Why will Oskar Schindler be remembered?

Answer 1

"Oscar Schindler did what no other German or human being for that matter, at that time,was willing to do to protect a people and save a nation from mass genocide and religious and ethnic persecution."

Schindler was a rich German businessman in Nazi Germany in the 1940s, conducting much of his business in Krackow, Poland when it was under Nazi occupation. However, as the World War II went on he discovered how Hitler and the Nazis were treating Jews, by imprisoning them and exterminating them in gas chambers throughout Poland and that part of Europe. To try and help the Jews, he employed hundreds of them (in reality far more than he needed) as slave labour in his factories, making weapons for the Nazis, so that they could not be sent to the extermination camps. Those Nazi officers who suspected that something was not right were bribed by Schindler not to tell the authorities, who would close the factories and send the Jews to their deaths, and presumably kill Schindler. His vast fortune just held out until the end of the war when the hundreds of Jews he saved were finally freed by the allied forces. Although a Nazi, Schindler was pardoned by the allied forces and is now thought of by the Jewish people as a hero - putting his own safety on the line for the sake of the Jews & there families he saved. Apparently, when questioned, his only regret was that he could not save more.

¨ He bought Jewish owned factories.

¨ . He negotiated the salvation of 1300 Jews, using the Germans' own ways of operating,through bribes, extortion, lies, black marketeering...

¨ . He got in touch with remaining wealthy Jews and had them invest in his company exchanging their money for their protecting, by having them work in his factories as skilled or essential labourers. He then paid of Nazis so they would allow the Jews to stay in Krakow.

¨ . He set up a branch of the Plaszow concentration camp for 900 Jewish workers in his factory and made a list of the workers he would need.

¨ He saved most of the workers by moving his factory to Brunnlitz in October 1944.

Oscar Schindler said 'I was a Nazi, and I believed that the Germans were doing wrong ... it didn't mean anything to me that they were Jewish just that they were killing millions of people

There is a book written about Schindler called 'Schindler's Ark' that tells of his work saving the Jews in his factories. There is also a movie (film) made by Steven Spielberg about Oskar Schindler called Schindler's List which is one of the most moving movies ever made. Although gruelling in places, at times I would defy anyone not to shed a tear - especially at the end, when a line of hundreds and hundreds of elderly Jews files past Schindler's grave to pay their respects to a great man - all with their own families now, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, who would not be here now had it not been for Schindler.

Answer 2

He saved over 1 thousand Jews from being killed by the German Army.