Oskar Schindler (1939–1945): How 1,200 Jews Were Saved

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who, between 1939 and 1945, used his enamelware factory in Kraków and later an armaments plant at Brünnlitz in Moravia to protect about 1,200 Jews from deportation and murder. His story, made famous by Thomas Keneally’s novel and Steven Spielberg’s film, is one of the best-known cases of rescue during the Holocaust.

Background: an unlikely rescuer

Schindler was born on 28 April 1908 in Zwittau (Svitavy), then part of Austria-Hungary, into a Catholic family of Sudeten Germans. Before the war he worked in sales and spied for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, and in 1939 he joined the Nazi Party.

After Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, Schindler arrived in Kraków looking for business opportunities. Late that year he took over a bankrupt enamelware works in the Zabłocie district, renaming it the Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik (DEF), often called Emalia. Jewish workers were cheap labour, and the accountant Itzhak Stern helped him find Jewish investors and staff.

The Kraków factory

At first Schindler’s motives were largely commercial. He made pots and pans for the German army and later added an armaments department, which gave the factory “war-essential” status. That status mattered, because it allowed him to argue that his Jewish workers could not be removed.

The Germans forced Kraków’s Jews into a ghetto in March 1941 and destroyed it on 13–14 March 1943, murdering or deporting thousands. Surviving workers were sent to the Płaszów labour camp, run by the brutal commandant Amon Göth. Schindler persuaded Göth to let him build a subcamp at the Emalia factory, where conditions were far better than at Płaszów. He spent heavily on bribes, black-market food and gifts to SS officials, and was arrested several times.

The Brünnlitz list

In 1944, as the Red Army advanced, Płaszów was being emptied and its prisoners sent to Auschwitz and other camps. Schindler obtained permission to move his armaments production to Brünnlitz (Brněnec), in the Sudetenland, and to take his workers with him.

Lists of names were drawn up in the Płaszów office in October 1944. The prisoner Marcel Goldberg did much of the typing, and Mietek Pemper, who worked as Göth’s stenographer, helped Schindler understand what the SS would accept. The men reached Brünnlitz via the Gross-Rosen camp. About 300 women on the list were instead diverted to Auschwitz-Birkenau; after weeks of negotiation and bribery they were released and taken to Brünnlitz, an almost unique event.

In January 1945 Schindler also took in about 100 Jewish prisoners found in frozen freight wagons from the Golleschau camp; some were already dead. The Brünnlitz factory produced almost no usable munitions, which Schindler later presented as deliberate.

Key people

• Oskar Schindler (1908–1974): the factory owner who used charm, bribery and his Nazi connections to keep his workers alive.
• Emilie Schindler (1907–2001): his wife, who cared for sick prisoners at Brünnlitz and found food and medicine.
• Itzhak Stern: the Jewish accountant who helped run the business and advised Schindler.
• Amon Göth: commandant of Płaszów, hanged in Kraków in 1946 for war crimes.
• Mietek Pemper: a prisoner clerk whose inside knowledge helped shape the list.

After the war

The Brünnlitz workers were freed in early May 1945, when Soviet forces arrived. Schindler, by now almost penniless, fled west. His later businesses in Argentina and West Germany failed, and survivors supported him financially.

Oskar and Emilie emigrated to Argentina in 1949. He returned alone to Germany in 1958, and the couple never lived together again, although they did not divorce.

In 1962 Schindler was invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, and in 1993 Yad Vashem formally recognised Oskar and Emilie Schindler as Righteous Among the Nations. Schindler died in Hildesheim on 9 October 1974 and was buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark (1982) won the Booker Prize, and Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) won seven Academy Awards.

The Emalia building in Kraków was opened in 2010 as a branch of the Historical Museum of the City of Kraków. Its permanent exhibition covers the whole German occupation of the city, not only Schindler, and draws large numbers of visitors each year.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Schindler planned the rescue from the start. He began as an opportunist; his commitment grew as he witnessed persecution and violence.
• Myth: there was a single list. Several lists were made in 1944 and 1945, and names changed between them.
• Fact: the rescue was costly and risky. Schindler spent most of his wartime fortune and was arrested several times.

Timeline

• 1939, late: Schindler takes over the enamelware factory in Zabłocie, Kraków.
• 1941, March: the Kraków ghetto is established.
• 1943, 13–14 March: the ghetto is liquidated; survivors are sent to Płaszów.
• 1943: Schindler sets up a subcamp at the Emalia factory.
• 1944, October: the Brünnlitz lists are drawn up; workers are moved to Moravia.
• 1945, January: about 100 prisoners from Golleschau are taken in at Brünnlitz.
• 1945, May: Brünnlitz is liberated.
• 1962: Schindler plants a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.

Why it matters

Schindler’s story shows that individuals inside the Nazi system could save lives even when most did nothing. About 1,200 people survived, and their descendants today number in the thousands.