Oskar Schindler

During World War II, businessman Oskar Schindler rescued more than 1,000 Jews from deportation to Auschwitz, Nazi Germany's largest camp complex.

Key Facts

1
Oskar Schindler was a German businessman and a member of the Nazi Party. In November 1939, he acquired some factories in German-occupied Poland by taking advantage of the German policy to "Aryanize" and "Germanize" Jewish-owned and Polish-owned businesses.
2
The best known of these factories today is the “Emalia” factory in Kraków. Before Schindler acquired this factory, it had been Jewish-owned. At Emalia, Schindler employed Jewish forced laborers from the Krakau-Plaszow camp.
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Schindler employed Jews and protected them from the brutality of daily life in a concentration camp. His actions aided in the survival of over 1,000 Jews. After his death, Schindler received the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" in 1993.

Oskar Schindler (1908–1974) was born on April 28, 1908, in Zwittau, Austria-Hungary (today Svitavy, Czechia). Schindler was an ethnic German and a Catholic. After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, Schindler became a citizen of the newly established Czechoslovak Republic.

After attending a series of trade schools and marrying Emilie Pelzl in 1928, Schindler held a variety of jobs, including working in his father's farm machinery business, opening a driving school, and selling government property. He also served in the Czechoslovak army and in 1938 attained the rank of lance corporal in the reserves. Schindler began working with the Amt Auslands/Abwehr (Office of the Military Foreign Intelligence) of the German Armed Forces in 1936. In February 1939, five months after the German annexation of the Sudetenland, he joined the Nazi Party. An opportunistic businessman with a taste for the finer things in life, he seemed an unlikely candidate to become a wartime rescuer. During World War II, Schindler would rescue more than 1,000 Jews from deportation to Auschwitz, Nazi Germany's largest camp complex.

Schindler's "Emalia" Factory in Kraków

Entrance to Oskar Schindler's enamel works in Zablocie, a suburb of Krakow.

Following the German invasion and occupation of Poland, Schindler moved to Kraków in October 1939. Taking advantage of the German occupation program to “Aryanize” and “Germanize” Jewish-owned and Polish-owned businesses in the so-called General Government (Generalgouvernement), he bought Rekord Ltd., a Jewish-owned enamelware manufacturer, in November 1939. He converted its plant to establish the Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik Oskar Schindler (German Enamelware Factory Oskar Schindler), also known as Emalia.

Krakow, Poland: Schindler's factory site

While Schindler operated two other factories in Kraków, only at Emalia did he employ Jewish workers who resided in the nearby Kraków ghetto. At its peak strength in 1944, Emalia employed 1,700 workers; at least 1,000 were Jewish forced laborers, whom the Germans had relocated from the Kraków ghetto after its liquidation in March 1943 to the forced labor camp and later concentration camp Krakau-Plaszow.

From March 1943 until Emalia became a subcamp the following year, Jewish prisoners deployed at Emalia lived at the Plaszow camp and were subject to the brutal conditions there. During this time, Schindler intervened repeatedly on their behalf. He used bribes and personal diplomacy both for the well-being of Jews threatened on an individual basis and to ensure, until late 1944, that the SS did not deport his Jewish workers. In order to claim the Jewish workers to be essential to the war effort, he added an armaments manufacturing division to Emalia. During the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943, Schindler allowed his Jewish workers to stay at the factory overnight.

"Emalia": A Subcamp of the Plaszow Concentration Camp

Prisoners receive meager food allocations at the Plaszow camp.

After the SS officially changed the designation of Plaszow from a forced-labor camp to a concentration camp in January 1944, Schindler persuaded the SS to convert Emalia into a subcamp of Plaszow. In addition to the approximately 1,000 Jewish forced laborers registered as factory workers, Schindler permitted 450 Jews working in other nearby factories to live at Emalia as well. This saved them from the systematic brutality and arbitrary murder that was part of daily life in Plaszow.

Schindler did not act here without risk or cost. His protection of his Jewish workers and some of his shady business dealings led SS and police authorities to suspect him of corruption and of giving unauthorized aid to Jews. German SS and police officials arrested him three times, while he owned Emalia, but were unable to charge him.

Schindler's List

In October 1944, after the SS transferred the Emalia Jews to Plaszow, Schindler sought and obtained authorization to relocate his plant to Brünnlitz (Brněnec) in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (near his hometown), and reopen it exclusively as an armaments factory. One of his assistants drew several versions of a list of up to 1,200 Jewish prisoners needed to work in the new factory. These lists came to be known collectively as "Schindler's List.”"Schindler met the specifications required by the SS to classify Brünnlitz as a subcamp of Gross-Rosen concentration camp and thereby facilitated the survival of around 800 Jewish men whom the SS deported from Plaszow via Gross-Rosen to Brünnlitz and between 300 and 400 Jewish women from Plaszow via Auschwitz.

Ludmilla Page describes conditions in Oskar Schindler's munitions factory in Brünnlitz

Ludmilla was born to an assimilated Jewish family in Kishinev, Romania. She and her mother, a physician, were living in Poland when the Germans invaded on September 1, 1939. They were taken to Krakow. Ludmilla was forced to live in the Krakow ghetto; her mother was sent to the Warsaw ghetto. Ludmilla worked in a factory at the Plaszow labor camp for a businessman who was a friend of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler. In October 1944, Schindler attempted to save some Jewish workers by relocating them to a munitions factory in Bruennlitz, in the Sudetenland. Ludmilla was among those on Schindler's list to be relocated. She and about 300 other women were detained briefly in Auschwitz before reaching Bruennlitz. There, some of the workers sought to sabotage the production of munitions. Ludmilla was liberated in early May 1945.

US Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

Though classified as an armaments factory, the Brünnlitz plant produced just one wagonload of live ammunition in just under eight months of operation. By presenting bogus production figures, Schindler justified the existence of the subcamp as an armaments factory. This facilitated the survival of over 1,000 Jews, sparing them the horrors and brutality of conventional camp life. Schindler left Brünnlitz only on May 9, 1945, the day that Soviet troops liberated the camp.

After World War II

After World War II, Schindler and his wife Emilie settled in Regensburg, Germany, until 1949, when they immigrated to Argentina. In 1957, permanently separated but not divorced from Emilie, Schindler returned alone to Germany. Schindler died in Germany, penniless and almost unknown, in October 1974. Many of those whose survival he facilitated—and their descendants—lobbied for and financed the transfer of his body for burial in Israel.

Oskar Schindler plants a tree on the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem.

In 1993, Yad Vashem awarded Oskar and Emilie Schindler the title "Righteous Among the Nations" in recognition of their efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust at great personal risk.

Schindler's story garnered more attention thanks to Steven Spielberg's 1993 Oscar-winning film Schindler's List, based on a 1983 novel of the same name by Thomas Keneally that recounted Schindler's life and works. The movie received popular and critical acclaim.

Last Edited: Feb 10, 2023

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Critical Thinking Questions

What pressures and motivations may have influenced Schindler's decisions?
Are these factors unique to this history or universal?
How can societies, communities, and individuals reinforce and strengthen the willingness to stand up for others?