Who+was+Oskar+Schindler?



“A righteous gentile is defined as a non-Jewish person. Also they are said to be “high-minded gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews” (Sherrow 13). Oskar Schindler was a righteous gentile. This means that he risked his life to save Jewish people during the Holocaust. In 1908 he joined the Nazi Party. He quickly became disenchanted with Hitler but continued to remain a member of the Nazi Party. During his time in the Nazi Party Oskar built up a successful enamelware business. Because he owned a business he was required to use Jews for labor. As the owner, he treated the Jewish workers fairly and even supplied them with extra food. On June 4, 1942, he witnessed the brutal treatment of Jews when a squad of SS men and Nazi police beat, kicked, and killed a group of men, women, and children. This event made Schindler decide to try to save as many people as he could. Oskar also bribed other Nazi officials and guards with money and jewels in order to maintain their loyalty and have more freedom. On many occasions he was sent to jail because he was suspected of bribing officials and dealing in the black market (Sherrow 19). During his adult life he spent all his money saving over 1000 Jewish men and women and died a poor man (Sherrow 18 and 19).

There is a story about the women that worked for Schindler. In October 1944, Schindler had gotten permission to take his workers out of the country to his new factory in Brinnlitz, Czechoslakia, a country no longer involved with the war. The men went first, and the women were going on a later train. Back in Poland, the women were working and waiting for Schindler to send for them. When they were loaded onto their train, they thought that they were going to join the men at the new factory. There was a mix-up and the train was sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp. Schindler was in jail on charges of bribing Nazi officials and dealing in the black market. He found out about the missing train while he was in jail. He tried really hard to get out of jail and fix this mistake. One day, the women were put back on a train and were not told where they were going. The women had been in the concentration camp for fourteen days by the time that they were put back on the train and taken to the factory in Czechoslovakia where Schindler was waiting. He saved a lot of people throughout the entire war and really made a difference (Sherrow 19).