Schindler’s List

Main takeaway:

This is the story of the pragmatic and improbable triumph of good over evil. It chronicles the astonishing actions of Oskar Schindler, a Sudeten German industrialist, bon vivant, and member of the Nazi Party, who initially arrived in occupied Poland to profit from the war. A man of immense charm, appetite, and moral ambiguity, Schindler was no conventional hero. He was a womanizer, a black-marketeer, and an associate of high-ranking SS officers. Yet, through his factory operations, first in Cracow and later in Moravia, his initial opportunism evolved into a dogged, all-consuming mission. He leveraged the very tools of a corrupt and savage system—bribery, personal connections, and the guise of essential war production—to save over a thousand Jews from the gas chambers. It is the account of how a flawed man, confronted by absolute evil, harnessed his vices for the purpose of outrageous virtue, ultimately risking his life and fortune to preserve a remnant of a condemned people.

1. The Paradox of the “Good German”

Oskar Schindler was a man of profound contradictions. Born in 1908 in Zwittau, Moravia, he was a hedonist driven by a taste for luxury, cognac, beautiful women, and the thrill of enterprise. He joined the Nazi party and its intelligence service, the Abwehr, more out of opportunism than ideological conviction, seeing them as vehicles for advancement and exemption from military service. When he arrived in Cracow in 1939, his goal was to become a tycoon, and he embraced the corrupt system to achieve it.

However, this same man possessed an innate revulsion to sadism and a capacity for outrageous generosity. His character was a mix of:
* Opportunism: He used his Party membership and connections to acquire a bankrupt enamelware factory and secure lucrative military contracts.
* Pragmatism: He recognized early that Jewish labor was cheap and that his factory could become a haven, justifying the employment of “essential” Jewish workers to SS officials.
* Humanity: He was incapable of ignoring the suffering he witnessed. This began with small acts—leaking information about an upcoming Aktion to his Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern—and escalated into a systematic, life-risking rescue operation.

Schindler was not a saint. He maintained a German mistress, Ingrid, and had a long affair with his Polish secretary, Victoria Klonowska, while his wife, Emilie, lived mostly in Moravia. Yet, his vices became tools. His love for carousing allowed him to bribe and charm SS officials, and his addiction to high-stakes dealing fueled his increasingly audacious plans to save his workers.

2. Cracow: The Intersection of Opportunity and Atrocity

In the wake of the German invasion, Cracow became the capital of the Government General of Poland, ruled by the vain and brutal Hans Frank from Wawel Castle. For an entrepreneur like Schindler, the city was a boomtown ripe with opportunity. The Nazi regime’s policy of “Aryanization” allowed him to take over the bankrupt Rekord enamelware factory (which he renamed Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik, or DEF) for a pittance, using Jewish investors’ capital in exchange for future goods.

Simultaneously, Cracow was a center of escalating persecution. Schindler’s early partnerships were forged in this environment:
* Itzhak Stern: A Jewish accountant, Stern became Schindler’s quiet moral compass. It was Stern who, in their first meeting, quoted the Talmudic verse, “He who saves the life of one man saves the entire world,” a seed that would take root in Oskar’s consciousness.
* Poldek Pfefferberg: A charismatic former soldier and black-marketeer, Pfefferberg became Schindler’s procurer of luxury goods, connecting him to the hidden economy of the city and later becoming a key figure in his operations.
* Abraham Bankier: The former manager of Rekord, Bankier’s expertise was essential to getting the factory running, and he helped Schindler navigate the network of Jewish investors.

Schindler thrived by operating within the system, cultivating friendships with influential but often disaffected Germans in the Abwehr, the Wehrmacht, and even the SS. These connections, initially fostered for business, would become lifelines when he later needed to pull his workers—and himself—out of the Gestapo’s grasp.

3. Amon Goeth: The Embodiment of Systematic Evil

Hauptsturmführer Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Płaszów forced-labor camp, was Schindler’s dark reflection. He was a man of Schindler’s age and stature, a fellow Catholic from a respectable family, and also a hedonist with a taste for luxury. But where Schindler possessed a core of humanity, Goeth was a creature of pure, arbitrary sadism. His rule at Płaszów was defined by casual murder; he was known to shoot prisoners from the balcony of his villa before breakfast simply for moving too slowly.

