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Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler (German: [ˈɔs.kaʁ ˈʃɪnd.lɐ] (listen); 28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist, humanitarian and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and its 1993 film adaptation, Schindler's List, which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit, who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication in saving the lives of his Jewish employees.

Oskar Schindler
Born(1908-04-28)28 April 1908
Died9 October 1974(1974-10-09) (aged 66)
Resting placeMount Zion Catholic Cemetery
Jerusalem, Israel
31°46′13″N 35°13′50″E / 31.770164°N 35.230423°E / 31.770164; 35.230423
OccupationIndustrialist
Political party
Spouse
(m. 1928)
Children2
AwardsRighteous Among the Nations

Schindler grew up in Zwittau, Moravia, and worked in several trades until he joined the Abwehr, the military intelligence service of Nazi Germany, in 1936. He joined the Nazi Party in 1939. Prior to the beginning of German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he collected information on railways and troop movements for the German government. He was arrested for espionage by the Czechoslovak government but was released under the terms of the Munich Agreement that year. He continued to collect information for the Nazis, working in Poland in 1939 before the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II. In 1939, he acquired an enamelware factory in Kraków, Poland, which employed, at its peak in 1944, about 1,750 workers, of whom 1,000 were Jews. His Abwehr connections helped him protect his Jewish workers from deportation and death in the Nazi concentration camps. As time went on, he had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe.

By July 1944, Germany was losing the war; the SS began closing down the easternmost concentration camps and deporting the remaining prisoners westward. Many were murdered in Auschwitz and the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Schindler convinced SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth, commandant of the nearby Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, to allow him to move his factory to Brněnec in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, thus sparing his workers from almost certain death in the gas chambers. Using names provided by Jewish Ghetto Police officer Marcel Goldberg, Göth's secretary Mietek Pemper compiled and typed the list of 1,200 Jews who travelled to Brünnlitz in October 1944. Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent the execution of his workers until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945, by which time he had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies for his workers.

Schindler moved to West Germany after the war, where he was supported by assistance payments from Jewish relief organisations. After receiving a partial reimbursement for his wartime expenses, he moved with his wife Emilie to Argentina, where they took up farming. When he went bankrupt in 1958, Schindler left his wife and returned to Germany, where he failed at several business ventures and relied on financial support from Schindlerjuden ("Schindler Jews")—the people whose lives he had saved during the war. He died on 9 October 1974 in Hildesheim, Germany, and was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the only former member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way. He and his wife Emilie were named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1993.

Life

Early life and education

Schindler was born on 28 April 1908, into a Sudeten German family in Zwittau, Moravia, Austria-Hungary. His father was Johann "Hans" Schindler, the owner of a farm machinery business, and his mother was Franziska "Fanny" Schindler (née Luser). His sister, Elfriede, was born in 1915. After attending primary and secondary school, Schindler enrolled in a technical school, from which he was expelled in 1924 for forging his report card. He later graduated, but did not take the Abitur exams that would have enabled him to go to college or university. Instead, he took courses in Brno in several trades, including chauffeuring and machinery, and worked for his father for three years. A motorcycle fan since his youth, he bought a 250-cc Moto Guzzi racing motorcycle and competed recreationally in mountain races for the next few years.[1]

On 6 March 1928, Schindler married Emilie Pelzl (1907–2001), daughter of a prosperous Sudeten German farmer from Maletein.[2] They moved in with Oskar's parents and occupied the upstairs rooms, where they lived for seven years.[3]

Soon after his marriage, Schindler quit working for his father and took a series of jobs, including a position at Moravian Electrotechnic and the management of a driving school. After an 18-month stint in the Czech army, where he rose to the rank of lance corporal in the Tenth Infantry Regiment of the 31st Army, he returned to Moravian Electrotechnic, which went bankrupt shortly afterwards. His father's farm machinery business closed around the same time, leaving Schindler unemployed for a year. He took a job with Jaroslav Šimek Bank of Prague in 1931, where he worked until 1938.[4]

Schindler was arrested several times in 1931 and 1932 for public drunkenness. Also around this time, he had an affair with Aurelie Schlegel, a school friend. They had a daughter, Emily, in 1933, and a son, Oskar Jr, in 1935. Schindler later claimed the boy was not his son.[5] Schindler's father, an alcoholic, abandoned his wife in 1935. She died a few months later after a lengthy illness.[3]

Spy for the Abwehr

Schindler joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935.[6] Although he was a citizen of Czechoslovakia, Schindler became a spy for the Abwehr, the military intelligence service of Nazi Germany, in 1936. He was assigned to Abwehrstelle II Commando VIII, based in Breslau.[7] He later told Czech police that he did it because he needed the money; by this time Schindler had a drinking problem and was chronically in debt.[8]

His tasks for the Abwehr included collecting information on railways, military installations and troop movements, as well as recruiting other spies within Czechoslovakia in advance of the planned invasion by Nazi Germany.[9] He was arrested by the Czech government for espionage on 18 July 1938 and immediately imprisoned, but was released as a political prisoner under the terms of the Munich Agreement, the instrument under which the Czech Sudetenland was annexed into Germany on 1 October.[10][11] Schindler applied for membership in the Nazi Party on 1 November and was accepted the following year.[12]

After some time off to recover in Zwittau, Schindler was promoted to second in command of his Abwehr unit and relocated with his wife to Ostrava (Ostrau), on the Czech-Polish border, in January 1939.[13] He was involved in espionage in the months leading up to Hitler's seizure of the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March. Emilie helped him with paperwork, processing and hiding secret documents in their apartment for the Abwehr office.[14] As Schindler frequently travelled to Poland on business, he and his 25 agents were in a position to collect information about Polish military activities and railways for the planned invasion of Poland.[15] One assignment called for his unit to monitor and provide information about the railway line and tunnel in the Jablunkov Pass, deemed critical for the movement of German troops.[16] Schindler continued to work for the Abwehr until as late as fall 1940, when he was sent to Turkey to investigate corruption among the Abwehr officers assigned to the German embassy there.[17]

World War II

Emalia

Schindler first arrived in Kraków (Krakau) in October 1939, on Abwehr business, and took an apartment the following month. Emilie maintained the apartment in Ostrava and visited Oskar in Kraków at least once a week.[18][19] In November 1939, he contacted interior decorator Mila Pfefferberg to decorate his new apartment. Her son, Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg, soon became one of his contacts for black market trading. They eventually became lifelong friends.[20]

The same month, Schindler was introduced to Itzhak Stern, an accountant for Schindler's fellow Abwehr agent Josef "Sepp" Aue, who had taken over Stern's formerly Jewish-owned place of employment as a Treuhänder (trustee).[21] Property belonging to Polish Jews, including their possessions, places of business, and homes were seized by the Germans beginning immediately after the invasion, and Jewish citizens were stripped of their civil rights.[22] Schindler showed Stern the balance sheet of a company he was thinking of acquiring, an enamelware factory called Rekord Ltd[a] owned by a consortium of Jewish businessmen that had filed for bankruptcy earlier that year.[23] Stern advised him that rather than running the company as a trusteeship under the auspices of the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost (Main Trustee Office for the East), he should buy or lease the business, as that would give him more freedom from the dictates of the Nazis, including the freedom to hire more Jews.[24]

