German industrialist Oskar Schindler is now known for saving the lives of more than 1,000 Jewish employees during the Holocaust (thanks to a 1993 Steven Spielberg film). However, Schindler's story and experience with the Nazi Party is more complicated than Hollywood portrays.
Oskar Schindler's life before World War II
Born in 1908 in what is today's Czech Republic (formerly the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Oskar Schindler was a German-Catholic who attended several trade schools and then spent several years trying to become a businessman, doing everything from selling government property to starting a business. Driving school, selling farm equipment.
As an ethnic German living in the Sudetenland at the time, Schindler shared the Nazi Party's belief that Germany should annex the territory, and in 1936 began working for Amt Auslands/Abwehr: the Office of Military Foreign Intelligence of the German Armed Forces.
"Evidence of his prewar work for German military counterintelligence is often overlooked," said Amy Randall, professor of history and chair of the history department at Santa Clara University.
More recently, there has been evidence that he has played a more significant role. "There does seem to be some indication that he was involved in helping to justify the invasion of Poland, but I don't know enough about the accuracy of these allegations," Randall explained.
This evidence comes from historian David A. Bush. David M. Crowe's 2004 book, Oskar Schindler: The True Story Behind His Life, Wartime Activities, and the List, is considered by many historians and others to be the most thorough and complete account of the Holocaust. Schindler's life. This is attributed, at least in part, to the findings of the new paper, which provide more information and details about Schindler.
According to Crowe, documents he consulted from the archives of the Czech secret police referred to Schindler as a "large-caliber, particularly dangerous spy" and indicated that he was the leader of a German unit planning to invade Poland.
Regardless of Schindler's involvement, Czech counterintelligence arrested and imprisoned him in 1938, though he was released later that year after the Munich Agreement allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland. In early 1939, Schindler became a full member of the Nazi Party, but his motives for doing so are unclear.
"For me, the question is how much of this is motivated by a belief in Nazi ideology, and not, as some say, as a businessman, he is pragmatic and sees this as an opportunity to do well under the new regime, in a new reality," Randall said.
Emalia factory in Krakow
In October 1939, Schindler immediately relocated to Krakow after the German invasion and began to occupy Poland. "He moved to an area where many factories and industries were closed or Aryanized," Randall explained, referring to the Nazi policy of confiscating Jewish-owned property and transferring it to non-Jews.
Schindler took advantage of this scheme within a month of his arrival in Krakow, purchasing a former Jewish-owned enamel factory called Emalia. "Jews were driven into the ghetto, but also into refugee camps and sub-camps, where companies could hire them without paying anything and take advantage of their jobs," Randall explained.
Initially, the factory manufactured kitchenware for civilians and the German army, but later expanded to produce ammunition. Although Schindler did hire local Polish workers, his Polish-Jewish accountant, Isaac Stern, suggested that by hiring Jewish workers, he could cut costs and thus increase profits.
"Once he started doing that, he developed some sympathy for their plight while making money," Randall explained. In addition, she added, although it was a highly unusual business practice, Schindler hired children and the elderly to prevent them from starving to death in the slums.
In March 1943, German troops cleared the ghetto in Krakow and transferred Jews to Prashov, a forced labor camp that was later converted into a concentration camp. Through bribes and his ties to the Nazi regime, Schindler was allowed to establish the Prashov subcamp in his factory, housing in sanitary conditions for some 1,000 Jews, and providing them with food.
By expanding his factories to produce military weapons and ammunition, Schindler was able to claim that his Jewish workers were essential to wartime production.
Schindler's list
In the fall of 1944, when Jews working at the Emaria factory were transferred to Prashov, Schindler lobbied and obtained permission to move his munitions manufacturing plant to Brněnec, a town near where he grew up, the then Sudetenland, which would be classified as a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
He also noted that Jewish laborers working in the Krakow factories were essential to his wartime production and needed to go with him to Brunlitz. About 800 men and 300 to 400 women were transferred to the factory in Brunlitz because their names appeared on what came to be known as the "Schindler's List" – which, according to Crow, actually had nine copies. Crowe wrote in his 2004 book that Marcel Goldberg, a corrupt member of the security police and a Jew, was responsible for creating four of the lists, while the people behind the other five remain unknown.
Crow explained that Schindler's direct involvement was limited to coming up with some names for the list, noting that he did not know most of the people on the list. But in the end, the authorship of these lists was only a detail of a plan that saved more than 1000 people from almost certain deaths in concentration camps.
Schindler's wife, Emily
Randall says that while the role of Schindler's wife, Emily (who married the businessman in 1928), is often downplayed or omitted from the narrative altogether, she was also involved in saving the lives of Jewish factory workers, especially after the establishment of the Brunlitz factory.
"Emily played a key role in serving the Jews," she explained. "She was clearly very keen on health care and even managed to get some medical supplies, as well as procure food and a lot of the basic resources needed to support these people in the long months leading up to the end of the war. ”
In addition to making daily contributions to the lives of the Jews in Brunlitz, Emily Schindler was involved in a number of well-documented activities in the factory. One example of this occurred in January 1945, when two ox-carrying carts arrived in Brunlitz carrying about 120 Jewish men who were trapped in their carriages, without food and water, ready to set out for a seven-day trip from Goleszow, a subcamp of Auschwitz.
Before the train could reach its destination, Auschwitz, Emily stopped the SS battalion commander. "She and Oscar convinced the SS that their factories needed these workers," Randall said. Emily then helped care for about 107 men who arrived in Brunlitz, all frostbitten, starving, but still alive. The other passengers froze to death.