The List of a Lifetime - Oscar Schindler.

Authors Avatar

Avery

Ben Avery

December 8, 2002

Prof. Spence

History 456

The List of a Lifetime

To many, Oscar Schindler was an alcoholic playboy and shameless womanizer of the worst sort.  In his hometown, he was known by the name "Gauner," which meant swindler or sharper. However, the true side of Schindler came out when he was single handedly responsible for saving the lives of  many Jews that would have ended up dying in one of Hitler’s concentration camps.  Many things surrounding Hitler and the Holocaust are unclear. However, I was surprised to find that the events surrounding the life of Schindler were all translated in similar fashion.

By comparing three different sources, I was able to gain a complete and total understanding about the live of Oscar Schindler. First, I began reading about him at the Jewish Virtual Library (www.us-israel.org) where there is an extensive biography about him.  After reading about Schindler online, I compared the information there to the information relayed in the book and the movie about Schindler.  Both the book and the movie were titled “Schindler’s List,” and like the information found in the Jewish Virtual Library, the storylines follow the life of Schindler.

Oscar Schindler was born on April 28th, 1908, in Zwittau Czechoslovakia.  After the bankruptcy of a close friend’s family business, Schindler found himself jobless.  Now without employment, Schindler joined the Nazi party, as did many others at that time.  Oscar Schindler quickly got on good terms with the local Gestapo chiefs and was recruited by the German Intelligence Agency to collect information about Poles and was highly esteemed for his efforts. 

He left his wife Emilie in Zwittau and moved to Crakow, where he took over a Jewish family`s apartment.  Bribes in the shape of money and illegal black market goods flowed copiously from Schindler and gave him control of a Jewish-owned enameled-goods factory, Deutsch Emailwaren Fabrik.  Since the factory was close to a Jewish ghetto, he principally employed Jewish workers (www.us-israel.org.)

As the brutality of the beast accelerated, Schindler came to the reality that the Jewish were more than just flesh and bones.  They were doctors, parents, and role models, just like people from all other races. It is at this point that Schindler decides to risk everything in desperate attempts to save "his" 1200 Jews from the certain death that lay within the German concentration camps. This was one of the points that differed between the three sources. Since there could be no definite pinpoint of Schindler’s thoughts, there was no way of knowing exactly when he made this decision.  The information from the Jewish Virtual Library placed this decision at an earlier time than either the book or the movie.

Join now!

Schindler realized that it was going to be a long, hard road to freedom. Schindler often spent his evenings on the town with SS and German Army officers. His apparent political standpoints and engaging personality made him popular among the Nazi elite. During the day Schindler would entertain officials and visitors to the factory, mixing them drinks, and telling them that he knew how to get work out of the Jews and that he wanted more brought into his factory. In this way he managed to bring approximately 1200 Jews into the plant, eventually saving them from the gas chamber.

...

This is a preview of the whole essay