Oskar Schindler

April 28, 1908 – October 9, 1974

German industrialist who saved over 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.

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Oskar Schindler was born in 1908 in what is now the Czech Republic, and for much of his early life he seemed an unlikely candidate for heroism. A charming, ambitious businessman fond of money, drinking, and good living, he joined the Nazi Party and saw the German occupation of Poland as a chance to get rich. In 1939 he took over an enamelware factory in Krakow and staffed it with Jewish workers, in part because their forced labor was cheaper. At first, saving lives was not his goal; profit was. What makes Schindler's story so compelling, and so useful for students thinking about moral choices, is that he changed. As he witnessed the escalating brutality of the Holocaust, the beatings, the deportations, and the murder of Jews, including the violent clearing of the Krakow ghetto, something in him shifted. He began using his factory and his Nazi connections not to exploit his workers but to protect them, listing more and more Jewish men and women as 'essential' to the war effort so they could not be deported to death camps such as those linked to Auschwitz. As the war turned and the Nazis intensified the killing, Schindler took extraordinary risks. He set up a new factory in his homeland and drew up lists, the famous 'Schindler's List,' of roughly 1,100 to 1,200 Jewish workers he claimed he needed, arranging for them to be transferred there rather than murdered. He spent his entire fortune bribing SS officials, buying black-market food and supplies, and even intervening when a trainload of 'his' women was mistakenly sent toward Auschwitz. By the end of the war he had gone from wealthy industrialist to a nearly bankrupt man who had spent everything to keep his workers alive. By the war's end, Schindler had saved the lives of more than 1,200 Jews, whose descendants today number in the thousands. After the war his business ventures failed, and he lived out his later years partly supported by the very people he had rescued, who never forgot him. He was honored by Israel as one of the 'Righteous Among the Nations,' the title given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews, and at his request he was buried in Jerusalem. His story, made world-famous by the 1993 film 'Schindler's List,' is often taught alongside those of other rescuers like Raoul Wallenberg. Schindler was no saint, and he never claimed to be; that is precisely why his transformation matters, showing that even a flawed, ordinary person can choose to do something extraordinarily good.

Oskar Schindler

Further reading