Steven Spielberg’s wonderful movie, “Schindler’s List,” gets a few (very few) things wrong, but nicely captures the paradox that was Oskar Schindler, a Czechoslovakian-born industrialist who, prior to World War II, spied for the German Abwehr (espionage unit), joined the Nazi Party and helped ensure the German takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1939, which hastened Hitler’s conquest of Eastern Europe.
Schindler was also an opportunist and when Germany conquered Poland in September of 1939, he moved to Krakow, where he bought a Jewish-owned enamelware factory for a fraction of its original worth and then contracted with the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) to supply him with Jewish laborers. Schindler was actually a terrible businessman — Jewish overseers mostly ran the factory — but he was a charmer who wined and dined, and bribed, important Nazi Party members, who awarded him with lucrative government contracts.
In short, Schindler was living large on the backs of Jewish slave labor when, in 1943, German soldiers raided a ghetto in Krakow, murdering Jews indiscriminately and shipping the rest to the Plaszow concentration camp, not far from Schindler’s factory. Appalled at the brutal murder of so many Jews, including some who had worked for him, Schindler transformed himself from a money-grubbing opportunist to a fierce defender of his Schindlerjuden (“Schindler’s Jews,” as they called themselves), not only keeping them fed and clothed at his own expense, but also using his charm (and bribes) to protect them from arrest or deportation by the SS.
And then, in 1944, as the German army retreated before the Soviet Army’s march into Poland, the SS began dismantling the concentration camps and moving prisoners westward. Notified that his factory would also be shut down, Schindler persuaded the SS to let him move his factory to Czechoslovakia, and he presented the SS with a list — the famous “Schindler’s list” — of some 1,200 Jewish workers who were to move with him, and so be spared certain death. And so survive the war.
Schindler’s post-war years were somewhat controversial. Yad Vashem, the Jewish society charged with honoring “Righteous Gentiles” for helping Jews escape the Holocaust, initially refused to honor Schindler, given his Nazi Party background and original exploitation of Jewish labor. But the Schindlerjuden rallied to his defense, noting that he had saved their lives at a huge risk to his own.
As a result, today among the trees dedicated to “Righteous Gentiles” that line the path to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, is a tree planted for Schindler, who died this week (Oct. 9) in 1974. The tree is easy to spot, the ground around it having been worn down by countless visitors wanting to honor this brave, righteous, and justifiably famous man.
