Transcript Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler
By: Morgan Sentelle
Childhood
 Oskar Schindler was born in Zwittau,
an industrial city in Moravia.
 Attended a German-language school.
 Father, Hans Schindler, was a
factory owner and his mother,
Louisa Schindler, was a homemaker.
 Close to his younger sister named
Elfriede.
 Was popular and had many friends,
but he was not a good student.
Growing Up
 During the 1920s Schindler
worked for his father selling
farm equipment.
 In 1928 he married Emilie. His
father disapproves of
marriage, and leaves his job
working for his father. He
becomes a salesman for
Morovia Eklectric and travels
to Poland on business.
Becoming Successful…
 By 1935 Sudeten Germans
were joining the pro-Nazi
Sudeten German Party.
 Schindler only joined
because it made business
sense to go along with the
happening events.
The new beginning…
 On September 1, 1939, Hitler
invaded Poland.
 Schindler went to Krakow,
Poland wanting to profit from
the conflict.
 By October the Nazis were
controlling all of Poland.
 Schindler made friends with key
officers in both the German
army and the SS, by giving
them illegal goods such as
cognac and cigars.
Itzhak Stern
 Schindler met Itzhak Stern, a
Jewish accountant.
 Schindler purchased a
bankrupt kitchenware
factory and opened it in
January 1940 and hired Stern
as the bookkeeper.
 They became very close.
Factory
 Schindler needed employees so he turned to
Krakow’s Jewish community. This was Sterns idea.
 Fifty-six thousand Jews lived in the city, most
living in ghettos.
 By 1940, the Nazi’s torture against Jews had
begun.
 Nazis issued a new regulation ordering all but
"work-essential" Jews to leave the city.
 June of 1942, the Nazis began relocating Krakow's
Jews to labor camps.
 This included Schindler’s workers. He ran to the
train station and argued with the SS men.
 He rescued them and took them back to his
factory.
Factory cont.
 1943 the Nazis ordered the
final "liquidation" of the
Krakow ghetto.
 Jews who were healthy and
could work were sent to
Plaszow and the rest were
sent off to death camps or
executed on the spot.
 Schindler proposed
establishing a labor minicamp within his factory that
would continue to employ
his own workers.
 The man in charge agreed
after Schindler bribed him.
A turn for the worse…
 Instead of labor camps they
turned them into concentration
camps which in turn would be
death camps.
 Schindler got word his factory
would shut down. For the second
time he approached the man in
charge asking to move his factory
and his workers to Czechoslovakia
so they could supply the Third
Reich with war supplies. He again
bribed him in order to gain his
support.
The list…
 He then had to decide which workers to
save.
 Came up with a list containing some
eleven hundred names.
 In 1944 he began to move his factory.
 Around eight hundred men were shipped
out in boxcars bound for Brunnlitz. Three
hundred women and children who were
supposed to join them there were
mistakenly routed to Auschwitz instead.
 Schindler rescued these women and
children and sent them to Brunnlitz.
 When he manufactured the shells for the
Nazis, they were always faulty shells.
End of war…
 May 8, 1945, the war came to an
end after Germany surrendered.
 Schindler gathered all of his
workers together on the factory
floor to give them the good news.
 Schindler and his wife, fled west
to avoid Russian troops.
 No more than a couple of days
later around twelve hundred
Shindler's Jews were freed by a
Russian officer who rode up to
the factory on horseback.
Schindler’s Life after war…
 His life after war consisted
of many failed business
ventures, overspending,
plenty of drinking, and
love affairs.
 In 1949 Schindler moved to
Argentina and purchased a
farm.
 1957 went bankrupt and
was relying on the charity
of the Jewish organization
B'nai B'rith to survive.
Life after war cont…
 1958 Schindler abandoned his wife
and returned to West Germany.
 In that same year Schindler lost his
cement business, he was invited to
visit Israel.
 Many people were mad at him for
testifying against SS officers and
saving Jews.
 Every spring he would go to Israel to
visit surviving Schindler Jews and
their children.
Death
 After his fifty-fourth birthday in
1962, he was officially declared a
"Righteous Gentile (non-Jew)”
 He died from heart and liver
problems in 1974
 His desire was to be buried in
Israel.
 About five hundred Schindler
Jews went to his funeral on
Mount Zion in Jerusalem.