With the financial backing of several Jewish investors, including one of the owners, Abraham Bankier, Schindler signed an informal lease agreement on the factory on 13 November 1939 and formalised the arrangement on 15 January 1940.[b] He renamed it Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik (German Enamelware Factory) or DEF, and it soon became known by the nickname "Emalia".[25][26] He initially acquired a staff of seven Jewish workers (including Abraham Bankier, who helped him manage the company[27]) and 250 non-Jewish Poles.[28] At its peak in 1944, the business employed around 1,750 workers, a thousand of whom were Jews.[29] Schindler also helped run Schlomo Wiener Ltd, a wholesale outfit that sold his enamelware, and was leaseholder of Prokosziner Glashütte, a glass factory.[30]

Schindler's ties with the Abwehr and his connections in the Wehrmacht and its Armaments Inspectorate enabled him to obtain contracts to produce enamel cookware for the military.[31] These connections also later helped him protect his Jewish workers from deportation and death.[32] As time went on, Schindler had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe.[33] Bankier, a key black market connection, obtained goods for bribes as well as extra materials for use in the factory.[34] Schindler himself enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and pursued extramarital relationships with his secretary, Viktoria Klonowska, and Eva Kisch Scheuer, a merchant specialising in enamelware from DEF.[35] Emilie Schindler visited for a few months in 1940 and moved to Kraków to live with Oskar in 1941.[36][37]

 
Schindler's factory in Kraków, 2011

Initially, Schindler was mostly interested in the money-making potential of the business and hired Jews because they were cheaper than Poles—the wages were set by the occupying Nazi regime.[38] Later he began shielding his workers without regard for cost.[39] The status of his factory as a business essential to the war effort became a decisive factor in enabling him to protect his Jewish workers. Whenever Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews) were threatened with deportation, he claimed exemptions for them. He claimed wives, children, and even people with disabilities were necessary mechanics and metalworkers.[39] On one occasion, the Gestapo came to Schindler demanding that he hand over a family that possessed forged 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."[40]

On 1 August 1940, Governor-General Hans Frank issued a decree requiring all Kraków Jews to leave the city within two weeks. Only those who had jobs directly related to the German war effort would be allowed to stay. Of the 60,000 to 80,000 Jews then living in the city, only 15,000 remained by March 1941. These Jews were then forced to leave their traditional neighbourhood of Kazimierz and relocate to the walled Kraków Ghetto, established in the industrial Podgórze district.[41][42] Schindler's workers travelled on foot to and from the ghetto each day to their jobs at the factory.[43] Enlargements to the facility in the four years Schindler was in charge included the addition of an outpatient clinic, co-op, kitchen, and dining room for the workers, in addition to expansion of the factory and its related office space.[44]

Płaszów

In fall 1941, the Nazis began transporting Jews out of the ghetto. Most of them were sent to the Bełżec extermination camp and murdered.[45] On 13 March 1943, the ghetto was liquidated and those still fit for work were sent to the new concentration camp at Płaszów.[46] Several thousand not deemed fit for work were sent to extermination camps and murdered; hundreds more were murdered on the streets by the Nazis as they cleared out the ghetto. Schindler, aware of the plans because of his Wehrmacht contacts, had his workers stay at the factory overnight to protect them from harm.[47] Schindler witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto and was appalled. From that point forward, says Schindlerjude Sol Urbach, Schindler "changed his mind about the Nazis. He decided to get out and to save as many Jews as he could."[48]

The Płaszów concentration camp opened in March 1943 on the former site of two Jewish cemeteries on Jerozilimska Street, about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) from the DEF factory.[49] In charge of the camp was SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth, a sadist who shot inmates of the camp at random.[48] Płaszów's inmates lived in constant fear for their lives.[50] Emilie Schindler called Göth "the most despicable man I have ever met."[51]

 
Hujowa Górka ("Prick Hill"), the execution place in Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp (2007)

Initially Göth's plan was that all the factories, including Schindler's, should be moved inside the camp gates.[52] However, Schindler, with a combination of diplomacy, flattery, and bribery, not only prevented his factory from being moved, but convinced Göth to allow him to build (at Schindler's own expense) a subcamp at Emalia to house his workers plus 450 Jews from other nearby factories. There they were safe from the threat of random execution, well fed and housed, and permitted to undertake religious observances.[53][54]

Schindler was arrested twice on suspicion of black market activities and once for breaking the Nuremberg Laws by kissing a Jewish girl, an action forbidden by the Race and Resettlement Act. The first arrest, in late 1941, led to him being kept overnight. His secretary arranged for his release through Schindler's influential contacts in the Nazi Party. His second arrest, on 29 April 1942, was the result of his kissing a Jewish girl on the cheek at his birthday party at the factory the previous day. He remained in jail five days before his influential Nazi contacts were able to obtain his release.[55] In October 1944, he was arrested again, accused of black marketeering and bribing Göth and others to improve the conditions of the Jewish workers. He was held for most of a week and released.[56] Göth had been arrested on 13 September 1944 for corruption and other abuses of power, and Schindler's arrest was part of the ongoing investigation into Göth's activities.[57] Göth was never convicted on those charges.[58][59]

In 1943, Schindler was contacted by Zionist leaders in Budapest via members of the Jewish resistance movement. Schindler travelled to Budapest several times to report in person on Nazi mistreatment of the Jews. He brought back funding provided by the Jewish Agency for Israel and turned it over to the Jewish underground.[60][61]

Brünnlitz

As the Red Army drew nearer in July 1944, the SS began closing down the easternmost concentration camps and evacuating the remaining prisoners westward to Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Göth's personal secretary, Mietek Pemper, alerted Schindler to the Nazis' plans to close all factories not directly involved in the war effort, including Schindler's enamelware facility. Pemper suggested to Schindler that production should be switched from cookware to anti-tank grenades in an effort to save the lives of the Jewish workers. Using bribery and his powers of persuasion, Schindler convinced Göth and the officials in Berlin to allow him to move his factory and his workers to Brünnlitz (Czech: Brněnec), in the Sudetenland, thus sparing them from certain death in the gas chambers. Using names provided by Jewish Ghetto Police officer Marcel Goldberg, Pemper compiled and typed the list of 1,200 Jews—1,000 of Schindler's workers and 200 inmates from Julius Madritsch's textiles factory—who were sent to Brünnlitz in October 1944.[62][63][64][65]

 
Schindler's factory at the former site of Brünnlitz labor camp in 2004

On 15 October 1944 a train carrying 700 men on Schindler's list was initially sent to the concentration camp at Gross-Rosen, where the men spent about a week before being re-routed to the factory in Brünnlitz.[66] Three hundred female Schindlerjuden were similarly sent to Auschwitz, where they were in imminent danger of being sent to the gas chambers. Schindler's usual connections and bribes failed to obtain their release. Finally after he sent his secretary, Hilde Albrecht, with bribes of black market goods, food and diamonds, the women were sent to Brünnlitz after several harrowing weeks in Auschwitz.[67]

In addition to workers, Schindler moved 250 wagon loads of machinery and raw materials to the new factory.[68] Few if any useful artillery shells were produced at the plant. When officials from the Armaments Ministry questioned the factory's low output, Schindler bought finished goods on the black market and resold them as his own.[69] The rations provided by the SS were insufficient to meet the needs of the workers, so Schindler spent most of his time in Kraków, obtaining food, armaments, and other materials. His wife Emilie remained in Brünnlitz, surreptitiously obtaining additional rations and caring for the workers' health and other basic needs.[70][71] Schindler also arranged for the transfer of as many as 3,000 Jewish women out of Auschwitz to small textiles plants in the Sudetenland in an effort to increase their chances of surviving the war.[72][73]

