Oskar Schindler (1908-1974)

An account of the activities of Oskar Schindler (who was born in 1908 in Svitavy, then Zwittau) during the Nazi period. In 1935 he began to work for the German counter-espionage service in Moravska Ostrava. In 1941 he and his wife moved to Kraków, where he acquired an enamel works factory from a Jewish trader. The Jewish workers, taken from the ghetto of Kraków, were interned in the nearby camp of Płaszów. Schindler endeavored to save as many Jews as he could by exploiting his position as a factory owner. In 1944 Płaszów was closed down. Schindler owned a munitions factory in Brünnlitz (Bohemia) and succeeded in obtaining permission from the SS to transfer 1,300 workers to that place. Schindler also saved the lives of 250 Jewish miners from Golleschau who were on the way to being executed, giving them shelter until the end of the war. In May 1945 the Jews in Brünnlitz were liberated. Relates, in brief, Schindler's decline after the war until his death in 1974. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)