Going through the pages of the famous book Schindler’s Listof Thomas Keneally (which was later materialized in the cinema by steven spielberg), I could not contain the desire to write a few lines about the real protagonist of this story: Oscar Schindlera true savior in times of Nazi Holocaust.
Catholic and inveterate Don Juan, Schindleror also known as Herr Direktor, was born in 1908 in Zwittau, Moravia (present-day Svitavy), Bohemia (where at that time it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, currently what would be the Czech Republic), in the bosom of a wealthy Catholic family dedicated to business.
At the age of 22, in the year 1930, Schindler joined the Nazi Party out of necessity, being soon recruited by the SS as an informant for the high Nazi ranks, given his large number of business contacts.
With the passing of the years, Schindler acquires a factory in Krakow, which its owner adapted to make campaign items. As German labor was very expensive, the businessman chose to use his contacts within the SS, to use the Jews who were inside the concentration camps, who began to work during the day in his factory, and at night they returned under the custody of guards.
Thanks to this daily coexistence with the captured Jews, Schindler he began to become aware of the fate of his employees, choosing to buy each of them for exclusive use within his factory, so that he could save them from the terrible fate that the concentration camps would bring them.
Picture _Nigel
That is how Schindlerwas able to protect the Jewish workers in his factory and save them from dying in the Nazi death camps, saving some 1,200 Polish Jews by the end of 1944.
Ironically, the businessman ended up being almost bankrupt, being persecuted for having belonged to the SS. After comings and goings to the Argentinawhere his wife was (from whom he later divorced), in 1960, the government of Israel recognizes his saving initiative towards the prisoners of plazowwhose and is declared “Righteous Among the Nations” and later dies in Hildesheim at the age of 66 years in the greatest poverty in 1974, being buried in the Catholic cemetery in Jerusalem.
On the back cover of my book, I find a sentence that sums up this incredible story: Whoever saves one man’s life saves the whole world. A good affirmation to remember the life of this man, who in secret was able to save many, filling with hope many more men who hoped to be included in the call. Schindler’s List.
To know more:
Schindler’s ListThomas Keneally, VIB (based on true story and historical documentation)