Oscar Schindler: How did he Helped Jews during Holocaust

Introduction

Oskar Schindler was the unlikeliest of heroes-indifferent to religion and politics, partial to gambling and drinking, and not averse to skirting the law in his many business ventures. Yet to the eleven hundred Jews whose lives he saved during World War II, he was nothing less than a saint. Until the 1980s, his name was barely known outside the world of Holocaust survivors. Thanks to a book and then a movie about his exploits, however, he has taken his place among those the Israelis call "Righteous Gentiles"-non-Jews who took great risks to ensure the safety of Jews doomed by the Nazis' "Final Solution." This paper discusses Oscar Schindler and how did he helped Jews during holocaust in a comprehensive way.

Oscar Schindler: Background and Bibliographical Information

Schindler was born in 1908 in the industrial city of Zwittau, Moravia, then a German province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now part of the Czech Republic. Also known as the Sudetenland, the region was home to several million ethnic Germans, including the Schindler family. It was there that Oskar grew up (his father owned a farm-machinery factory) and attended a German-language school. Among his childhood playmates were the two sons of a local rabbi.

During the 1920s, Schindler worked in sales for his father. In 1928, however, the young man's marriage to a woman named Emilie caused a rift in the relationship between the two men. Schindler subsequently left his father's employ and became a sales manager for a Moravian electric company. His new job often took him to Poland on business, and over time he developed a strong affinity for the city of Krakow, the ancient seat of Polish kings.

Meanwhile, the political landscape in Europe was undergoing major changes, especially in Germany, where Adolf Hitler assumed the post of chancellor in 1933. Hitler's vision of a new German empire included the Sudetenland, which had been annexed by the fledgling Republic of Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I in 1918 following the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire. Hitler began stirring up ethnic passionsamong the Sudeten Germans, pointing out that their "rightful" ties were with Germany, not Czechoslovakia.

Given these obstacles, who within the gentile population was most likely to stand up for the persecuted Jews, who traditionally were perceived as "Christ killers" and who, for many still unexplained reasons, were routinely blamed for every conceivable ill? What propelled these altruistic rescuers toward such life-threatening activities?

Attempts to apply conventional classifications to the individual gentiles who became altruistic rescuers yield heterogeneous results. Two examples illustrate this diversity. In wartime Warsaw, a young Polish factory laborer named Stanislawa Dawidziuk, who had not completed elementary school, shared a one-room apartment with her husband (a waiter) and her teenage brother. In 1942, at her husband's request, Stanislawa agreed to add to their cramped quarters Irena, a woman whose looks betrayed her Jewish background. A Polish policeman named Laminski brought Irena to the Dawidziuks' household. At the outset, Irena was ...