Schindler's List

In 1993 the multi-Oscar winning film Schindler’s List made the deeds of Oskar Schindler known throughout the world. Although it depicted events that happened 50 years earlier (and was an adaptation of the 1982 Booker Prize winning novel Schindler’s Ark) it effectively introduced The Holocaust to millions of people – who may well have heard the term but didn’t really know what it meant. Schindler was a German businessman who saved about 1200 Jews who worked in his factories in Nazi-occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia. He was also a member of The Nazi Party and worked as a spy for the regime in the mid-1930s. The fact that same person who often held lavish parties for top Nazi officials (above) is now one of the most celebrated figures of rescue during The Holocaust is what makes his story so fascinating. The closing scene of the film (right) features hundreds of people he saved and their descendants. Each one of them owe their lives to someone who evolved from being a wartime profiteer to a selfless humanitarian. Schindler was one of the many ethnic- Germans who lived in Czechoslovakia when the Nazi’s invaded Poland in 1939. Three years earlier he had joined the Nazi Party and agreed to collect information for them about Czech KRAKOW nationals as it was an easy way of earning some money - making money BRÜNNLITZ was all he really cared about. When the German’s proclaimed Krakow locations of the major concentration and X = death camps the Germans built in Poland as their administrative capital in Poland he decided to go there, spotting another business opportunity and moved from Brünnlitz, where he lived at the time. He had heard that many Jewish companies were being forced to close down and decided to buy one of them, at an inevitably very cheap price, in order to produce goods that could be sold to the fellow Germans. Schindler approached the Jewish owners of this enamel factory (above) knowing that they had to sell it as soon as possible, and bought it very cheaply. He knew that there would be a demand for pots, pans and other kitchenware from the many German officials who were moving into the city. He was right – it was the first time any of his businesses had been successful! Schindler knew nothing about the enamel business, so he decided to ask I did not know what he wanted and I was frightened... the company’s accountant Itzhak Stern if a German asked you a question in the street it was compulsory for you to precede your answer with ‘I am to stay on and work for him. Stern was a Jew....’ Then we had to begin wearing the Star of to play a crucial part in the eventual David. The situation was growing worse for the Jews – rescue plan, but he recalls his first and it was in this atmosphere of terror and panic that I had this meeting with Oskar Schindler. meeting with Schindler with fear. Itzhak Stern The Krakow Plaszow Kazimierz Ghetto Concentration Camp Kazimierz Photos taken of a synagogue and street scene before the war Kazimierz was the oldest part of the city and where practically all of Krakow’s Jews had lived for centuries. There were many synagogues and other places of Jewish learning there. It was an area where Catholic and Jewish Poles happily coexisted. In 1941, when the occupying German authorities created the ghetto south of the Vistula River, its inhabitants were forced to move from their long-established family homes. The ghetto walls being built (left) and Jews being forced The Krakow out of Kazimierz to the ghetto area (right). Many Ghetto local antisemitic Poles jeered them as they made their way across The Vistula. The Krakow Ghetto was established in March 1941 and over 15,000 Jews were crammed into an area that had previously housed 3000. The conditions were dreadful and unhygienic. Each flat had multiple families and some people had to live on the streets. Food was strictly rationed and Jews were subject to random acts of violence from their German tormentors. First, Jews were used as slave labour - hence the ease in which Schindler was able to staff his factory. From June 1942 the Germans started to deport Jews to concentration camps. In March 1943 the ghetto was finally emptied of Jews – some were sent to the recently built Plaszow Jews being deported in 1943 (left) and the Camp, south of the city, but most were murdered abandoned bundles of clothes in the empty in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Belzec. streets after they had gone. Płaszów Concentration Camp Płaszów concentration camp was built on the site of two Jewish Cemeteries. It was originally intended to be a forced labour camp – but after the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto expanded to Photos of the camp, probably taken by become part of the wider German officials for propaganda purposes concentration camp network. The criminal treatment of Jews at Płaszów was exacerbated by the heartlessly cruel commandant Amon Göth. He was known to “hunt” Jews while riding a white horse – randomly shooting any in his firing range. Schindler often dealt directly with Göth, who was also a frequent guest at his many parties… The turning point… It was in the spring of 1942, when the SS began to deport Jews from the Krakow Ghetto, that Schindler witnessed the brutality and bloodshed of his fellow Germans first hand. By then he had acquired quite a large fortune and was living far more comfortably than he ever had before. But suddenly that did not matter any more and he decided to do what he could to save his Jewish workers. Much to their alarm, he began to ask them how they had been treated in the past. They already knew he was a kind person… (for a German factory owner), but they were shocked by what seemed to be genuine interest in their wellbeing. And the more Schindler found out the angrier he became – both with his fellow countrymen for the way they were behaving, and with himself, for being blind to the truth for so long… The turning point… When he learnt about the plans to completely liquidate the ghetto, he told all his employees to stay in the factory until the round ups were over. This angered some Nazi officials, but Schindler insisted that his workers were essential for the war effort and therefore irreplaceable. He started to spend huge amounts of his own money to buy more food for his workers too. As the violence worsened, and the conditions at the Plaszow Camp grew ever more dangerous, Schindler told Göth, that he wanted to transform his factory into a sub-camp of Plaszow, complete with barracks for his Jewish workers. This would mean that everyone in his factory would remained safely under his protection. At first Göth was not sure of the idea, but after Schindler bribed him he agreed. By the summer of Göth on the white horse he used to “hunt” Jews 1944, more than 1,000 Jews were living in the factory. The Germans were fighting two wars… Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy had two equally important war objectives; - the conventional territorial ambitions to rule over vast swathes of Europe, - the ideological, racist objective of killing every Jew. By the end of 1944 Germany was clearly losing the military conflict and their occupation of Poland was crumbling. Although the Soviet troops were steadily progressing further westward towards Berlin, it would be six more months before German finally surrendered. These battlefield defeats made the Nazi’s war against the Jews a race against time – even if we lose militarily, they thought, at least we would have succeeded in annihilating the Jews. From the Nazi perspective, what the world would come to see as a grievous crime against humanity, was simply cleansing the world of “subhuman vermin”. Himmler (pictured right) the head of the SS, was well aware of how the rest of the world would react if they found out precisely what was happening to the Jews of Europe. “This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be.” It became imperative that evidence of these crimes was erased and Jews who hadn’t yet been killed would be moved further into Germany, away from the ever approaching eyes of the world. KRAKOW BRÜNNLITZ When Schindler was ordered to close his factory and send his workers to the gas chambers, he decided to seek permission to open up an armaments factory in Brünnlitz which was still under German control. The German Army was desperate for ammunition and gave him the go-ahead, provided he could supply the authorities with a list of the names of the workers he wanted to take… …in the end Schindler’s list contained over 1200 names. There are many remarkable examples of how Schindler risked his own safety to protect his workers. Perhaps the most daring was when he heard that a group of 300 women who were on the list to be taken to Brünnlitz were mistakenly take to Auschwitz (right) instead. To a committed Nazi, the accidental death of 300 Jews would have meant nothing, but Schindler was desperate to save them. “We were deported in cattle cars to our certain death in Auschwitz… we were there for 10 days and then we hear Schindler had got us released… he won our survival… so we were taken to the factory in Brünnlitz.

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