In January 1945 a trainload of 250 Jews who had been rejected as workers at a German mine in Goleschau in occupied Poland arrived at Brünnlitz. The boxcars were frozen shut when they arrived, and Emilie Schindler waited while an engineer from the factory opened the cars using a soldering iron. Twelve people were dead in the cars, and the remainder were too ill and feeble to work. Emilie took the survivors into the factory and cared for them in a makeshift hospital until the end of the war.[74][73] Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent the slaughter of his workers as the Red Army approached.[75] On 7 May 1945 he and his workers gathered on the factory floor to listen to British prime minister Winston Churchill announce over the radio that Germany had surrendered and that the war in Europe was over.[76]

After the war

 
Memorial plaque on the house where Schindler lived in Regensburg

As a member of the Nazi Party and the Abwehr intelligence service, Schindler was in danger of being arrested as a war criminal. Bankier, Stern, and several others prepared a statement he could present to the Americans attesting to his role in saving Jewish lives. He was also given a ring, made using gold from dental work taken out of the mouth of Schindlerjude Simon Jeret. The ring was inscribed "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire."[c][77] To escape being captured by the Soviets, Schindler and his wife departed westward in their vehicle, a two-seater Horch, initially with several fleeing German soldiers riding on the running boards. A truck containing Schindler's mistress Marta, several Jewish workers, and a load of black market trade goods followed behind. The Horch was confiscated by Soviet troops at the town of Budweis, which had already been captured by Soviet troops. The Schindlers were unable to recover a diamond that Oskar had hidden under the seat.[78] They continued by train and on foot until they reached the American lines at the town of Lenora, and then travelled to Passau, where an American Jewish officer arranged for them to travel to Switzerland by train. They moved to Bavaria in Germany in the fall of 1945.[79]

 
Schindler's grave in Jerusalem. The Hebrew inscription reads: "Righteous Among the Nations"; the German inscription reads: "The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews".

By the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies for his workers.[80] Virtually destitute, he moved briefly to Regensburg and later Munich, but did not prosper in postwar Germany. He was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organisations.[39] In 1948 he presented a claim for reimbursement of his wartime expenses to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and received $15,000.[81] He estimated his expenditures at over $1,056,000, including the costs of camp construction, bribes, and expenditures for black market goods, including food.[82]

Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1949, where he tried raising chickens and then nutria (coypu), a small animal raised for its fur. When the business went bankrupt in 1958, he left his wife and returned to Germany, where he had a series of unsuccessful business ventures, including a cement factory.[83][84] He declared bankruptcy in 1963 and suffered a heart attack the next year, which led to a month-long stay in hospital.[85] Remaining in contact with many of the Jews he had met during the war, including Stern and Pfefferberg, Schindler survived on donations sent by Schindlerjuden from all over the world.[84][86]

Schindler died of liver failure on 9 October 1974.[87] He is buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way.[39][84]

For his work during the war, on 8 May 1962, Yad Vashem invited Schindler to a ceremony in which a carob tree was planted in his honor on the Avenue of the Righteous.[88] He and his wife Emilie were named Righteous Among the Nations, an award bestowed by the State of Israel on non-Jews who took an active role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust, on 24 June 1993.[89] Schindler, along with Karl Plagge,[90] Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz,[91] Helmut Kleinicke,[92] and Hans Walz[93] are among the few Nazi Party members to be given this award. Schindler received other awards, including the German Order of Merit in 1966.[94]

Writer Herbert Steinhouse, who interviewed Schindler in 1948, wrote: "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."[39] In a 1983 television documentary, Schindler is quoted as saying: "I felt that the Jews were being destroyed. I had to help them; there was no choice."[95]

Legacy

Films and book

In 1951, Poldek Pfefferberg approached director Fritz Lang and asked him to consider making a film about Schindler. Also on Pfefferberg's initiative, in 1964 Schindler received a $20,000 (equivalent to $175,000 in 2021) advance from MGM for a proposed film treatment titled To the Last Hour. Neither film was made, and Schindler quickly spent the money he received from MGM.[96][97] He was also approached in the 1960s by MCA of Germany and Walt Disney Productions in Vienna, but again nothing came of these projects.[98]

In 1980, Australian author Thomas Keneally by chance visited Pfefferberg's luggage store in Beverly Hills while en route home from a film festival in Europe, and Pfefferberg told him the story of Oskar Schindler. He gave Keneally copies of some materials he had on file, and Keneally soon decided to make a fictionalised treatment of the story. After extensive research and interviews with surviving Schindlerjuden, he wrote his historical novel Schindler's Ark (published in the United States as Schindler's List) which was released in 1982.[99]

The novel was adapted as the 1993 movie Schindler's List by director Steven Spielberg. Although Spielberg had acquired the film rights ten years earlier, he did not feel he was emotionally or professionally ready to tackle it, and offered the project to several other directors.[100] Later, after reading a script for the project prepared by Steven Zaillian for Martin Scorsese, he decided to trade him Cape Fear for the opportunity to do the Schindler biography.[101] In the film, the character of Itzhak Stern (played by Ben Kingsley) is a composite of Stern, Bankier and Pemper.[27] Liam Neeson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Schindler,[102] and the film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.[103]

Other film treatments include a 1983 British television documentary produced by Jon Blair for Thames Television, entitled Schindler: His Story as Told by the Actual People He Saved (released in the US in 1994 as Schindler: The Real Story),[104][105] and a 1998 A&E Biography special, Oskar Schindler: The Man Behind the List.[106]

Schindler's suitcase

In 1997 a suitcase belonging to Schindler containing historic photographs and documents was discovered in the attic of the apartment of Ami and Heinrich Staehr in Hildesheim. Schindler had stayed with the couple for a few days shortly before his death in 1974. Staehr's son Chris took the suitcase to Stuttgart, where the documents were examined in detail in 1999 by Dr. Wolfgang Borgmann, science editor of the Stuttgarter Zeitung. Borgmann wrote a series of seven articles, which appeared in the paper from 16 to 26 October 1999 and were eventually published in book form as Schindlers Koffer: Berichte aus dem Leben eines Lebensretters; eine Dokumentation der Stuttgarter Zeitung (Schindler's Suitcase: Reports from the Life of a Lifesaver). The documents and suitcase were sent to the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem in Israel for safekeeping in December 1999.[107]

Copies of the list

 
Schindler's memorial in Svitavy, Czech Republic, his birthplace

In early April 2009, a carbon copy of one version of the list was discovered at the State Library of New South Wales by workers combing through boxes of materials collected by author Thomas Keneally. The 13-page document, yellow and fragile, was filed among research notes and original newspaper clippings. The document was given to Keneally in 1980 by Pfefferberg when he was persuading him to write Schindler's story. This version of the list contains 801 names and is dated 18 April 1945; Pfefferberg is listed as worker number 173. Several authentic versions of the list exist, because the names were re-typed several times as conditions changed in the hectic days at the end of the war.[108]

One of four existing copies of the list was offered at a ten-day auction starting on 19 July 2013 on eBay at a reserve price of $3 million.[109] It received no bids.[110]

Other memorabilia

In August 2013, a one-page letter signed by Schindler on 22 August 1944 sold in an online auction for $59,135. The letter noted Schindler's permission for a factory supervisor to move machinery to Czechoslovakia. The same unknown auction buyer had previously purchased 1943 construction documents for Schindler's Kraków factory for $63,426.[111]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The full name of the company was Pierwsza Małopolska Fabryka Naczyń Emaliowanych i Wyrobów Blaszanych "Rekord". Brzoskwinia 2008.
  2. ^ He bought the business outright on 26 June 1942. Crowe 2004, p. 109.
  3. ^ The inscription is a compressed version of a precept in the Talmud; see wikiquote:Talmud#Quotes.

