Oskar Schindler (; 28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist 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 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 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.
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.
A fan of motorcycles since his youth, Schindler bought a 250-cc Moto Guzzi racing motorcycle and competed recreationally in mountain races for the next few years. On 6 March 1928, Schindler married Emilie Pelzl (1907–2001), daughter of a prosperous Sudeten German farmer from Maletein.
He took a job with Jaroslav Šimek Bank of Prague in 1931, where he worked until 1938. Schindler was arrested several times in 1931 and 1932 for public drunkenness.
He took a job with Jaroslav Šimek Bank of Prague in 1931, where he worked until 1938. Schindler was arrested several times in 1931 and 1932 for public drunkenness.
She bore him a daughter, Emily, in 1933, and a son, Oskar Jr, in 1935.
She bore him a daughter, Emily, in 1933, and a son, Oskar Jr, in 1935.
Schindler later claimed the boy was not his son. Schindler's father, an alcoholic, abandoned his wife in 1935.
She died a few months later after a lengthy illness. ===Spy for the Abwehr=== Schindler joined the separatist Sudeten German Party in 1935.
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 to save the lives of his Jewish employees. 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.
Although he was a citizen of Czechoslovakia, Schindler became a spy for the Abwehr, the military intelligence service of Nazi Germany, in 1936.
Prior to the beginning of German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he collected information on railways and troop movements for the German government.
He took a job with Jaroslav Šimek Bank of Prague in 1931, where he worked until 1938. Schindler was arrested several times in 1931 and 1932 for public drunkenness.
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.
He joined the Nazi Party in 1939.
Schindler 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, Schindler acquired an enamelware factory in Kraków, Poland, which employed at the factory's peak in 1944 about 1,750 workers, of whom 1,000 were Jews.
Schindler applied for membership in the Nazi Party on 1 November and was accepted the following year. 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.
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. ===World War II=== ====Emalia==== Schindler first arrived in Kraków (Krakau) in October 1939, on Abwehr business, and took an apartment the following month.
In November 1939, he contacted interior decorator Mila Pfefferberg to decorate his new apartment.
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. ===World War II=== ====Emalia==== Schindler first arrived in Kraków (Krakau) in October 1939, on Abwehr business, and took an apartment the following month.
Emilie Schindler visited for a few months in 1940 and moved to Kraków to live with Oskar in 1941. 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.
"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." On 1 August 1940, Governor-General Hans Frank issued a decree requiring all Kraków Jews to leave the city within two weeks.
Emilie Schindler visited for a few months in 1940 and moved to Kraków to live with Oskar in 1941. 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.
Of the 60,000 to 80,000 Jews then living in the city, only 15,000 remained by March 1941.
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. ====Płaszów==== In fall 1941, the Nazis began transporting Jews out of the ghetto.
The first arrest, in late 1941, led to him being kept overnight.
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.
On 13 March 1943, the ghetto was liquidated and those still fit for work were sent to the new concentration camp at Płaszów.
He decided to get out and to save as many Jews as he could." Płaszów concentration camp opened in March 1943 on the former site of two Jewish cemeteries on Jerozilimska Street, about from the DEF factory.
Göth was never convicted on those charges, but was hanged by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland for war crimes on 13 September 1946. In 1943, Schindler was contacted via members of the Jewish resistance movement by Zionist leaders in Budapest.
In 1939, Schindler acquired an enamelware factory in Kraków, Poland, which employed at the factory's peak in 1944 about 1,750 workers, of whom 1,000 were Jews.
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. By July 1944, Germany was losing the war; the SS began closing down the easternmost concentration camps and deporting the remaining prisoners westward.
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.
At its peak in 1944, the business employed around 1,750 workers, a thousand of whom were Jews.
In October 1944, he was arrested again, accused of black marketeering and bribing Göth and others to improve the conditions of the Jewish workers.
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.
He brought back funding provided by the Jewish Agency for Israel and turned it over to the Jewish underground. ====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.
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. 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.
It received no bids. ===Other memorabilia=== In August 2013, a one-page letter signed by Schindler on 22 August 1944 sold in an online auction for $59,135.
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.
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. 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.
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 the war in Europe was over. ===After the war=== As a member of the Nazi Party and the Abwehr intelligence service, Schindler was in danger of being arrested as a war criminal.
They moved to Bavaria in Germany in the fall of 1945. By the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies for his workers.
This version of the list contains 801 names and is dated 18 April 1945; Pfefferberg is listed as worker number 173.
Göth was never convicted on those charges, but was hanged by the Supreme National Tribunal of Poland for war crimes on 13 September 1946. In 1943, Schindler was contacted via members of the Jewish resistance movement by Zionist leaders in Budapest.
In 1948 he presented a claim for reimbursement of his wartime expenses to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and received $15,000.
Other awards include the German Order of Merit (1966). Writer Herbert Steinhouse, who interviewed him in 1948, wrote that "Schindler's exceptional deeds stemmed from just that elementary sense of decency and humanity that our sophisticated age seldom sincerely believes in.
Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1949, where he tried raising chickens and then nutria, a small animal raised for its fur.
I had to help them; there was no choice." ==Legacy== ===Films and book=== In 1951, Poldek Pfefferberg approached director Fritz Lang and asked him to consider making a film about Schindler.
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.
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.
He was also approached in the 1960s by MCA of Germany and Walt Disney Productions in Vienna, but again nothing came of these projects. 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.
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.
He declared bankruptcy in 1963 and suffered a heart attack the next year, which led to a month-long stay in hospital.
Also on Pfefferberg's initiative, in 1964 Schindler received a $20,000 () advance from MGM for a proposed film treatment titled To the Last Hour.
Oskar Schindler (; 28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was a German industrialist 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 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 died on 9 October 1974 and is buried in Jerusalem on Mount Zion, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way.
Schindler had stayed with the couple for a few days shortly before his death in 1974.
He was also approached in the 1960s by MCA of Germany and Walt Disney Productions in Vienna, but again nothing came of these projects. 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.
The document was given to Keneally in 1980 by Pfefferberg when he was persuading him to write Schindler's story.
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 to save the lives of his Jewish employees. 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.
After extensive research and interviews with surviving Schindlerjuden, his 1982 historical novel Schindler's Ark (published in the United States as Schindler's List) was the result. The novel was adapted as the 1993 movie Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg.
A repentant opportunist saw the light and rebelled against the sadism and vile criminality all around him." In a 1983 television documentary, Schindler was quoted as saying, "I felt that the Jews were being destroyed.
After acquiring the rights in 1983, Spielberg felt he was not ready emotionally or professionally to tackle the project, and he offered the rights to several other directors.
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 to save the lives of his Jewish employees. 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 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.
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 to rescue Jews during the Holocaust, on 24 June 1993.
After extensive research and interviews with surviving Schindlerjuden, his 1982 historical novel Schindler's Ark (published in the United States as Schindler's List) was the result. The novel was adapted as the 1993 movie Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg.
Staehr's son Chris took the suitcase to Stuttgart, where the documents were examined in detail in 1999 by Dr.
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. ===Copies of the list=== 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 documents and suitcase were sent to the Holocaust museum at Yad Vashem in Israel for safekeeping in December 1999. ===Copies of the list=== 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.
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. 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.
It received no bids. ===Other memorabilia=== In August 2013, a one-page letter signed by Schindler on 22 August 1944 sold in an online auction for $59,135.
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