnel,” he said, “Instead, I chose tailors, hairdressers and Talmudic scholars and gave them all cards as [vital] ‘petroleum technicians.’
Meanwhile, Beitz secretly relayed to his Jewish acquaintances information about impending roundups and deportations. He and his wife, Else, risked their own security to hide Jews even in their home.
The exact number of Jews saved by Mr. Beitz is not easily determined. Some estimates place the number as high as 800. But he remained haunted by one person whose life he could not save.
Once, he went to the railway station before a transport and recognized among the deportees one of his secretaries and her elderly mother. Mr. Beitz pulled both women from the cattle car. The SS guard, unconvinced of the older woman’s value to the company, ordered her back onto the train.
Unable to bear such a separation, the secretary turned to Mr. Beitz. “Herr Direktor, may I [also] return to the car?” she asked.... She never came back.