References

  1. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 2–7.
  2. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, pp. 4–6, 26.
  3. ^ a b Thompson 2002, p. 13.
  4. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 7–8.
  5. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 8–9.
  6. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 16.
  7. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 17.
  8. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 19.
  9. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 22, 24–25.
  10. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 40–41.
  11. ^ Evans 2005, p. 674.
  12. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 46–47.
  13. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 48, 51.
  14. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 53–54.
  15. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 18, 54, 63.
  16. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 56.
  17. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 291–292.
  18. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, p. 43.
  19. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 87.
  20. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 88–91.
  21. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 100.
  22. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 147.
  23. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 107–108.
  24. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 101.
  25. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 111.
  26. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 39.
  27. ^ a b Crowe 2004, p. 102.
  28. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 114.
  29. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 136.
  30. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 120, 136.
  31. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 86.
  32. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 79.
  33. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, p. 61.
  34. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 104.
  35. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 203–204.
  36. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 40–41.
  37. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, p. 49.
  38. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 138.
  39. ^ a b c d e Steinhouse 1994.
  40. ^ Silver 1992, p. 149.
  41. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 161.
  42. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 41.
  43. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 49.
  44. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 175.
  45. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 56.
  46. ^ Longerich 2010, p. 376.
  47. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 60–61.
  48. ^ a b Roberts 1996, p. 62.
  49. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 112; map, plate 3.
  50. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 195.
  51. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, p. 59.
  52. ^ Thompson 2002, p. 20.
  53. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 63–65.
  54. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 139.
  55. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 53–54.
  56. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 75.
  57. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 331.
  58. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 95.
  59. ^ Rzepliñski 2004, p. 2.
  60. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 151.
  61. ^ Thompson 2002, p. 19.
  62. ^ Mietek Pemper obituary.
  63. ^ Thompson 2002, pp. 21–23.
  64. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 72–73.
  65. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 316.
  66. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 383–387.
  67. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 391, 401.
  68. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 326.
  69. ^ Thompson 2002, p. 23.
  70. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, pp. 85–89.
  71. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 78–79.
  72. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 333.
  73. ^ a b Thompson 2002, p. 24.
  74. ^ Schindler & Rosenberg 1997, pp. 89–91.
  75. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 78.
  76. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 83.
  77. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 453–454.
  78. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 467.
  79. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 469–473.
  80. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 455.
  81. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 482, 487.
  82. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 409.
  83. ^ Roberts 1996, pp. 86, 88.
  84. ^ a b c Thompson 2002, p. 25.
  85. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 510.
  86. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 510–511.
  87. ^ Biography 2017.
  88. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 528.
  89. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 604.
  90. ^ Good 2005, p. 179.
  91. ^ Saphir 2018.
  92. ^ "Kleinicke, Helmut". Yad Vashem. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  93. ^ "The Righteous Among The Nations – Walz Family". Yad Vashem. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  94. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 566.
  95. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 91.
  96. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 194, 511.
  97. ^ Roberts 1996, p. 88.
  98. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 542–543.
  99. ^ Keneally 2007, pp. 1–29.
  100. ^ McBride 2010, p. 426.
  101. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 603.
  102. ^ Mulraney, Frances (10 August 2016). "Looks like 2017 is going to be Liam Neeson's Oscar year". Irish Central. Retrieved 25 December 2018.
  103. ^ Weinraub, Bernard (10 February 1994). "'Schindler' Nominated for 12 Oscars". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 December 2018.
  104. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 213.
  105. ^ Bellafante 1994.
  106. ^ Goodman 1998.
  107. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 586, 609–613.
  108. ^ BBC News 2009.
  109. ^ Smith 2013.
  110. ^ Abramson 2013.
  111. ^ Kepler 2013.

Sources

  • Abramson, Alana (29 July 2013). "'Schindler's List' Receives Zero Bids on eBay". ABC News. Retrieved 30 July 2013.
  • Bellafante, Ginia (1994). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 June 2012. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
  • Brzoskwinia, Waldemar (19 June 2008). . Gazeta Wyborcza (in Polish). Kraków: Agora SA. Archived from the original on 18 April 2010. Retrieved 28 June 2013.
  • Crowe, David M. (2004). Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-465-00253-5.
  • Evans, Richard J. (2005). The Third Reich in Power. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-303790-3.
  • Good, Michael (2005). The Search For Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews. Fordham: Fordham University Press. ISBN 0-8232-2440-6.
  • Goodman, Walter (1998). . The New York Times. Archived from the original on 10 June 2012. Retrieved 20 May 2010.
  • Keneally, Thomas (2007). Searching for Schindler: A Memoir. New York: Nan A. Talese. ISBN 978-0-385-52617-3.
  • Kepler, Adam W. (16 August 2013). "Schindler Letter Sells for Nearly $60,000". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  • Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5.
  • McBride, Joseph (2010) [1997]. Steven Spielberg: A Biography. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-60473-836-0.
  • Roberts, Jack L. (1996). The Importance of Oskar Schindler. The Importance of biography series. San Diego: Lucent. ISBN 1-56006-079-4.
  • Rzepliñski, Andrzej (25 March 2004). (PDF). First International Expert Meeting on War Crimes, Genocide, and Crimes against Humanity. Lyon, France: International Criminal Police Organization – Interpol General Secretariat. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  • Saphir, Alexander Bodin (21 October 2018). "The tip-off from a Nazi that saved my grandparents". BBC News. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  • Schindler, Emilie; Rosenberg, Erika (1997) [1996]. Where Light and Shadow Meet. New York; London: Norton. ISBN 0-393-04123-9.
  • Silver, Eric (1992). The Book of the Just: The Silent Heroes Who Saved Jews from Hitler. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-297-81245-6.
  • Smith, Emily (19 July 2013). "Schindler's list will be publicly auctioned – one of only four existing copies in the world". New York Post. Retrieved 19 July 2013.
  • Staff (15 June 2011). "Mietek Pemper". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 11 January 2022. Retrieved 7 July 2013.
  • Staff (6 April 2009). "Schindler's List found in Sydney". BBC Online. BBC News. Agence France-Presse. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
  • Staff (24 April 2017). "Oskar Schindler's Life After World War II". Biography.com. Biography. The Arena Group. Retrieved 6 February 2022.
  • Steinhouse, Herbert (April 1994). "The Real Oskar Schindler". Saturday Night. Andela Publishing. Retrieved 28 June 2013.
  • Thompson, Bruce, ed. (2002). Oskar Schindler. People Who Made History. San Diego: Greenhaven Press. ISBN 0-7377-0894-8.

