Oskar Schindler was born in 1908 in Zwittau, then part of the Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic.  When he was a little boy he had a strong Catholic home and religious parents.  His closest neighbors were a Jewish Rabbi family, two of the sons were Oskar’s best friends.

Schindler joined the Nazis party in 1938.  Even though he gradually came to dislike Hitler, he remained in the party.  He enjoyed a rich lifestyle with fine wines, gambling, and extramarital affairs.  By 1940, the Nazis required business owners, such as Schindler, to use Jews as their workers, then the owners of the businesses would give the Jews wages directly to the Nazis coffers.

Schindler when asked, told that the transformation during the war was sparked by the Final Solution.  Schindler actually witnessed the brutality of the Nazis.  He was so stunned by the mean behavior he decided to save as many lives as he could.  He later said “No thinking person could fail to see what would happen.  I now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.” Schindler did not believe in abusing people from the Plaszow labor camp that worked in his factory. He treated his employees kindly and gave them extra food.  Leon Leyson, back then a boy working in Schindler’s factory, vividly recalls how Schindler kept on saving him and his family.

Schindler used his enormous wealth to protect his laborers from being deported and from death.  He expanded his plant and added more workers.  By the winter of 1942 he had more than 550 workers.  He convinced the Nazis to let prisoners from the Plaszow labor camp to come work for him.  Oskar Schindler’s wife, Ernile, looked after the sick in a secret place in the factory.  The living conditions there were better and they got away from beatings and murders.  Schindler’s sold his wife’s jewels to buy food, clothes, and medicine for Jews.  

In 1944, Schindler devised a plan to build a bigger factory in Brinnlitz that would cost him $40,000.  He insisted he would have to take along his “skilled workers”, whose names are on the now-famous list, in exchange for diamonds.  On October 15, eight hundred Jews, followed by hundreds more, let Plaszow for Brinnlitz.  Schindler didn’t spend one night outside of the factory, like in Plaszow. 

Schindler risked his life to rescue more than 300 female workers that were mistakenly sent to Auschwitz.  When the Schindler-women were being sent off to the showers they heard a voice say: ‘What are you doing with these people? These are my people!’ It was Schindler come to rescue them.  The women were released.

In that seven- month period no one usable shell was made in Schindler’s factory.  But in May 1945, it was over.  The Russians moved into Brinnlitz.  The night before Schindler gathered everyone together for an emotional good-bye.  He told them they were free and he was a fugitive.  “My children you are saved, Germany has lost the war.”

After World War 2, he was isolated and rejected by his fellow citizens. He had stones thrown at him, people swore at him, and he was persecuted.  He then moved to Argentina with his wife and became a farmer.  Poldek Pfefferberg, a Schindler-Jew, insists that Oskar Schindler began helping Jews way before the war turned against the Nazis. ‘He risked his life,’ Pfefferberg said ‘He was doing it from the first day.’  In 1957, Schindler became bankrupt and he returned to Europe.  He never saw his wife again.

In 1983, Steven Spielberg turned the best-selling novel into an award-winning film called ’Schindler’s List’.  The author of Schindler’s Ark, Thomas Kenedly, says the most common feeling is “I don’t know why he did it….”

Oskar Schindler loved doing good.  He risked his life to rescue more than 1200 Jews.  He went through the Holocaust without soiling his respect and love for humanity.