Schindler's List : Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a Sudeten German industrialist credited with saving almost 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, by having them work in his enamelware and ammunitions factories located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic. He was the subject of the book Schindler's Ark, and the film based on it, Schindler's List.

Early life
Schindler was born 28 April 1908 in Svitavy (German: Zwittau), Moravia, then part of Austria-Hungary, now Czech Republic. Oskar Schindler's parents, Hans Schindler and his wife Franziska Luser, were Roman Catholic, but divorced when Oskar was 27. Oskar was very close to his elder sister, Elfriede. After school he worked as a commercial salesman.
On 6 March 1928, Schindler married Emilie Pelzl (1907-2001) , daughter of Josef and Maria Pelzl. The marriage was childless.

In the 1930s he changed jobs several times. He also tried starting various businesses, but soon went bankrupt because of the Great Depression. He joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935. Though a citizen of Czechoslovakia, Schindler started to work for German military intelligence (the Abwehr). He was exposed and jailed in July 1938, but after the Munich Agreement he was set free as a political prisoner. In 1939, Schindler joined the Nazi Party. One source (based on Nazi documents and postwar investigation) contends that he also continued with work for the Abwehr, paving the way for a German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939.

World War II
An opportunistic businessman, he was one of many who sought to profit from the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Schindler gained ownership of a factory in Kraków from a Jewish industrialist named Nathan Wurzel, under Nazi Germany's Aryanization policies.

Schindler, on Wurzel's advice, renamed the factory Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik, or DEF, to manufacture enamelware. He obtained around 1,000 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 replied with a German scatological term, "Scheiße". Initially Schindler may have been motivated by money — hiding wealthy Jewish investors, for instance — but later he began shielding his workers without regard for 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.

While witnessing a 1942 raid on the Kraków Ghetto, where soldiers were used to round up the inhabitants for shipment to the concentration camp at Płaszów, Schindler was appalled by the murder of many of the Jews who had been working for him. He was a very persuasive individual, and after the raid, increasingly used all of his skills to protect his Schindlerjuden ("Schindler's Jews"), as they came to be called. Schindler went out of his way to take 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 commandant of Plaszow, for 700 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 black market activities and complicity in embezzlement; the commandant Amon Göth and other SS-guards used Jewish property (such as money, jewelery, and works of art) for themselves, although according to law, it belonged to the Reich. Schindler mediated such sales on black market and also preserved many stolen items. He managed to avoid being jailed after each arrest. Schindler would typically bribe government officials to avoid investigation.

As the Red Army drew nearer to Auschwitz and the other easternmost concentration camps, the SS began evacuating the remaining prisoners westward. Schindler persuaded the SS officials to allow him to move his 1,100 Jewish workers to Brněnec (German: Brünnlitz) in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia (then in the Sudetenland province), thus sparing the Jews from certain death in the extermination camps. In Brněnec, he gained another former Jewish factory, where he was supposed to produce missiles and hand grenades for the war effort. However, during the months that this factory was running, not a single weapon produced could actually be fired. Hence Schindler made no money; rather, his previously earned fortune was getting steadily smaller in bribing officers and caring for his workers.

After the war
By the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his workers. Virtually destitute, he moved briefly to Regensburg, Germany and, later, Munich, but did not prosper in postwar Germany. In fact, he was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organizations. Eventually, Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1948, where he went bankrupt. Returning to Germany in 1958, he had a series of unsuccessful business ventures. Schindler settled down in a little apartment at Am Hauptbahnhof Nr. 4 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany and tried again – with help from a Jewish organization – to establish a cement factory. This, too, went bankrupt in 1961. His business partner cancelled their partnership. In 1971 Oskar Schindler moved to live with friends in Hildesheim, Germany. Due to a heart complaint he was taken to the Sankt Bernward Hospital in Hildesheim on 12 September 1974, where he died on 9 October 1974, at the age of 66. The costs for his stay in the hospital were paid from social welfare of the city of Hildesheim. He was buried at the Catholic cemetery at Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

No one really knows what Schindler's motives were. However, 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."

The writer Herbert Steinhouse, who interviewed Schindler in 1948 at the behest of some of the surviving Schindlerjuden (Schindler's Jews), said

"Oskar Schindler's exceptional deeds stemmed from just that elementary sense of decency and humanity that our sophisticated age seldom sincerely believes in. A repentant opportunist saw the light and rebelled against the sadism and vile criminality all around him. The inference may be disappointingly simple, especially for all amateur psychoanalysts who would prefer the deeper and more mysterious motive that may, it is true, still lie unprobed and unappreciated. But an hour with Oskar Schindler encourages belief in the simple answer."

Legacy
In 1967, Schindler was honored at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial to the victims of the Holocaust as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, or "righteous Gentiles", an honor awarded by Israel to non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust at great personal risk. Schindler was the only former member of the Nazi party to be so recognized by the planting of a tree in his name at the Yad Vashem Memorial.

