Oskar Schindler – a flawed hero
On Monday we commemorated World Holocaust Day, a day we commit to remembering the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. World Holocaust Day was established by United Nations Resolution on 1st November 2005 and 27th January was chosen because it was the day that Auschwitz, the most infamous of Nazi death camps, was liberated by the army of the Soviet Union.
World Holocaust Day was conceived with two purposes: to remember the genocide of 6 million Jewish people during one of human history’s darkest chapters, and to ensure that as direct memories fade with time, we never forget what happened so that it can never be repeated. The theme of this year’s commemorations is For a Better Future, no doubt chosen with the sense that there is perhaps more uncertainty and polarisation in our world today than has been the case for many years.
In Monday’s assembly we reflected on the life of Oskar Schindler, a complex and flawed man who joined the Nazi Party, made money out of his business dealings with the Nazi regime, but who also saved many Jewish people from almost certain death.
Schindler was born on 28th April 1908 in Austria-Hungary. After World War One, he became a citizen of the newly established country of Czechoslovakia. As a young man he had several different jobs and also served in the Czechoslovakian army, but only five months after Germany annexed the Sudetenland areas of his country, Schindler joined the Nazi Party.
He was an opportunist businessman and moved to Krakow, in Poland, in October 1939, shortly after the Nazis conquered that country. He profited from the anti-Semitic policies of the German regime, buying a Jewish-owned enamelware factory that he renamed Emalia. Over time, however, Schindler began to shift his focus from making money to protecting Jewish labourers. At its peak, 1,700 people worked there, at least 1,000 of whom were Jewish forced labourers and when the Krakow Ghetto was liquidated in March 1943, Schindler was given permission to continue using Jewish forced labourers who lived in terrible conditions at the camp in Plaszow. He regularly intervened by using bribes to delay the deportation of Jewish people to the death camps. As the Nazis implemented their so-called Final Solution, the systematic extermination of all Jewish people in Europe, Schindler stepped up his efforts to protect those who worked at Emalia, which included securing permits for many of them to live at the factory.
In October 1944, the SS stopped this arrangement, so Schindler sought permission to relocate his factory to near his hometown in what had been Czechoslovakia. He was allowed to do so largely because he said it would only make weapons and armaments that would go towards defending Germany against invasion from West and East. His Secretary, a woman named Mimi Reinhardt, typed a list of up to 1,200 Jewish prisoners who were deemed essential workers, and Schindler was able to get his new factory designated as a sub-camp of a local concentration camp, so they could live as well as work there.
By this stage, the Nazis were clearly losing the war and Schindler was focused on saving lives, so much so that his factory produced only one shipment of live ammunition in around 8 months of operation. He got away with that by producing bogus production figures and capitalising on the chaos of the Nazi regime’s final months.
Schindler settled in Germany after the war before moving to Argentina in 1957. He returned to Germany and died in October 1974, penniless and in obscurity.
However, many of those he saved, and their children, began a campaign to transfer his body to Israel and in 1993, the story gained widespread notoriety as a result of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film, Schindler’s List. You may have Steven Spielberg’s film, which is both harrowing and inspiring. If you have seen it, you will recall the scene at the end that illustrates what Oskar Schindler’s actions meant in terms of the generations who have lived, who live today, and who are yet to be born – people who simply wouldn’t exist if it had not been for this flawed but ultimately heroic individual.
In the same year, Schindler and his wife Emilie were awarded the title of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, in recognition of the lives they saved.
Oskar Schindler was a deeply flawed man. He was a Nazi Party member who provided intelligence that supported Hitler’s regime; he made money from acquiring a factory seized as part of anti-Jewish persecution; he cheated on his wife; and he was a heavy drinker. But some of these flaws also meant he was trusted by those he came to deceive, which in turn allowed him to save around 1,200 people who would otherwise have perished like so many others did in the Holocaust. He is, in many ways, a perfect illustration of the fact that humans are rarely, if ever, inherently good or inherently evil. Perhaps his life can also give us hope that even when we may feel overwhelmed by stories of crime, wars, and natural or man-made disasters that dominate the news, there is something within the human condition that means good will out in the end.
Best wishes
Michael Bond