External links

  • Oskar Schindler at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website
  • Oskar and Emilie Schindler – Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem website
  • Gallery of images of Oskar Schindler's Factory in Kraków
  • Oskar Schindler's Factory – a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków
  • Oskar Schindler's list at Auschwitz.dk
  • "Aerial Evidence for Schindler's List" at the Yad Vashem website
  • Spielberg's bibliography for the film Schindler's List at the UC Berkeley Library website
  • : an interview with Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website

oskar, schindler, similarly, named, racehorse, oscar, schindler, horse, german, ˈɔs, kaʁ, ˈʃɪnd, listen, april, 1908, october, 1974, german, industrialist, humanitarian, member, nazi, party, credited, with, saving, lives, jews, during, holocaust, employing, th. For the similarly named racehorse see Oscar Schindler horse Oskar Schindler German ˈɔs kaʁ ˈʃɪnd lɐ listen 28 April 1908 9 October 1974 was a German industrialist humanitarian and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1 200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler s Ark and its 1993 film adaptation Schindler s List which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative tenacity courage and dedication in saving the lives of his Jewish employees Oskar SchindlerBorn 1908 04 28 28 April 1908Zwittau Moravia Austria Hungary now Svitavy Czech Republic Died9 October 1974 1974 10 09 aged 66 Hildesheim Lower Saxony West GermanyResting placeMount Zion Catholic CemeteryJerusalem Israel31 46 13 N 35 13 50 E 31 770164 N 35 230423 E 31 770164 35 230423OccupationIndustrialistPolitical partySudeten German Party SdP 1935 1939 Nazi Party 1939 1945 SpouseEmilie Pelzl m 1928 wbr Children2AwardsRighteous Among the NationsSchindler grew up in Zwittau Moravia and worked in several trades until he joined the Abwehr the military intelligence service of Nazi Germany in 1936 He joined the Nazi Party in 1939 Prior to the beginning of German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938 he collected information on railways and troop movements for the German government He was arrested for espionage by the Czechoslovak government but was released under the terms of the Munich Agreement that year He continued to collect information for the Nazis working in Poland in 1939 before the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II In 1939 he acquired an enamelware factory in Krakow Poland which employed at its peak in 1944 about 1 750 workers of whom 1 000 were Jews His Abwehr connections helped him protect his Jewish workers from deportation and death in the Nazi concentration camps As time went on he had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe By July 1944 Germany was losing the war the SS began closing down the easternmost concentration camps and deporting the remaining prisoners westward Many were murdered in Auschwitz and the Gross Rosen concentration camp Schindler convinced SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Amon Goth commandant of the nearby Krakow Plaszow concentration camp to allow him to move his factory to Brnenec in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia thus sparing his workers from almost certain death in the gas chambers Using names provided by Jewish Ghetto Police officer Marcel Goldberg Goth s secretary Mietek Pemper compiled and typed the list of 1 200 Jews who travelled to Brunnlitz in October 1944 Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent the execution of his workers until the end of World War II in Europe in May 1945 by which time he had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies for his workers Schindler moved to West Germany after the war where he was supported by assistance payments from Jewish relief organisations After receiving a partial reimbursement for his wartime expenses he moved with his wife Emilie to Argentina where they took up farming When he went bankrupt in 1958 Schindler left his wife and returned to Germany where he failed at several business ventures and relied on financial support from Schindlerjuden Schindler Jews the people whose lives he had saved during the war He died on 9 October 1974 in Hildesheim Germany and was buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion the only former member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way He and his wife Emilie were named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1993 Contents 1 Life 1 1 Early life and education 1 2 Spy for the Abwehr 1 3 World War II 1 3 1 Emalia 1 3 2 Plaszow 1 3 3 Brunnlitz 1 4 After the war 2 Legacy 2 1 Films and book 2 2 Schindler s suitcase 2 3 Copies of the list 2 4 Other memorabilia 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 Sources 7 External linksLifeEarly life and education Schindler was born on 28 April 1908 into a Sudeten German family in Zwittau Moravia Austria Hungary His father was Johann Hans Schindler the owner of a farm machinery business and his mother was Franziska Fanny Schindler nee Luser His sister Elfriede was born in 1915 After attending primary and secondary school Schindler enrolled in a technical school from which he was expelled in 1924 for forging his report card He later graduated but did not take the Abitur exams that would have enabled him to go to college or university Instead he took courses in Brno in several trades including chauffeuring and machinery and worked for his father for three years A motorcycle fan since his youth he bought a 250 cc Moto Guzzi racing motorcycle and competed recreationally in mountain races for the next few years 1 On 6 March 1928 Schindler married Emilie Pelzl 1907 2001 daughter of a prosperous Sudeten German farmer from Maletein 2 They moved in with Oskar s parents and occupied the upstairs rooms where they lived for seven years 3 Soon after his marriage Schindler quit working for his father and took a series of jobs including a position at Moravian Electrotechnic and the management of a driving school After an 18 month stint in the Czech army where he rose to the rank of lance corporal in the Tenth Infantry Regiment of the 31st Army he returned to Moravian Electrotechnic which went bankrupt shortly afterwards His father s farm machinery business closed around the same time leaving Schindler unemployed for a year He took a job with Jaroslav Simek Bank of Prague in 1931 where he worked until 1938 4 Schindler was arrested several times in 1931 and 1932 for public drunkenness Also around this time he had an affair with Aurelie Schlegel a school friend They had a daughter Emily in 1933 and a son Oskar Jr in 1935 Schindler later claimed the boy was not his son 5 Schindler s father an alcoholic abandoned his wife in 1935 She died a few months later after a lengthy illness 3 Spy for the Abwehr Schindler joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935 6 Although he was a citizen of Czechoslovakia Schindler became a spy for the Abwehr the military intelligence service of Nazi Germany in 1936 He was assigned to Abwehrstelle II Commando VIII based in Breslau 7 He later told Czech police that he did it because he needed the money by this time Schindler had a drinking problem and was chronically in debt 8 His tasks for the Abwehr included collecting information on railways military installations and troop movements as well as recruiting other spies within Czechoslovakia in advance of the planned invasion by Nazi Germany 9 He was arrested by the Czech government for espionage on 18 July 1938 and immediately imprisoned but was released as a political prisoner under the terms of the Munich Agreement the instrument under which the Czech Sudetenland was annexed into Germany on 1 October 10 11 Schindler applied for membership in the Nazi Party on 1 November and was accepted the following year 12 After some time off to recover in Zwittau Schindler was promoted to second in command of his Abwehr unit and relocated with his wife to Ostrava Ostrau on the Czech Polish border in January 1939 13 He was involved in espionage in the months leading up to Hitler s seizure of the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March Emilie helped him with paperwork processing and hiding secret documents in their apartment for the Abwehr office 14 As Schindler frequently travelled to Poland on business he and his 25 agents were in a position to collect information about Polish military activities and railways for the planned invasion of Poland 15 One assignment called for his unit to monitor and provide information about the railway line and tunnel in the Jablunkov Pass deemed critical for the movement of German troops 16 Schindler continued to work for the Abwehr until as