Schindler's story, retold by Holocaust survivor Poldek Pfefferberg, was the basis for Thomas 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, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal. The film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The prominence of Spielberg's film introduced Schindler into popular culture. As the film is the sole source of most people's knowledge of Schindler, he is generally perceived much as Spielberg's film depicts him: as a man who was instinctively driven by profit-driven amorality, but who at some point made a silent but conscious decision that preserving the lives of his Jewish employees was imperative, even if requiring massive payments to induce Nazis to turn a blind eye. While Spielberg's film takes some cinematic liberties, the depiction of Schindler appears to be a rare example of an unromanticized historical protagonist. Schindler did in fact spend the majority of his wealth, and forever alienated himself from any political standing in his own country, to save the lives of his Jewish workers.

In the Autumn of 1999 a suitcase belonging to Schindler was discovered, containing over 7,000 photographs and documents, including the list of Schindler's Jewish workers. The document, on his enamelware factory's letterhead, had been provided to the SS stating that the named workers were "essential" employees. Friends of Schindler found the suitcase in the attic of a house in Hildesheim, Germany, where he had been staying at the time of his death. The friends took the suitcase to Stuttgart, where its discovery was reported by a newspaper, the Stuttgarter Zeitung. The contents of the suitcase; including the list of the names of those he had saved and the text of his farewell speech before leaving "his Jews" in 1945, are now at the Holocaust Museum of Yad Vashem in Israel.

Schindler's List

Schindler's List is a 1993 biographical film directed by Steven Spielberg, telling the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust. It was based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, and starred Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as the SS officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's accountant Itzhak Stern. The film was a box office success, and won several Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Score.

Plot
The film begins with the relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding areas to Krakow in late 1939, shortly after the beginning of World War II. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an unsuccessful businessman, arrives from Czechoslovakia in hopes of using the abundant slave labor force of Jews to manufacture goods for the German military. Schindler, an opportunistic member of the Nazi Party, lavishes bribes upon the army and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a contact in Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a functionary in the local Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the now underground Jewish business community in the Ghetto. They loan him the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced (for trade on the black market). Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his new-found wealth and status as "Herr Direktor," while Stern handles all administration. Stern even suggests that Schindler hire Jews instead of Poles because they cost less (the Jews themselves get nothing; the wages are paid to the Reich). Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto though, and Stern falsifies documents to ensure that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" by the Nazi bureaucracy, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps, or even death.

Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes) arrives in Krakow to initiate construction of a labor camp nearby, Płaszów. The SS soon clears the Krakow ghetto, sending in hundreds of troops to empty the cramped rooms and shoot anyone who protests, is uncooperative, or for no reason at all. Schindler watches the massacre from the hills overlooking the area, and is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to befriend Göth and, through Stern's attention to bribery, he continues to enjoy the SS's support and protection. The camp is built outside the city at Płaszów. During this time, Schindler bribes Göth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers, with the motive of keeping them safe from the depredations of the guards. Eventually, an order arrives from Berlin commanding Göth to exhume and destroy all bodies of those killed in the Krakow Ghetto, dismantle Płaszów, and to ship the remaining Jews to Auschwitz. Schindler prevails upon Göth to let him keep "his" workers, so that he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, in Moravia, away from the "final solution", now fully underway in occupied Poland. Göth acquiesces, charging a certain amount for each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers that should keep them off the trains to Auschwitz.

"Schindler's List" comprises these "skilled" inmates, and for many of those in Płaszów camp, being included means the difference between life and death. Almost all of the people on Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site, with exception to the train carrying the women, which is accidentally redirected to Auschwitz. Schindler rushes immediately to Auschwitz and stops their gassing. He bribes the camp commander, Rudolf Höß, with a cache of diamonds to spare the women. As the women board the train to the site of the factory, several SS officers attempt to hold some children back and prevent them from leaving. However, Schindler, who is there to personally oversee the boarding, steps in and demands the officers release the children. Once the Schindler women arrive in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler institutes firm controls on the Nazi guards assigned to the factory, permits the Jews to observe the Sabbath, and spends much of his fortune bribing Nazi officials. In his home town, he surprises his wife while she's in church during mass, and tells her that she is the only woman in his life (despite having been shown previously to be a womanizer). She goes with him to the factory to assist him. He runs out of money just as the German army surrenders, ending the war in Europe.

As a German Nazi and self-described "profiteer of slave labor", Schindler must flee the oncoming Soviet Red Army. After dismissing the Nazi guards to return to their families, he packs a car in the night, and bids farewell to his workers. They give him a letter explaining he is not a criminal to them, together with a ring engraved with the Talmudic quotation, "He who saves the life of one man, saves the world entire." Schindler is touched but deeply distraught, feeling he could've done more to save many more lives. He leaves with his wife during the night. The Schindler Jews, having slept outside the factory gates through the night, are awakened by sunlight the next morning. A Soviet dragoon arrives and announces to the Jews that they have been liberated by the Red Army. The Jews walk to a nearby town in search of food. As they walk abreast, the frame changes to another of the Schindler Jews in the present day at the grave of Oskar Schindler in Israel. The film ends by showing a procession of now-aged Jews who worked in Schindler's factory, each of whom reverently sets a stone on his grave. The actors portraying the major characters walk hand-in-hand with the people they portrayed, also placing stones on Schindler's grave as they pass. We learn that the survivors and descendants of the approximately 1,100 Jews sheltered by Schindler now number over 6,000. The Jewish population of Poland, once numbering in the millions, was at the time of the film's release approximately 4,000. In the final scene, a man (the unseen face of Liam Neeson) places a rose on the grave, and stands contemplatively over it.