Schindler, Oskar

Schindler, Oskar (1908-1974), German industrialist who protected Jews from the Nazis, born at Zwittau, in the Sudetenland. A Catholic, he studied engineering, raced motorcycles, and served in the Czech army before becoming a sales manager for a manufacturer of electrical goods. In 1939 he spied for the Germans during trips to Poland, moving to Kraków that October to run an enamelware factory. This became a haven for the predominantly Jewish workforce, who benefited from both Schindler's human sympathy, and his capitalist irritation at SS brutalities interfering with business. When the Kraków ghetto was destroyed (1943), and a local concentration camp constructed, he built his own for his workers. When the Russian advance obliged the Germans to transport their victims to Auschwitz in 1944, Schindler, by bluff and bribery, had his factory and workers moved to Czechoslovakia. After the war he ranched in Argentina (1949-1957), went bankrupt, and returned to Germany. In 1961 he was invited to Israel, where a memorial plaque was unveiled on his birthday. Despite frequent hostility from German neighbours he received the Cross of Merit in 1966, and a state pension in 1968. A novel by Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark (1982, filmed as Schindler's List), brought the wartime hero's activities to a much wider public.