late as fall 1940 when he was sent to Turkey to investigate corruption among the Abwehr officers assigned to the German embassy there 17 World War II Emalia Schindler first arrived in Krakow Krakau in October 1939 on Abwehr business and took an apartment the following month Emilie maintained the apartment in Ostrava and visited Oskar in Krakow at least once a week 18 19 In November 1939 he contacted interior decorator Mila Pfefferberg to decorate his new apartment Her son Leopold Poldek Pfefferberg soon became one of his contacts for black market trading They eventually became lifelong friends 20 The same month Schindler was introduced to Itzhak Stern an accountant for Schindler s fellow Abwehr agent Josef Sepp Aue who had taken over Stern s formerly Jewish owned place of employment as a Treuhander trustee 21 Property belonging to Polish Jews including their possessions places of business and homes were seized by the Germans beginning immediately after the invasion and Jewish citizens were stripped of their civil rights 22 Schindler showed Stern the balance sheet of a company he was thinking of acquiring an enamelware factory called Rekord Ltd a owned by a consortium of Jewish businessmen that had filed for bankruptcy earlier that year 23 Stern advised him that rather than running the company as a trusteeship under the auspices of the Haupttreuhandstelle Ost Main Trustee Office for the East he should buy or lease the business as that would give him more freedom from the dictates of the Nazis including the freedom to hire more Jews 24 With the financial backing of several Jewish investors including one of the owners Abraham Bankier Schindler signed an informal lease agreement on the factory on 13 November 1939 and formalised the arrangement on 15 January 1940 b He renamed it Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik German Enamelware Factory or DEF and it soon became known by the nickname Emalia 25 26 He initially acquired a staff of seven Jewish workers including Abraham Bankier who helped him manage the company 27 and 250 non Jewish Poles 28 At its peak in 1944 the business employed around 1 750 workers a thousand of whom were Jews 29 Schindler also helped run Schlomo Wiener Ltd a wholesale outfit that sold his enamelware and was leaseholder of Prokosziner Glashutte a glass factory 30 Schindler s ties with the Abwehr and his connections in the Wehrmacht and its Armaments Inspectorate enabled him to obtain contracts to produce enamel cookware for the military 31 These connections also later helped him protect his Jewish workers from deportation and death 32 As time went on Schindler had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe 33 Bankier a key black market connection obtained goods for bribes as well as extra materials for use in the factory 34 Schindler himself enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and pursued extramarital relationships with his secretary Viktoria Klonowska and Eva Kisch Scheuer a merchant specialising in enamelware from DEF 35 Emilie Schindler visited for a few months in 1940 and moved to Krakow to live with Oskar in 1941 36 37 Schindler s factory in Krakow 2011 Initially Schindler was mostly interested in the money making potential of the business and hired Jews because they were cheaper than Poles the wages were set by the occupying Nazi regime 38 Later he began shielding his workers without regard for cost 39 The status of his factory as a business essential to the war effort became a decisive factor in enabling him to protect his Jewish workers Whenever Schindlerjuden Schindler Jews were threatened with deportation he claimed exemptions for them He claimed wives children and even people with disabilities were necessary mechanics and metalworkers 39 On one occasion the Gestapo came to Schindler demanding that he hand over a family that possessed forged 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 40 On 1 August 1940 Governor General Hans Frank issued a decree requiring all Krakow Jews to leave the city within two weeks Only those who had jobs directly related to the German war effort would be allowed to stay Of the 60 000 to 80 000 Jews then living in the city only 15 000 remained by March 1941 These Jews were then forced to leave their traditional neighbourhood of Kazimierz and relocate to the walled Krakow Ghetto established in the industrial Podgorze district 41 42 Schindler s workers travelled on foot to and from the ghetto each day to their jobs at the factory 43 Enlargements to the facility in the four years Schindler was in charge included the addition of an outpatient clinic co op kitchen and dining room for the workers in addition to expansion of the factory and its related office space 44 Plaszow In fall 1941 the Nazis began transporting Jews out of the ghetto Most of them were sent to the Belzec extermination camp and murdered 45 On 13 March 1943 the ghetto was liquidated and those still fit for work were sent to the new concentration camp at Plaszow 46 Several thousand not deemed fit for work were sent to extermination camps and murdered hundreds more were murdered on the streets by the Nazis as they cleared out the ghetto Schindler aware of the plans because of his Wehrmacht contacts had his workers stay at the factory overnight to protect them from harm 47 Schindler witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto and was appalled From that point forward says Schindlerjude Sol Urbach Schindler changed his mind about the Nazis He decided to get out and to save as many Jews as he could 48 The Plaszow concentration camp opened in March 1943 on the former site of two Jewish cemeteries on Jerozilimska Street about 2 5 kilometres 1 6 mi from the DEF factory 49 In charge of the camp was SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Amon Goth a sadist who shot inmates of the camp at random 48 Plaszow s inmates lived in constant fear for their lives 50 Emilie Schindler called Goth the most despicable man I have ever met 51 Hujowa Gorka Prick Hill the execution place in Krakow Plaszow concentration camp 2007 Initially Goth s plan was that all the factories including Schindler s should be moved inside the camp gates 52 However Schindler with a combination of diplomacy flattery and bribery not only prevented his factory from being moved but convinced Goth to allow him to build at Schindler s own expense a subcamp at Emalia to house his workers plus 450 Jews from other nearby factories There they were safe from the threat of random execution well fed and housed and permitted to undertake religious observances 53 54 Schindler was arrested twice on suspicion of black market activities and once for breaking the Nuremberg Laws by kissing a Jewish girl an action forbidden by the Race and Resettlement Act The first arrest in late 1941 led to him being kept overnight His secretary arranged for his release through Schindler s influential contacts in the Nazi Party His second arrest on 29 April 1942 was the result of his kissing a Jewish girl on the cheek at his birthday party at the factory the previous day He remained in jail five days before his influential Nazi contacts were able to obtain his release 55 In October 1944 he was arrested again accused of black marketeering and bribing Goth and others to improve the conditions of the Jewish workers He was held for most of a week and released 56 Goth had been arrested on 13 September 1944 for corruption and other abuses of power and Schindler s arrest was part of the ongoing investigation into Goth s activities 57 Goth was never convicted on those charges 58 59 In 1943 Schindler was contacted by Zionist leaders in Budapest via members of the Jewish resistance movement Schindler travelled to Budapest several times to report in person on Nazi mistreatment of the Jews He brought back funding provided by the Jewish Agency for Israel and turned it over to the Jewish underground 60 61 Brunnlitz As the Red Army drew nearer in July 1944 the SS began closing down the easternmost concentration camps and evacuating the remaining prisoners westward to Auschwitz and Gross Rosen concentration camp Goth s personal secretary Mietek Pemper alerted Schindler to the Nazis plans to close all factories not directly involved in the war effort including Schindler s enamelware facility Pemper suggested to Schindler that production should be switched from cookware to anti tank grenades in an effort to save the lives of the Jewish workers Using bribery and his powers of persuasion Schindler convinced Goth and the officials in Berlin to allow him to move his factory and his workers to Brunnlitz Czech Brnenec in the Sudetenland thus sparing them from certain death in the gas chambers Using names provided by Jewish Ghetto Police officer Marcel