Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories in occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia. His actions, which involved considerable personal risk and financial sacrifice, were later dramatized in the novel Schindler's Ark and the film Schindler's List. Initially a war profiteer motivated by opportunism, Schindler underwent a profound moral transformation, using his position and cunning to subvert the Final Solution and protect his workers from deportation to extermination camps like Auschwitz.

Early life and career

Oskar Schindler was born into a Sudeten German family in Svitavy, a town in the Moravia region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After leaving school, he worked for his father, selling farm equipment, and later held various jobs, including a position with the Czechoslovak Army. In the 1930s, Schindler joined the Sudeten German Party and began working as an Abwehr agent for German military intelligence, gathering information on Poland prior to the invasion of Poland in 1939. Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, he officially joined the Nazi Party and leveraged his connections to pursue business opportunities in the newly annexed territory.

World War II and the enamelware factory

Following the outbreak of World War II, Schindler moved to Kraków, taking advantage of the General Government's Aryanization policies to acquire a formerly Jewish-owned enamelware factory. He renamed it Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik and, with the help of his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, staffed it primarily with Jewish workers from the Kraków Ghetto. Initially driven by profit and a lavish lifestyle, Schindler's close observation of the brutal Nazi persecution, particularly the violent Kraków Ghetto liquidation in 1943, sparked a change in his motives. He began using his factory as a refuge, bribing SS officials like Amon Göth, the commandant of the nearby Płaszów concentration camp, to keep his workers from being transported to death camps.

The list and rescue of Jews

In late 1944, as the Red Army advanced, the SS began closing down camps in the east and deporting remaining prisoners to Auschwitz. Determined to protect his workers, Schindler, with Stern's help, compiled the names of approximately 1,200 Jewish men, women, and children deemed "essential" for war production. He then secured permission from Berlin to relocate his armaments factory to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland, arguing for the necessity of his skilled workforce. He spent his entire fortune bribing officials to approve the transfer, which became known as "Schindler's List." Upon arrival at Brünnlitz, he and his wife Emilie Schindler continued to protect the workers, even sheltering a train of freezing prisoners from Goleszów and defying orders to produce a single usable artillery shell.

Postwar life and death

After the war, Schindler was destitute and supported for a time by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He emigrated briefly to Argentina with his wife to attempt farming, but the venture failed. He returned alone to West Germany in 1958, where he experienced a series of unsuccessful business ventures and lived modestly, supported by donations from Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews) he had saved. He was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1962. Schindler died of liver failure in Hildesheim, West Germany, in 1974 and was buried, at his request, in the Latin Cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Legacy and recognition

Schindler's story remained relatively unknown until the publication of Thomas Keneally's 1982 historical novel Schindler's Ark, which won the Booker Prize. It was adapted into the acclaimed 1993 film Schindler's List by director Steven Spielberg, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. His legacy is preserved by the descendants of the Schindlerjuden, and he is memorialized at institutions like Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The factory in Kraków now houses a museum dedicated to his life and the wartime experience, serving as a powerful testament to individual courage and moral choice in the face of genocide.

Category:1908 births Category:1974 deaths Category:German industrialists Category:Righteous Among the Nations Category:Holocaust rescuers