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.