Goldberg Pemper compiled and typed the list of 1 200 Jews 1 000 of Schindler s workers and 200 inmates from Julius Madritsch s textiles factory who were sent to Brunnlitz in October 1944 62 63 64 65 Schindler s factory at the former site of Brunnlitz labor camp in 2004 On 15 October 1944 a train carrying 700 men on Schindler s list was initially sent to the concentration camp at Gross Rosen where the men spent about a week before being re routed to the factory in Brunnlitz 66 Three hundred female Schindlerjuden were similarly sent to Auschwitz where they were in imminent danger of being sent to the gas chambers Schindler s usual connections and bribes failed to obtain their release Finally after he sent his secretary Hilde Albrecht with bribes of black market goods food and diamonds the women were sent to Brunnlitz after several harrowing weeks in Auschwitz 67 In addition to workers Schindler moved 250 wagon loads of machinery and raw materials to the new factory 68 Few if any useful artillery shells were produced at the plant When officials from the Armaments Ministry questioned the factory s low output Schindler bought finished goods on the black market and resold them as his own 69 The rations provided by the SS were insufficient to meet the needs of the workers so Schindler spent most of his time in Krakow obtaining food armaments and other materials His wife Emilie remained in Brunnlitz surreptitiously obtaining additional rations and caring for the workers health and other basic needs 70 71 Schindler also arranged for the transfer of as many as 3 000 Jewish women out of Auschwitz to small textiles plants in the Sudetenland in an effort to increase their chances of surviving the war 72 73 In January 1945 a trainload of 250 Jews who had been rejected as workers at a German mine in Goleschau in occupied Poland arrived at Brunnlitz The boxcars were frozen shut when they arrived and Emilie Schindler waited while an engineer from the factory opened the cars using a soldering iron Twelve people were dead in the cars and the remainder were too ill and feeble to work Emilie took the survivors into the factory and cared for them in a makeshift hospital until the end of the war 74 73 Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent the slaughter of his workers as the Red Army approached 75 On 7 May 1945 he and his workers gathered on the factory floor to listen to British prime minister Winston Churchill announce over the radio that Germany had surrendered and that the war in Europe was over 76 After the war Memorial plaque on the house where Schindler lived in Regensburg As a member of the Nazi Party and the Abwehr intelligence service Schindler was in danger of being arrested as a war criminal Bankier Stern and several others prepared a statement he could present to the Americans attesting to his role in saving Jewish lives He was also given a ring made using gold from dental work taken out of the mouth of Schindlerjude Simon Jeret The ring was inscribed Whoever saves one life saves the world entire c 77 To escape being captured by the Soviets Schindler and his wife departed westward in their vehicle a two seater Horch initially with several fleeing German soldiers riding on the running boards A truck containing Schindler s mistress Marta several Jewish workers and a load of black market trade goods followed behind The Horch was confiscated by Soviet troops at the town of Budweis which had already been captured by Soviet troops The Schindlers were unable to recover a diamond that Oskar had hidden under the seat 78 They continued by train and on foot until they reached the American lines at the town of Lenora and then travelled to Passau where an American Jewish officer arranged for them to travel to Switzerland by train They moved to Bavaria in Germany in the fall of 1945 79 Schindler s grave in Jerusalem The Hebrew inscription reads Righteous Among the Nations the German inscription reads The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews By the end of the war Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies for his workers 80 Virtually destitute he moved briefly to Regensburg and later Munich but did not prosper in postwar Germany He was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organisations 39 In 1948 he presented a claim for reimbursement of his wartime expenses to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and received 15 000 81 He estimated his expenditures at over 1 056 000 including the costs of camp construction bribes and expenditures for black market goods including food 82 Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1949 where he tried raising chickens and then nutria coypu a small animal raised for its fur When the business went bankrupt in 1958 he left his wife and returned to Germany where he had a series of unsuccessful business ventures including a cement factory 83 84 He declared bankruptcy in 1963 and suffered a heart attack the next year which led to a month long stay in hospital 85 Remaining in contact with many of the Jews he had met during the war including Stern and Pfefferberg Schindler survived on donations sent by Schindlerjuden from all over the world 84 86 Schindler died of liver failure on 9 October 1974 87 He is buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way 39 84 For his work during the war on 8 May 1962 Yad Vashem invited Schindler to a ceremony in which a carob tree was planted in his honor on the Avenue of the Righteous 88 He and his wife Emilie were named Righteous Among the Nations an award bestowed by the State of Israel on non Jews who took an active role in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust on 24 June 1993 89 Schindler along with Karl Plagge 90 Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz 91 Helmut Kleinicke 92 and Hans Walz 93 are among the few Nazi Party members to be given this award Schindler received other awards including the German Order of Merit in 1966 94 Writer Herbert Steinhouse who interviewed Schindler in 1948 wrote 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 39 In a 1983 television documentary Schindler is quoted as saying I felt that the Jews were being destroyed I had to help them there was no choice 95 Legacy Steven Spielberg Schindler s List director Films and book In 1951 Poldek Pfefferberg approached director Fritz Lang and asked him to consider making a film about Schindler Also on Pfefferberg s initiative in 1964 Schindler received a 20 000 equivalent to 175 000 in 2021 advance from MGM for a proposed film treatment titled To the Last Hour Neither film was made and Schindler quickly spent the money he received from MGM 96 97 He was also approached in the 1960s by MCA of Germany and Walt Disney Productions in Vienna but again nothing came of these projects 98 In 1980 Australian author Thomas Keneally by chance visited Pfefferberg s luggage store in Beverly Hills while en route home from a film festival in Europe and Pfefferberg told him the story of Oskar Schindler He gave Keneally copies of some materials he had on file and Keneally soon decided to make a fictionalised treatment of the story After extensive research and interviews with surviving Schindlerjuden he wrote his historical novel Schindler s Ark published in the United States as Schindler s List which was released in 1982 99 The novel was adapted as the 1993 movie Schindler s List by director Steven Spielberg Although Spielberg had acquired the film rights ten years earlier he did not feel he was emotionally or professionally ready to tackle it and offered the project to several other directors 100 Later after reading a script for the project prepared by Steven Zaillian for Martin Scorsese he decided to trade him Cape Fear for the opportunity to do the Schindler biography 101 In the film the character of Itzhak Stern played by Ben Kingsley is a composite of Stern Bankier and Pemper 27 Liam Neeson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Schindler 102 and the film won seven Oscars including Best Picture 103 Other film treatments include a 1983 British television documentary produced by Jon Blair for Thames Television entitled Schindler His Story as Told by the Actual People He Saved released in the US in 1994 as Schindler The Real Story 104 105 and a 1998 A amp E Biography special Oskar Schindler The Man Behind the List 106 Schindler s suitcase In 1997 a suitcase belonging to Schindler containing historic photographs and documents was discovered in the attic of the apartment of Ami and Heinrich Staehr in Hildesheim Schindler had stayed with the couple for a few days shortly before his death in 1974 Staehr s son Chris took the suitcase to Stuttgart where the documents were examined in detail in 1999 by Dr Wolfgang