Oskar Schindler died 50 years ago. He was a man of contradictions, but one deeply ingrained in Jewish and German memory.
October 9, 2024 14:01October 10, 2024 08:22
Oskar Schindler played many roles in his life. The son of a wealthy family, sometimes a successful and sometimes unsuccessful entrepreneur, a man sentenced to death, a Nazi spy, a hedonist and a hedonist, an alcoholic who, to this day, He is also the most famous savior of the Jews.
Born in 1908, the son of a factory owner in Zvitau, Moravia, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), Schindler grew up in relative affluence until the global economic crisis of 1929.
Oskar Schindler after World War II. Image: Wikipedia
After the closure of his father's agricultural machinery factory, Schindler served as a German Foreign Affairs/Defense Ministry agent from 1935 to 1939. This position would be very important to him later on.
Although his espionage was discovered in 1939 and Schindler was sentenced to death for treason, Hitler's control over the “rest of the Czech Republic” (which Germany declared a protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939) The attack saved his life.
From September 1938 to March 1939, Czechoslovakia was divided. Image: Wikipedia
From Nazi to Jewish savior
In order to make a quick profit, in 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, Schindler rented an enamel factory in Krakow, Poland, occupied by Nazi Germany, to produce tableware and later ammunition for the Wehrmacht.
The “German Enamel Factory” was converted into a museum.Image: Shutterstock
The factory was classified by the Nazis as vital to the war effort, a key reason why they were able to hire disenfranchised Polish Jews from the area as cheap labor.
However, Schindler gradually began to change his mind; he increasingly put his own financial interests in the background. The story of Jewish workers from the Krakow ghetto and Plaszow labor camp (a concentration camp established in 1944) to the “German e-mail factory” changed his view of the war, Hitler, and the National Socialists.
Schindler and his wife Emily began developing strategies to save the Jewish workers in the concentration camp. He frequently lied to the SS and other German officials and began forging documents belonging to his employees so that they could continue working for his company. As he continued, he hired more and more Jews, as they were needed for production vital to the war effort.
Not only was he willing to risk his entire fortune, he was also willing to risk his life.
As a result of his work, Oskar Schindler became increasingly targeted by the Nazis. He was arrested three times by the Gestapo and insulted as a “friend of the Jews” and a “collaborator.”
However, his good rapport with German officers due to his time in the Foreign Ministry/Intelligence Service resulted in his release time and time again.
world famous list
In 1944, as the Nazis began to lose more and more ground and the Eastern Front drew ever closer, Schindler, at great risk and expense, moved his factory (including the associated labor force of some 1,200 Jewish forced laborers) camp) moved to Brünnlitz. Sub-camp in the Sudetenland.
Memorial plaque commemorating Oskar Schindler in the Czech Republic.Image: Shutterstock
In addition to those already working in the factory, there were many new names on the list of workers who were allowed to move to the camps at that time.
The rescued people later called themselves “Schindler Jews,” and the list ultimately included 297 women and 781 men. They received permission from the SS to continue working as forced laborers and thus avoid death in the concentration camps.
The list of Jewish workers was made famous by Thomas Keneally's book and Steven Spielberg's 1993 film of the same name, and went down in world history as “Schindler's List.”
post war years
[1945年德国投降后，辛德勒逃往德国南部，并试图非法进入瑞士，但未能成功。他被移交给德国的法国占领军。
After stays in Regensburg and Munich, Schindler moved to Argentina with Emily in 1949. He tried unsuccessfully to regain his footing, but was able to rely on Financial support from Jewish organizations.
In 1958, he returned to Frankfurt alone and lived alternately in Germany and Israel. In 1967, Israel's National Holocaust Memorial Museum awarded Schindler the title of “Righteous Among the Nations” for his efforts to save forced labor. In 1993, his wife Emilie Schindler was recognized.
After Schindler died in Germany on October 9, 1974, he was buried on Mount Zion near Jerusalem at the age of 66.
Oskar Schindler's grave in Jerusalem. Image: Shutterstock
Schindler was a hedonist and a hero
Throughout his life, Schindler was considered a handsome man and a hedonist; he enjoyed drinking and having fun outside of marriage.
Publicist Michel Friedman, the son of a saved “Schindler Jew,” said of him: “He was not an intellectual, he was not an educated man, he was not a Someone who has learned anything.”
He was not particularly respected morally, and to many women he was a “drunkard.” “But unlike all 'moralists,' he risked his life to help people. “In doing so, he showed that it was entirely possible under the Nazi regime,” Friedman said.
The facts are: not a single worker at Oskar Schindler's production facilities died abnormally.
For nearly 20 years of my life, I have struggled with Lou Ottens' 1963 invention: the cassette tape. What is remembered is not an ordinary musical experience, but something entirely different. A little ode to my accompanying media from the 1980s and 1990s.
My first cassette player – the little magic box in my childhood room! A flat speaker, a groove for inserting tapes, five large buttons and a small button labeled “Eject” – all lined up one behind the other. The red record button is considered a major turn-off. It eliminates the annoying gaps in my beloved Kasperli tapes. Most of the time, I pressed the right button and let the tape slide past the tape head. I listened with fascination to the story the magic box told me.
