Oskar Schindler
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| Born | April 28, 1908 Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Austria-Hungary |
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| Died | October 9, 1974 Hildesheim, Germany |
Oskar Schindler (April 28, 1908 – October 9, 1974) was an Austrian industrialist who saved his Jewish workers from the Holocaust. He saved up to 1,200 employed Jews by having them work in his enamelware and munitions factories located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic.
Early Life
Oskar Schindler was born on 28 April 1908 in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Austria-Hungary (now Svitavy, Bohemia, in the Czech Republic). He was born into a wealthy business family, but in the 1930s his family soon went bankrupt because of the Great Depression. As a teenager, Schindler joined the Nazi Party. His parents, Hans and Louisa, divorced when Oskar was 27, the source of his resentment towards his father.Oskar was very close to an older sister, Elfriede.
During World War II
An opportunistic businessman, he was one of many who sought to profit from the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Schindler brutally decepted his way to own a factory in Kraków from a jewish industrialist named Nathan Wurzel. Schindler, on Wurzel's advice, renamed the factory Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik, or DEF, to manufacture enamelware. He obtained around 1,300 Jewish slave labourers to work there with the help of his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern. When Stern and Schindler were first introduced to each other, Schindler held out his hand. Stern declined to take it. When Schindler asked why, he explained that he was a Jew and it was forbidden for a Jew to shake a German's hand. Schindler answered with a Teutonic (German) expletive: "Scheiße" (shit, prounced shy-seh). Stern could tell from the start that this was no ordinary German. Initially he may have been motivated by money — hiding wealthy Jewish investors, for instance — but later he began shielding his workers without regard to cost. He would, for instance, claim that unskilled workers were essential to the factory. Harming his workers would result in complaints and demands for compensation from the government. Schindler was arrested three times during the war, once even for just kissing a young Jewish girl on the cheek. His second arrest was by the Gestapo for black market activities. Today it is known that Schindler was an Abwehr agent.While witnessing a 1942 raid on the Kraków Ghetto, where soldiers were used to ship the ghetto inhabitants to the concentration camp at Plaszow, Schindler was appalled by the murder of many Jews whom he had tried to hide. He was a very persuasive individual, and after the raid, increasingly used all his skills to protect his Schindlerjuden (Schindler's Jews). Schindler went out of his way to take good care of the Jews who worked at DEF, often calling on his legendary charm and ingratiating manner to help his workers get out of difficult situations. Once, says author Eric Silver in The Book of the Just, "Two Gestapo men came to his office and demanded that he hand over a family of five who had bought forged Polish identity papers. 'Three hours after they walked in,' Schindler said, 'two drunk Gestapo men reeled out of my office without their prisoners and without the incriminating documents they had demanded'". Schindler also reportedly began to smuggle children out of the ghetto, delivering them to Polish nuns, who either hid them from the Nazis, or claimed they were Christian orphans. He arranged with Amon Göth, the commander of Plaszow, for 900 Jews to be transferred to an adjacent factory compound where they would be relatively safe from the depredations of the German guards. Schindler was arrested twice on suspicion of conspiracy, but managed both times to avoid being jailed. Schindler would typically bribe government officials to avoid investigation. When the advance of the Red Army threatened to liberate the concentration camps, almost all were destroyed and a majority of the inmates murdered. Schindler, however, moved 1,200 "workers" to a factory at Brněnec-Brünnlitz in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in October 1944. When one shipment of his workers was misrouted to Auschwitz, he managed to have them returned to him at an extremely hefty price. Brněnec was liberated in May 1945.
After the war
At the end of the war Schindler emigrated to Argentina. He went bankrupt and returned to Germany in 1958 to start a series of unsuccessful business ventures. Schindler settled down in a little apartment Am Hauptbahnhof Nr. 4 in Frankfurt am Main in West Germany and tried—again with help from the Jewish organization—to establish a cement factory. This was not a success either, and it went bankrupt in 1961. His business partner in Germany cancelled the partnership saying, “…now it is clear that you are a friend of Jews and I will not work together with you anymore…” Oskar Schindler died in Hildesheim, Germany, on 9 October 1974, at the age of 66. He was buried at the Christian Cemetery at Mount Zion in Jerusalem.Schindler's grave is located near the bus parking lot near Zion Gate. At the bottom of the ramp leading to the parking lot, across the street is a gate to the graveyard with a small sign indicating the way to Schindler's grave. It is on the lowest terrace, to the right of the entrance. The GPS location is UTM 711223 East, 3517126 North. The grave is easy to spot since it is the only one with many stones piled on top of it, each placed there as a token of gratitude by one of the people he saved or their loved ones. In 1963, Oskar Schindler was named a Righteous Gentile (non-Jew). He was the third Christian to ever receive this honor.
No one really knows what Schindler's motives were, including Schindler. He was quoted as saying "I knew the people who worked for me... When you know people, you have to behave toward them like human beings."
Schindler commemorated
He is honoured at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. He was given an honour to plant a tree at the Avenue of the Righteous.
Schindler's story, retold by Holocaust survivor Poldek Pfefferberg, was the basis for Tom Keneally's book Schindler's Ark (the novel was later renamed Schindler's List), which was adapted into the 1993 movie Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg. In the film, he is played by Liam Neeson. The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Footnotes
See also
- Emilie Schindler
- Raoul Wallenberg
- Albert Göring
- Corrie ten Boom
- Frank Foley
- Ala Gertner
- Wilm Hosenfeld
- Karl Plagge
- John Rabe
- Ho Feng Shan
- Chiune Sugihara
- Nicholas Winton
- Henri Reynders
- Schindler Jews
- Itzhak Stern
- Dimiter Peshev
Books
- Crowe, David M. Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List. Philadelphia: Westview Press, 2004. ISBN 081333375X
External links
- [The Schindler Story]
- [Oskar and Emilie Schindler in Yad Washem Memorial]
- [Oskar Schindler's list at Auschwitz.dk]
- [Holocaust Rescuers Bibliography]
- [Oskar Schindler's grave at www.findagrave.com]
- [Oskar Schindler]
- [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Special Topics: Oskar Schindler]
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