There is a common quote
among us, ‘Do something good; no one remembers, do something bad; no one
forgets’. But the protagonist of the story that I am going to narrate makes
that quote seem inaccurate. For himself, though he is convicted for doing
numerous bad things, is only remembered for the good he did. He is Oskar
Schindler and this is his story.
Schindler was a drunkard. Schindler was a
womanizer. His relations with his wife were bad. He often had not one but
several girlfriends. Everything he did put him in jeopardy, Yet during the Second
World War, what stood between 1200 Jews in the Krakow Ghetto and liquidation
was the same man, doing his utmost best to save the lives of Jews.
Born
in 1908 to a family of businessmen in Zwittau,
Moravia, then a German province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now part of
the Czech Republic, he had a younger sister Elfriede with whom he had a close relationship
despite their seven-year age difference. Oskar's father, Hans Schindler, was a
factory owner and his mother, Louisa Schindler, was a homemaker. Oskar in his
childhood was a popular and a friendly student but he was not an exceptional
one.
Initially motivated by his selfish interests in
war profiteering and money making, in 1939 Schindler came to Krakow, Poland. He was able to create friendships with key SS (special Nazi
armed unit) officials often by bribing them and giving them black market gifts.
In 1940 he opened an enamelware factory (Deutsche Enamelware Factory) with the
help of his hired Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern and using his natural flair,
he kept on bribing SS officials to get major contracts to his business. With
Stern’s advice Schindler hired Jews to work in his factory because they were
considered a source of ‘cheap and reliable labour’.
He eventually was able to create a bond with his
‘reliable labour’ and another side of him, which sympathized the Jews and the
many humiliations they had to undergo emerged. He then worked towards saving
their lives by bribing the authorities. He spent his entire fortune to save his
workers whom he now referred to as ‘my children’.
In his factory, Nazi guards were only allowed
outsides the gates and if they had to come into the factory premises, it was
done under the authority of Schindler himself. Workers referred to his factory
as ‘heaven’. No unnatural deaths occurred inside his factory. These were the
same years when millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps like Treblinka and Auschwitz,
but miraculous survivors were Schindler’s Jews for they were protected by
him.
As a result of employing all his persuasive
powers, uninhibited bribing, fighting and even begging, he was able to get
permission from the authorities to move his factory to Brunnlitz,
Czechoslovakia not to make profits but to save the lives of his workers by
taking them with him since the Nazis had decided to dissolve and close all the
satellite camps at Plazow.
Schindler
together with his accountant Stern, made a list, which is commonly known as
Schindler’s list of 1200 Jews to be taken to Brunnlitz consisting of men, women
and even children.
Schindler’s Jews survived the holocaust and he
earned their everlasting gratitude. What mattered to them was that he who
emerged out of chaos of madness and risked everything to save them.
He died on October
9th 1974 and was buried in Jerusalem.
Today
there are more than 6,000 descendants of Schindler`s Jews living in the USA and
Europe, and many in Israel. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population
of Poland was 3.5
million. Today there are between 3,000 and 4,000 left.
No
matter how bad he was, he will always be only remembered for the good he did to
Jews. He was successful in life.
A movie based on the life of Oskar Schindler was made in 1993 which was directed by Steven Spielberg and Liam Neeson starred as Schinldler. I personally think that it is
a 'must watch' and that movie was what persuaded me to write this.
