Oskar Schindler

1.- Prewar

Oskar Schindler was born on April 28, 1908, in Zwittau, Bohemia (part of Austria-Hungary, now in the Czech Republic). His family was Catholic, rich and engaged business. In his childhood Oskar had Jews as his best friends. His family suffered the postwar famine of World War I and the Great Depression of 1929. In 1930 he joined the Nazi party. Schindler did the Engineer career while he joined the army of his country.  Two years before the outbreak of World War II, Schindler became director of sales for a manufacturer of electrical products.

2.- War

In 1939, shortly before the invasion of Poland by Nazi troops, Schindler worked as a spy in Poland for the Germans. His mission was to study the Polish population and the importance of the Jewish community, very large and with great weight by then.

In October of the same year, Schindler was transferred to the Polish city of Krakow to run a factory of pots, place where Schindler try to avoid the transferring of the largest possible number of Jews to the death camps with his wife Emily Schindler.

The Guetto of Krakow was built in 1941. The Jews were moved from the Guetto to death camps, where they were eliminated by the Nazis. At the beginning Schindler only was interested in money he could make with the Jews. He was not in favour but, either against the anti-Semitism.

Schindler, pretending false sympathy for the anti-Semitism system, managed to convince the Nazis to allow him to use prisoners from the Krakow guetto in his factory. Initially, Shindler was only interested in money so he selected rich Jews. With the money he earned from the factory, Schindler was able to persuade SS commanders.Oskar Schindler negotiated with Goeth, the SS leader of the Krakow Guetto. The Jews were able to work in Schindler’s factory during the day and they came back to the Guetto in the evening. For this reason, Schindler worked with Itzhak Stern, a very skillful accountant. Stern realized that they could use Jewish people to work in his factory at a lower price than Polish workers. Those Jews were workers so the Nazis could not send them to death camps.

“ Stern discovered a way to channel his essentially forced labor for Schindler into a way to help his fellow Jews. As Schindler left Stern to run the factory, he immediately began to give factory jobs to Jews who otherwise would be deemed “nonessential” and would most likely be killed. He forged documents to make teachers and intellectuals appear to be experienced machinists and factory workers. Stern’s motivation to help his people was abundantly clear. He would often advise Schindler about things, mainly the company.” (Itzhak Stern – Wikipedia).

Schindler had made an agreement with Goeth by which he has to pay the Jewish salaries and some more money. This way Goeth turned a blind eye. Little by little, Schindler realized what was going on and assumed he could help many more Jews with his factory. Schindler and Itzhak Stern selected more than one thousand Jews, even Jews who had never worked in a factory and were going to be deemed as “non-essential” and eliminated.

            After the Ghetto recession in 1943, Schindler’s factory of pots was not enough. Schindler wanted to rescue more and more Jews. Schindler and Stern had a very successful idea: change the  production of pots by projectiles. Further more Schindler ordered that some projectiles were poorly manufactured.

3.- Postwar

At the end of 1944 Schindler had rescued more than 1200 Polish Jews. Schindler finished in bankruptcy. When the war finished, Schindler moved to Argentine where he started a rancher business. In 1957 the rancher went bust and Schindler came back to Germany alone, leaving his wife, Emily, at Argentine. He never saw Emily again. Four years after, in 1961, the government from Israeli invented him to live in his country with an annuity. In 1971 Schindler moved again to German, this time to Hildesheim where he spent his last years with his family and some friends.

4.- Books  and Movie

In 1982, the novelist Thomas Keneally wrote Schindler's Ark based on how Schindler run his factory.

In 1944, Spielberg  film Schindler’s list. The movie was very successful and won seven Oscars, despite it was three hours long and was filmed in black and white.

Ich, Emilie Schindler by the Argentinian author Erika Rosenberg tries to show that Emilie was just as involved in shielding Jews from the Nazis.