one man many actions
...(“Schindler’s List,” 1995). Schindler himself grew up to be a very tall and handsome man. This resulted in the adornment from all the young women, and of all the young women his heart fell for a young girl named Emily. After only six weeks of courtship they were married. Sadly, after only a few months of marriage, Schindler began to heavily abuse alcohol. He also had several affairs, which resulted in two children out of wedlock. In 1929, the Schindler family business went bankrupt. During this same time, Schindler lost his mother due to illness. Finding himself jobless, Schindler sought work in nearby Poland as a machinery salesman (“Schindler’s List,” 1995). Now the picture I have just painted of Schindler, is not exactly one of high class and morals. Indeed Schindler was an alcoholic and womanizer. This may lead many to wonder, how could this man be considered a hero, a walking example of hope to a race with whom he had no affiliation. How did he do it? It was truly no easy task. The saving of the first Schindler Jews began in 1939, when he came to Krakow in the wake of the Germany invasion. In Krakow, he took over two previously Jewish owned companies that dealt with the manufacture and sales of enamel kitchenware products. In one of the businesses, however, Schindler was merely a trustee. Looking to increase his power, he opened up a small enamel shop right outside of Krakow near the Jewish ghetto. Here he employed mostly Jewish workers. This in turned saved them from being deported to labor camps. Then in 1942 Schindler found from some of his workers that many of the local Krakow Tunstall 4 Jews were being sent to the brutal Plazow labor camp. The SS officer Amon Goeth made the conditions of life at Plazow dreadful. A prisoner at Plazow was very lucky if he could survive for more than four weeks in this camp. Goeth passed his mornings by using his high- powered, scoped rifle to shoot at children playing in the camp. He often would use it as an incentive to work harder. For example, some young men hauling coal were moving too slow for his liking. He shot one of them with his sniper rifle, so the rest would hurry up. Now to avoid from his Jews being sent to a place of this nature, is where Schindler’s connections with the German government would prove to be useful. Using his manipulating abilities, Schindler convinced the S.S. and the Armaments Administration, whom had set up the Plazow labor camp, to set up a portion of the camp in his factory, “to save time in getting to the job.” They agreed, and Schindler took in those with disabilities and unfit or unqualified to work. In turn, he spared 900 Jewish lives from this one action (Paldiel, 1982). The selection was a random process, but as stated previously, Schindler did not discriminate, to anyone who was selected, in fact to con the Germans, the old were registered as being twenty years younger, children were registered as adults, and lawyers, doctors, and artists, are registered as metal workers and mechanics, all so they can serve as essential for the war industry. By having the camp in his factory, Schindler discovered that he could have food and medicine smuggled into the barracks with less danger. The guards of course were bribed, and Goeth was to never discover it. At his factory situated by the work camp of Plazow, Nazi guards are instructed to stay on their sides of the fence and nobody is allowed inside the factory Tunstall 5 without permission from Schindler himself. Also at his factory, workers are only half as hungry as in other camps. For example, meals at Schindler’s have a calorie count of 2000 as against 900 in other places. When food supplies were critical, Schindler would spend great sums of money purchasing food supplies on the black market. Schindler’s factory was considered to Jews as a safe haven, from the Nazis, nobody was hit, nobody murdered, and nobody sent to death camps, like the nearby Auschwitz . Years continued to pass, and those Jews who worked in the factory, continued to be saved and protected by Schindler. In the years that passed, millions of Jews died in Polish camps like Treblinka and Auschwitz, but Schindler’s Jews miraculously survived, to their own surprise, in Plazow right up to 1944. When the Nazis were beaten back on East Front, Plazow, and its satellite camps were closed down, Schindler had no illusion as to what was to happen next. Desperately he exerted his influences on the military and industrial circles in Krakow and Warsaw and finally Berlin to save his Jews from certain death. With his life as the stakes, he employed all his powers of persuasion, he bribed unlimitedly, fought, and begged, and where no one would have believed it possible, Schindler succeeded. He was granted permission to move the whole of his factory from Plazow to Brunlitz, and furthermore, unheard of before, take all his workers with him. In this way, the 1,098 workers who had been written on “Schindler’s List,” in connection with the removal avoided sharing the fate of the other 25,000 men, women, and children of Plazow who were sent without mercy to extermination in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only 60 kilometers from Plazow. Tunstall 6 Oscar Schindler was arrested twice for his assumed acts of treason for helping the Jews, but like always he would just use his connections or spend a little bit more money to ensure his release. There were so many occasions where Schindler could have just walked away from everything a rich man, and left “his Jews” to die in concentration camps like Plazow and Auschwitz, but instead he chose to spend every penny he had bribing and paying off Nazi officials to keep his Jews alive. Until the liberation of Spring 1945, Oscar Schindler used all means at his disposal to ensure the safety of his Schindler-Jews. He spent every pfennig he had, and even Emilie Schindler’s jewelry was sold to buy food, clothes, and medicine. He set up a secret sanatorium in the factory with medical equipment purchased on the black market. Here Emilie Schindler looked after the sick. Those who did not survive were given a proper Jewish burial in a hidden graveyard . In May 1945, it was all over. The Russians moved into Brunnlitz. The previous evening, Schindler gathered everybody together in the factory, and took a deeply emotional leave of them. He announced to them that they were free, that Germany had lost the war. He asked them, “do not go into neighboring houses and rob or strike out acts of revenge, but instead prove yourselves worthy of the millions of victims among you” (“Schindler’s List”, 1995). Schindler stayed with them until five after midnight, assuring their safety, and then fled. The Americans caught Amon Goeth, and turned him over to Poland. He was convicted and then hung for the numerous murders in Krakow. Schindler’s life after the war consisted of a long series of failures. He tried without success to be a film producer and was deprived of his nationality immediately after the war. Threats from former Tunstall 7 Nazis made it impossible to live in Germany, and he was denied at his attempts to gain a permit for entry into the United States, because he had been a member of the Nazi party. After this he fled to Buenos Aires in Argentina with his wife Emilie, his mistress and a dozen of “his Jews”. He settled down in 1949 as a farmer, supported financially by Joint and thankful Jews, whom never forgot him. Still Schindler met with no success, and in 1957 he became bankrupt and traveled back to Europe alone, never to see Emilie again. He settled down in an apartment in Frankfort, West Germany, and with the help of Joint he tried to establish a cement facto...