When was schindler born

Within a week, Schindler arrived in Krakow, Poland, eager to find a way to profit from the conflict in one way or another. In mid-October, the city became the new seat central location of government for all of Nazi-occupied Poland.

Schindler quickly created friendships with key officers in both the Wehrmacht the German army and the SS the special armed Nazi unit , offering them black-market illegal goods such as cognac and cigars. It was around this same time that he met Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant who would eventually help his relations with the local Jewish business community.

Schindler purchased a bankrupt kitchenware factory and opened it in January Stern was hired on as the bookkeeper and soon developed a close relationship with his employer. Schindler relied on his legendary flair as well as his willingness to bribe the right people to secure numerous German army contracts for his pots and pans.

To staff his factory, he turned to Krakow's Jewish community, which, Stern told him, was a good source of cheap, reliable labor. At the time, some fifty-six thousand Jews lived in the city, most living in ghettos poor neighborhoods that were traditionally reserved for Jews. Oskar Schindler. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

By the spring of , the Nazi crack-down against Jews had begun. Schindler was ordered to pay his Jewish employees' wages directly to the SS rather than to the workers themselves. In August Nazi authorities issued a new regulation ordering all but "work-essential" Jews to leave the city.

This sparked the panic that sent Jews scrambling for work that would be considered "essential. In June of , the Nazis began relocating Krakow's Jews to labor camps. Some of Schindler's workers, including his office manager, were among the first group of people ordered to report to the train station.

Schindler raced to the station and argued with an SS officer about how essential his workers were to the war effort. By dropping the names of some of his Nazi friends and making a couple of threats, he was finally able to rescue the workers and escort them safely back to his factory. In early the Nazis ordered the final "liquidation" of the Krakow ghetto. The man put in charge of the operation was a young SS officer named Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow forced labor camp just outside the city.

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. When Goeth announced that local industries would be moved inside Plaszow, Schindler proposed establishing a labor mini-camp within his factory that would continue to employ his own workers. Goeth agreed after Schindler bribed him. In early , however, Plaszow's designation was changed from that of a labor camp to a concentration camp.

This meant that its prisoners were suddenly marked for transport to death camps such as Auschwitz. Then came word in the summer that the main camp was to be closed as well as Schindler's factory.

Schindler approached Goeth about moving his factory and his workers to Czechoslovakia so that they might continue to supply the Third Reich Hitler's army with vital war supplies. After another bribe, the SS officer agreed to throw his support behind the plan and told Schindler to draw up a list of those people he wanted to take with him.

Schindler was now faced with the task of choosing those he wanted to save—literally a matter of life and death. Schindler came up with a list containing some eleven hundred names, including all the employees of Emalia Camp and a number of others as well.

During the fall of , Schindler made the necessary arrangements and paid the necessary bribes to begin the process of moving his factory to the town of Brunnlitz, Czechoslovakia. The liquidation of the Plaszow camp began that October. Watching innocent people being packed onto trains bound for certain death, something awakened in him. By the autumn of , Germany's hold on Poland had weakened. As the Russian army approached, the Nazi's tried desperately to complete their program of liquidation and sent all remaining Jews to die.

The factory operated in its new location a year, making defective bullets for German guns. Conditions were grim, for the Schindlers as well as the workers. But Schindler saved most of these workers when he transferred his factory to Brunnlitz Sudetenland in October When the war ended, Schindler fled to Argentina with his wife and a handful of his workers and bought a farm. In , he abandoned his land, his wife and his mistress to return to Germany.

He died in Hildesheim in Skip to main content. Drive to Yad Vashem:. For more Visiting Information click here. Oskar Schindler with his horse, Cracow, Poland, Oskar Schindler with a group of former inmates from Bruenlitz, Schindler surrounded by his survivors during a visit to Israel in the 's.

Schindler next to the tree planted in his honor in the Avenue of the Righteous. His survivors follow the coffin through the streets of the Jerusalem Old City on the way to the Latin cemetery. Emilie Schindler receives the Righteous award. Schindler's Signature in Yad Vashem's Guestbook. The first page of Schindler's list.

Germany Featured Stories. Yad Vashem Har Hazikaron P. Phone: 2 Fax: 2 Email: webmaster yadvashem. Useful Links.

The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. The good news: The Yad Vashem website had recently undergone a major upgrade! The less good news: The page you are looking for has apparently been moved. On October 9, Schindler died of liver failure at the age of Before his death, he requested to be buried in Jerusalem. Amid hundreds of tearful Schindler Jews, his wish was granted and he was buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. As for Schindler's wife Emilie, who also played a huge but publicly understated role in saving hundreds of Jews during World War II, she continued to live in Argentina, scraping by with the help of the Schindler Jews and the government of Argentina.

Towards the end of her life and in failing health, she asked to live her remaining days in Germany. Although a home was secured for her in Bavaria in the summer of , she would never live in it.

Soon after she became critically ill and died on October 5, in a Berlin hospital. She was just shy of her 94th birthday. Although she struggled with resentment towards her late husband for his womanizing and marital neglect, Emilie still had profound love for Schindler. Revealing her internal dialogue when she visited his tomb almost 40 years after his passing, she had said to him: "At last we meet again.

I have received no answer, my dear, I do not know why you abandoned me. But what not even your death or my old age can change is that we are still married, this is how we are before God.