Schindler’s relationship with Goeth was a masterpiece of manipulation, built on a shared taste for cognac, fine food, and women. Oskar despised Goeth but played the part of a loyal friend and fellow profiteer, regularly visiting his villa for dinner parties and plying him with gifts. This association was crucial for several reasons:
* Access and Influence: It allowed Schindler to operate with a degree of autonomy and to negotiate for the lives of his workers.
* Psychological Manipulation: Oskar understood that Goeth, despite his brutality, was susceptible to flattery and bribery. He played on Goeth’s greed and ego, framing his requests for workers not as humanitarian pleas but as necessities for the war effort that would reflect well on Goeth himself.
* Moral Contrast: Goeth represents the absolute evil that Schindler was reacting against. Dining with Goeth, witnessing his casual cruelty towards his Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch, and hearing the reports of his daily atrocities, solidified Schindler’s resolve.

The relationship culminated in a game of blackjack, where Schindler won Helen Hirsch from Goeth, adding her to his list of workers to be saved—a transaction that encapsulated the bizarre blend of chance, charm, and audacity that defined Oskar’s methods.

4. The Witness of Horror: The Ghetto Liquidation

While Schindler’s initial motives were financial, his transformation was galvanized by what he witnessed. The defining moment was the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto in March 1943. From a hilltop overlooking the ghetto with his mistress, Ingrid, Schindler watched the SS Sonderkommandos storm the streets. He saw families forcibly separated, old people and children shot where they stood, and the sheer, dispassionate brutality of the operation.

One image in particular became seared into his memory: a small girl in a scarlet coat, walking alone and unnoticed amidst the chaos and murder. She represented a point of innocence in a world of methodical slaughter. This spectacle proved to Schindler that the Nazi regime’s policy was not a temporary aberration but a systematic program of extermination. He understood that there was no line they would not cross and that the system permitted no witnesses because it intended for all witnesses to perish. As he would later state, “Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.” This event marked the point of no return, where his casual acts of kindness solidified into a conscious and determined mission of rescue.

5. The Subcamp at Emalia: A Flawed Paradise

To protect his Jewish workers from the daily terror of Płaszów and the whims of Amon Goeth, Schindler used his influence and considerable funds to establish a subcamp on the grounds of his factory. This camp, known as Emalia, became a sanctuary. While life there was still one of imprisonment and long work hours, it was a world away from Płaszów.

The defining characteristics of Emalia were:
* Absence of Violence: Schindler forbade the SS guards from entering the factory floor or the barracks without his permission. There were no random beatings, no summary executions, and no attack dogs.
* Adequate Food: While the official SS rations were starvation-level, Schindler spent a fortune on black-market food to ensure his workers received around 2,000 calories a day. No one died of hunger at Emalia.
* Human Dignity: Prisoners were treated as human beings. Couples could meet, religious observances like Shabbat were quietly permitted, and the pervasive fear that characterized other camps was largely absent.

Schindler himself set the tone, wandering the factory floor, chatting with workers, and making his godlike promise: “If you work here, then you’ll live through the war.” For the Schindlerjuden, Emalia was not true freedom, but in the context of the Holocaust, it was a paradise. It was a testament to Schindler’s ability to create a pocket of relative sanity within a universe of madness.

6. The Art of the Deal: Bribery and Connections as Tools of Salvation

Schindler’s entire rescue operation was financed by a complex system of black-market dealing and bribery. He understood that the Nazi regime, for all its ideological purity, was riddled with corruption. He exploited this weakness relentlessly. His primary tools were not weapons, but luxury goods.

• Diamonds, Cognac, and Cigars: Schindler became a master procurer of scarce commodities. He paid for everything: for workers to be assigned to his factory, for their names to be kept off deportation lists, for his own release from Gestapo custody, and for the authorizations needed to move his entire factory to Moravia. A single diamond could secure a life; a case of cognac could avert an inconvenient inspection.
• Cultivating a Network: He maintained a web of contacts at every level of the bureaucracy, from SS police chiefs like Julian Scherner to Wehrmacht officers in the Armaments Inspectorate. He knew whom to flatter, whom to bribe, and whom to intimidate with the names of his powerful “friends.”
• Financial Ruin: This method was enormously expensive. By the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune—millions of Reichsmarks—on bribes and black-market food. He who had come to Poland to get rich left with nothing but a diamond ring made from a survivor’s dental gold.

His three arrests by the Gestapo—for charges ranging from “Jew-kissing” to black-marketeering in connection with Amon Goeth—were testament to the risks he ran. Each time, he was saved by the very network of corrupt officials he had so carefully cultivated.

7. The List Is Life: The Transition to Brinnlitz

As the Russian front advanced in the autumn of 1944, the SS began liquidating the camps in the East, including Płaszów. The order came down that all industrial operations were to be closed and the prisoners “relocated”—a euphemism for being sent to extermination camps like Auschwitz and Gróss-Rosen. It was at this moment that Schindler undertook his most audacious gamble. He proposed to move his entire factory, along with its “skilled workers,” to a new location in Brinnlitz, Moravia, far from the front lines.

