Emilie Schindler - World War II

World War II

See also: Holocaust

In 1938, the unemployed Oskar Schindler joined the Nazi Party and moved to Kraków, leaving his wife in Zwittau. There he was given control of a Jewish-owned enameled-goods factory, Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik, where he principally employed Jewish workers because they were the cheapest. However, he soon realized the true brutalities of the Nazis and the Schindlers started protecting his Jewish laborers. Initially, they saved the workers by bribing the SS guards; later, they listed their employees as essential factory workers, constructing uniforms and munitions for the Reich. When conditions worsened and they started running out of money, he sold his jewels to buy food, clothes and medicine. He looked after sick workers in a secret sanatorium in the factory with medical equipment purchased on the black market.

One of the survivors, Maurice Markheim, later recalled:

He got a whole truck of bread from somewhere on the black market. They called me to unload it. He was talking to the SS and because of the way he turned around and talked, I could slip a loaf under my shirt. I saw he did this on purpose. A loaf of bread at that point was gold... There is an old expression: Behind the man, there is the woman, and I believe she was the great human being.

The Schindlers saved more than 1,200 Jews from extermination camps. In May 1945, when Soviets moved into Brunnlitz, the Schindlers left the Jews in the factory and went into hiding, in fear of being caught because of Oskar's ties with the Nazi party.