Oskar Schindler

Background & Early Life

German businessman Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) has become well known as the hero of Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 film "Schindler’s List." The movie, based on Thomas Kenneally’s novel "Schindler’s Ark" (1982), tells the story of how war profiteer Schindler rescued approximately 1,200 Jews from the Nazi concentration camps by employing them in his factory in Poland. The film’s title refers to the list of names of the Jews he rescued. These Holocaust survivors later became known as "Schindlerjuden" (German for “Schindler’s Jews”).

For his work, the state of Israel recognized Schindler in 1967 as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations," a non-Jew who helped save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. His wife, Emilie, was similarly honored in 1993.

However, the real Oskar Schindler was a far more complex figure than the one shown in the film, and many of his actions were motivated by profit as much as generosity. Schindler was a brilliant war profiteer, who made a fortune in Nazi-occupied Poland, but he was unable to achieve success in the post-war world. He was a member of the Nazi Party, who socialized with SS officers, yet he found himself helping the very Jews the Nazis were trying to destroy, and doing so at the risk of his own life and fortune.

Schindler was born on April 28, 1908 into a middle-class family in the town of Zwittau, Moravia. This was part of the “Sudetenland” region of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (after World War I ended in 1918 and the Empire collapsed, this region became part of Czechoslovakia). The region, which contained around three million Germans, was highly industrial. Schindler’s father owned and operated a factory that produced farm equipment. As a young man, Oskar Schindler studied engineering and was originally intended to join the family business.

The family was Catholic, but it is not clear how much Schindler’s religious views may have influenced his rescue work during World War II (1939-1945). A number of Jews lived in Zwittau, some of whom lived near the Schindlers and attended school with Oskar, but he was not close to any of them. As a youth he belonged to the Sudeten German Party, a Nazi-style party founded by Konrad Henlein. After Germany annexed the Sudetenland in 1938, he joined the German Nazi Party, the leading political organization in tolitarian Nazi Germany. Under the leadership of dictator and party leader Adolf Hitler, the Nazis believed in the superiority of the so-called "Aryan" race, and espoused a particularly vicious brand of antisemitism. After taking power of the German government in 1933, Hitler and the Nazis began persecuting political dissidents, Jews, and other minority groups, while building up Germany's military to prepare for war.

Schindler traveled to Poland shortly after the Germans invaded in September 1939. Schindler was looking for new business opportunities and hoped to set up a venture of his own, and settled in Krakow, the headquarters of the German occupation authorities. Within a month, he had purchased what had been a Jewish-owned enamelware factory in the town of Zablocie. Schindler soon became wealthy, especially after he expanded his product line to include munitions. By late 1942, as Germany's conflict with the Soviet Union, United States, and Great Britain intensified, he had around 800 employees. About half of these were Jews from Krakow, who had been forced into slave labor.

Schindler & the War

Though originally motivated by money, Schindler gradually became disgusted by the Nazis’ brutality. In 1942, the Nazis murdered of thousands of Jews while trying to take them to the Plaszow concentration camp. Schindler, who witnessed this event, sought to have around 900 Jews transferred from the camp to his neighboring factory.

Schindler used massive bribes and diplomacy to convince the Plaszow camp’s brutal SS Commandant Amon Goeth to approve the transfer. The businessman also managed to keep the SS guards out of the camp, a tactic that allowed him to protect the Jews from hard labor. To avoid suspicion, he falsified employment records, claiming that many of the Jews were laborers with essential skills for the war effort.

In 1944, as the war turned against Germany, Schindler convinced the Nazis to allow him to set up a factory at Brunnlitz in his native Sudetenland. The “factory” was merely a cover, however, for his rescue efforts. He developed a list of 1,200 “employees,” who were to be transferred to this facility. Schindler foiled an effort to have these Jews sent to Auschwitz, where near-certain death awaited them, and instead arranged for their safe transfer to Brunnlitz, where they remained for the rest of the war.

As the Soviet Red Army approached Czechoslovakia, Schindler escaped from Moravia to western Germany with little more than his life and the clothes he wore. His assets were now in Soviet-controlled territory, and as a former Nazi he had little hope of regaining them. He and his wife survived with the help of Jewish organizations and members of his “list.” They funded the Schindlers’ 1949 emigration to Argentina, where he became a nutria (otter) rancher. This venture failed, as did his attempt in the late 1950s to operate a cement factory in Germany. By this point, his marriage had broken down, and he abandoned Emilie in order to return to Europe.

In 1961, broke again, Schindler made his first visit to Israel. There he received a hero’s welcome from the Schindlerjuden and other Holocaust survivors. From that point on, he traveled regularly between Germany and Israel, making seventeen visits in all. Schindler was sliding into alcoholism, and became increasingly dependent on the Holocaust survivor community for financial support.

In July 1967, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel designated Schindler as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” Twenty-six years later, in June 1923, Yad Vashem gave the same designation to his widow, Emilie Schindler.

Schindler died in Hildesheim, Germany on October 9, 1974, but the surviving Schindlerjuden arranged to have buried at the Protestant Cemetery in Jerusalem. Emilie died on October 5, 2001. She is buried in Germany.

"Righteous Gentiles" & the Holocaust

“Righteous Among the Nations” or “Righteous Gentiles” are the names that Judaism has bestowed on those who helped to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. In addition to Oskar Schindler, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem has recognized around 20,000 such individuals. Many “Righteous Gentiles” were diplomats, who were able to provide refugee Jews with travel visas.

Other “Righteous Gentiles” were anonymous, but all shared a hated of Nazi brutality and a desire to save life. The film "Tzedek" ("Righteousness"), which premiered at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, told the story of 36 such ordinary heroes. The movie, by French author Marek Halter, focused on the question of why so many people remained silent or collaborated in the Nazi horror.

Among the most well-known “Righteous Gentiles” is Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat based in Budapest, Hungary. During the last two years of the war he managed to rescue more than 30,000 Jews by providing them with Swedish diplomatic papers. He also managed to rescue thousands of Jews from death marches to the concentration camps. He disappeared in January 1945, after being arrested by Soviet troops.

Dr. Ho Feng-shan, the Chinese Consul-General in Austria, may have rescued up to 4,000 Jews by giving them exit visas. Some traveled to Shanghai, while others reached western countries.

Pope Pius XII, pontiff from 1939-1958, has been credited with saving over 800,000 Jews. He protected many of these by granting them Vatican citizenship, after the Nazis occupied Rome in 1943. He may also have helped the underground network of priests throughout Europe who smuggled Jews to safety. Many historians have criticized him for not speaking out more forcefully against Nazism, but the State of Israel has officially recognized Pius as a “Righteous Gentile” for his actions.