Borgmann science editor of the Stuttgarter Zeitung Borgmann wrote a series of seven articles which appeared in the paper from 16 to 26 October 1999 and were eventually published in book form as Schindlers Koffer Berichte aus dem Leben eines Lebensretters eine Dokumentation der Stuttgarter Zeitung Schindler s Suitcase Reports from the Life of a Lifesaver The documents and suitcase were sent to the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem in Israel for safekeeping in December 1999 107 Copies of the list Schindler s memorial in Svitavy Czech Republic his birthplace In early April 2009 a carbon copy of one version of the list was discovered at the State Library of New South Wales by workers combing through boxes of materials collected by author Thomas Keneally The 13 page document yellow and fragile was filed among research notes and original newspaper clippings The document was given to Keneally in 1980 by Pfefferberg when he was persuading him to write Schindler s story This version of the list contains 801 names and is dated 18 April 1945 Pfefferberg is listed as worker number 173 Several authentic versions of the list exist because the names were re typed several times as conditions changed in the hectic days at the end of the war 108 One of four existing copies of the list was offered at a ten day auction starting on 19 July 2013 on eBay at a reserve price of 3 million 109 It received no bids 110 Other memorabilia In August 2013 a one page letter signed by Schindler on 22 August 1944 sold in an online auction for 59 135 The letter noted Schindler s permission for a factory supervisor to move machinery to Czechoslovakia The same unknown auction buyer had previously purchased 1943 construction documents for Schindler s Krakow factory for 63 426 111 See alsoList of individuals and groups assisting Jews during the Holocaust List of Righteous Among the Nations by country List of SchindlerjudenNotes The full name of the company was Pierwsza Malopolska Fabryka Naczyn Emaliowanych i Wyrobow Blaszanych Rekord Brzoskwinia 2008 He bought the business outright on 26 June 1942 Crowe 2004 p 109 The inscription is a compressed version of a precept in the Talmud see wikiquote Talmud Quotes References Crowe 2004 pp 2 7 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 pp 4 6 26 a b Thompson 2002 p 13 Crowe 2004 pp 7 8 Crowe 2004 pp 8 9 Crowe 2004 p 16 Crowe 2004 p 17 Crowe 2004 p 19 Crowe 2004 pp 22 24 25 Crowe 2004 pp 40 41 Evans 2005 p 674 Crowe 2004 pp 46 47 Crowe 2004 pp 48 51 Crowe 2004 pp 53 54 Crowe 2004 pp 18 54 63 Crowe 2004 p 56 Crowe 2004 pp 291 292 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 p 43 Crowe 2004 p 87 Crowe 2004 pp 88 91 Crowe 2004 p 100 Longerich 2010 p 147 Crowe 2004 pp 107 108 Crowe 2004 p 101 Crowe 2004 p 111 Roberts 1996 p 39 a b Crowe 2004 p 102 Crowe 2004 p 114 Crowe 2004 p 136 Crowe 2004 pp 120 136 Crowe 2004 p 86 Crowe 2004 p 79 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 p 61 Crowe 2004 p 104 Crowe 2004 pp 203 204 Roberts 1996 pp 40 41 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 p 49 Crowe 2004 p 138 a b c d e Steinhouse 1994 Silver 1992 p 149 Longerich 2010 p 161 Roberts 1996 p 41 Roberts 1996 p 49 Crowe 2004 p 175 Roberts 1996 p 56 Longerich 2010 p 376 Roberts 1996 pp 60 61 a b Roberts 1996 p 62 Crowe 2004 p 112 map plate 3 Crowe 2004 p 195 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 p 59 Thompson 2002 p 20 Roberts 1996 pp 63 65 Crowe 2004 p 139 Roberts 1996 pp 53 54 Roberts 1996 p 75 Crowe 2004 p 331 Roberts 1996 p 95 Rzeplinski 2004 p 2 Crowe 2004 p 151 Thompson 2002 p 19 Mietek Pemper obituary Thompson 2002 pp 21 23 Roberts 1996 pp 72 73 Crowe 2004 p 316 Crowe 2004 pp 383 387 Crowe 2004 pp 391 401 Crowe 2004 p 326 Thompson 2002 p 23 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 pp 85 89 Roberts 1996 pp 78 79 Crowe 2004 p 333 a b Thompson 2002 p 24 Schindler amp Rosenberg 1997 pp 89 91 Roberts 1996 p 78 Roberts 1996 p 83 Crowe 2004 pp 453 454 Crowe 2004 p 467 Crowe 2004 pp 469 473 Crowe 2004 p 455 Crowe 2004 pp 482 487 Crowe 2004 p 409 Roberts 1996 pp 86 88 a b c Thompson 2002 p 25 Crowe 2004 p 510 Crowe 2004 pp 510 511 Biography 2017 Crowe 2004 p 528 Crowe 2004 p 604 Good 2005 p 179 Saphir 2018 Kleinicke Helmut Yad Vashem Retrieved 22 April 2019 The Righteous Among The Nations Walz Family Yad Vashem Retrieved 22 April 2019 Crowe 2004 p 566 Roberts 1996 p 91 Crowe 2004 pp 194 511 Roberts 1996 p 88 Crowe 2004 pp 542 543 Keneally 2007 pp 1 29 McBride 2010 p 426 Crowe 2004 p 603 Mulraney Frances 10 August 2016 Looks like 2017 is going to be Liam Neeson s Oscar year Irish Central Retrieved 25 December 2018 Weinraub Bernard 10 February 1994 Schindler Nominated for 12 Oscars The New York Times Retrieved 25 December 2018 Crowe 2004 p 213 Bellafante 1994 Goodman 1998 Crowe 2004 pp 586 609 613 BBC News 2009 Smith 2013 Abramson 2013 Kepler 2013 SourcesAbramson Alana 29 July 2013 Schindler s List Receives Zero Bids on eBay ABC News Retrieved 30 July 2013 Bellafante Ginia 1994 Schindler The Real Story The New York Times Archived from the original on 10 June 2012 Retrieved 20 May 2010 Brzoskwinia Waldemar 19 June 2008 Zablocie chlodnia i fabryki Gazeta Wyborcza in Polish Krakow Agora SA Archived from the original on 18 April 2010 Retrieved 28 June 2013 Crowe David M 2004 Oskar Schindler The Untold Account of His Life Wartime Activities and the True Story Behind the List Cambridge MA Westview Press ISBN 978 0 465 00253 5 Evans Richard J 2005 The Third Reich in Power New York Penguin ISBN 978 0 14 303790 3 Good Michael 2005 The Search For Major Plagge The Nazi Who Saved Jews Fordham Fordham University Press ISBN 0 8232 2440 6 Goodman Walter 1998 Oskar Schindler The Man Behind the List The New York Times Archived from the original on 10 June 2012 Retrieved 20 May 2010 Keneally Thomas 2007 Searching for Schindler A Memoir New York Nan A Talese ISBN 978 0 385 52617 3 Kepler Adam W 16 August 2013 Schindler Letter Sells for Nearly 60 000 The New York Times Retrieved 19 August 2013 Longerich Peter 2010 Holocaust The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Oxford New York Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 280436 5 McBride Joseph 2010 1997 Steven Spielberg A Biography Jackson University Press of Mississippi ISBN 978 1 60473 836 0 Roberts Jack L 1996 The Importance of Oskar Schindler The Importance of biography series San Diego Lucent ISBN 1 56006 079 4 Rzeplinski Andrzej 25 March 2004 Prosecution of Nazi Crimes in Poland in 1939 2004 PDF First International Expert Meeting on War Crimes Genocide and Crimes against Humanity Lyon France International Criminal Police Organization Interpol General Secretariat Archived from the original PDF on 3 March 2016 Retrieved 31 December 2014 Saphir Alexander Bodin 21 October 2018 The tip off from a Nazi that saved my grandparents BBC News Retrieved 22 April 2019 Schindler Emilie Rosenberg Erika 1997 1996 Where Light and Shadow Meet New York London Norton ISBN 0 393 04123 9 Silver Eric 1992 The Book of the Just The Silent Heroes Who Saved Jews from Hitler New York Grove Press ISBN 978 0 297 81245 6 Smith Emily 19 July 2013 Schindler s list will be publicly auctioned one of only four existing copies in the world New York Post Retrieved 19 July 2013 Staff 15 June 2011 Mietek Pemper The Daily Telegraph Archived from the original on 11 January 2022 Retrieved 7 July 2013 Staff 6 April 2009 Schindler s List found in Sydney BBC Online BBC News Agence France Presse Retrieved 17 July 2013 Staff 24 April 2017 Oskar Schindler s Life After World War II Biography com Biography The Arena Group Retrieved 6 February 2022 Steinhouse Herbert April 1994 The Real Oskar Schindler Saturday Night Andela Publishing Retrieved 28 June 2013 Thompson Bruce ed 2002 Oskar Schindler People Who Made History San Diego Greenhaven Press ISBN 0 7377 0894 8 External links Wikiquote has quotations related to Oskar Schindler Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oskar Schindler Oskar Schindler at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website Oskar and Emilie Schindler Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem website Gallery of images of Oskar Schindler s Factory in Krakow Oskar Schindler s Factory a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Krakow Oskar Schindler s list at Auschwitz dk Aerial Evidence for Schindler s List at the Yad Vashem website Spielberg s bibliography for the film Schindler s List at the UC Berkeley Library website Voices on Antisemitism A Podcast Series an interview with Helen Jonas Rosenzweig at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Oskar Schindler amp oldid 1133447367, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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