Oscar Schindler is an industrialist, German spy, and Jewish advocate. He became a hero when he saved more than a thousand people during the Holocaust, providing them with jobs at their enterprises in Poland and the Czech Republic. For his work, Schindler was posthumously awarded the title "Righteous Among the Nations of the World."
Biography of Oscar Schindler
Oscar Schindler was born in 1908 in the Czech industrial city of Zwittau. In the area where Oscar grew up, the German-speaking Sudeten diaspora lived. His parents were Catholic Austrians. Oscar's father, Hans Schindler, was the owner of the factory, and his mother, Louise Schindler, was a housewife.
In the 1920s, Schindler worked at his father’s factory producing agricultural machinery. However, in 1928, the marriage of a young man with a woman named Emilia Peltzl caused problems in the relationship between the two men. In addition, the young man squandered all the money - his wife’s dowry. Schindler left his father’s business, started drinking, he was often detained for scandals and fights.
In the 30s, Oscar's affairs got better. He started working as an agent of a large bank and he got money. As it turned out, he was paid by the Abwehr - German intelligence, for which he obtained information. By 1935, many Sudeten Germans joined the pro-Nazi German party. Schindler also joined it, but not because of devotion to the Nazis, but because it was easier to do business in this way.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Schindler and his family arrived in Krakow, trying to find a way to profit from the war. In mid-October, the city became the new seat of government for Nazi-occupied Poland. Schindler quickly established friendly relations with key officers both in the Wehrmacht and in the SS (special armed Nazi unit), offering them black market goods such as cognac and cigars.
Around the same time, he met an accountant, Yitzhak Stern, who ultimately helped him build friendships with the local Jewish business community. Schindler acquired the bankrupt dishware factory and opened it in January 1940. Stern was hired as an accountant, and 7 Jews and 250 Polish workers worked at Schindler’s factory. By 1940, the businessman already had several enterprises: the manufacture of glass products, a cutlery factory and an enamelware factory.
The salvation of the Jews
Mostly Polish workers worked in production. But Schindler turned to the Jewish community of Krakow, which, as Stern told him, was a good source of cheap and reliable labor. At that time, about fifty-six thousand Jews lived in the city, most of whom lived in the ghetto. The number of employees of Jewish nationality grew exponentially. In 1944, approximately 1, 700 people worked for Schindler, including more than 1, 000 Jews. Their salaries were lower, besides they worked much better than the Poles.
Schindler subsequently realized his involvement in the crimes of the Nazis and all the horrors that the Nazi regime did against the Jewish population. The businessman took the position of a humanist and began to defend the Jews, without deriving any benefit from it. Oscar Schindler bargained from Nazi officials for the opportunity to recruit Plashov concentration camp prisoners to work in their factories. The exact number of people saved is unknown, only the well-known list that Schindler made was about 1200 people. But he helped many more Jews.
In 1944, the Nazis began the mass destruction of prisoners in concentration camps. Oscar Schindler managed to take out more than a thousand people to the city of Brenets (Brunlitz), thereby saving them from death during the Holocaust.