This plan required him to create a definitive list of the people he would take with him. The compilation of this list was the ultimate expression of his role as a savior.
* A Negotiated Salvation: The list was an official document, requiring approval from the SS headquarters in Oranienburg. Schindler, with help from allies in the Wehrmacht, argued that his factory was producing essential secret armaments (a complete fiction) and that his workers were irreplaceable specialists.
* The Power of a Name: For the prisoners of Płaszów, getting on “Schindler’s List” was the only hope of survival. It became an object of desperate maneuvering, with bribes paid to the Płaszów clerk, Marcel Goldberg, who had the power to add or remove names.
* An Ark of Souls: The final list contained approximately 1,100 names—men, women, and children, many of whom were arbitrarily designated as “metalworkers” or “munitions experts.” It included the original Emalia workers, Helen Hirsch, the Pfefferbergs, the Rosners, Itzhak Stern, and others Schindler and his associates managed to add at the last minute. The list was, in the most literal sense, life itself.

8. The Journey Through Hell: Auschwitz and Gróss-Rosen

The journey to the sanctuary of Brinnlitz was not direct. By order of the SS bureaucracy, the 800 men on the list were first sent to Gróss-Rosen, and the 300 women were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

For the men, the journey to Gróss-Rosen was a brutal shock. After the relative haven of Emalia, they were thrown into a harsh regime of starvation, exposure, and cruelty. They spent a week there, naked for hours on the frozen Appellplatz, their heads shaved, before Schindler’s frantic interventions secured their release and transport to Brinnlitz.

For the women, the experience was even more horrific. They were sent to Auschwitz, the epicenter of the Final Solution. For three weeks, they lived in a windowless hut in Birkenau, on the verge of starvation, ravaged by dysentery, and under the constant threat of selection for the gas chambers by doctors like Josef Mengele. They witnessed the smoke from the crematoria and believed their inclusion on Schindler’s list had been a final, cruel joke. Oskar’s rescue of these 300 women from Auschwitz is believed to be a unique event. He sent an emissary with diamonds and luxury goods to bribe the camp commandant, and used his high-level contacts in Berlin to apply pressure. He argued that these women were essential, long-fingered specialists needed to polish the inside of shell casings. It was an absurd but ultimately successful claim. When the women finally arrived at Brinnlitz, shorn, skeletal, and sick, Schindler greeted them at the gate with the words, “You have nothing more to worry about. You’re with me now.”

9. Brinnlitz: The Sanctuary Built on Sabotage

The Brinnlitz camp was the culmination of Schindler’s efforts—a fully realized, self-contained ark funded by Schindler and dedicated to a single purpose: keeping its 1,100 inhabitants alive until the war ended. The factory’s official purpose was the manufacture of antitank shells, but this was a complete sham.

• Deliberate Non-Production: In seven months of operation, the Brinnlitz factory did not produce a single usable shell. The machinery was intentionally calibrated incorrectly, furnace gauges were rigged, and quality control was non-existent. Schindler celebrated telegrams from the Wehrmacht that complained about his defective products.
• A Self-Sustaining Haven: Conditions mirrored those at Emalia. The food was the best in any camp in Europe, with Schindler and Emilie making regular trips to procure black-market goods. A clinic was established, and Emilie Schindler personally nursed the sickest arrivals back to health.
• Defying the System: Schindler kept the SS garrison, commanded by the hostile Untersturmführer Liepold, at bay with a constant supply of liquor and by invoking his (largely fictional) importance to the secret weapons program. He even purchased a plot of land to establish a Jewish cemetery, ensuring that the few who died of natural causes received a proper burial—an act of profound defiance against a system that sought to obliterate Jewish identity even in death.

Brinnlitz was a massive and expensive confidence trick, a Potemkin village of war production whose only real product was life.

10. The Final Acts of Rescue and Liberation

Even in the final, chaotic months of the war, Schindler’s rescue efforts expanded. His compassion became nearly compulsive.
* The Goleszów Transport: In the dead of winter, Schindler was alerted to two sealed cattle cars abandoned on a siding near the camp. Inside were over a hundred Jewish men from the Goleszów camp, frozen, skeletal, and near death after more than ten days without food or water. Schindler bribed the camp commandant to let him take them in, and he and Emilie nursed most of them back to health.
* Arming the Prisoners: Fearing a last-minute massacre by retreating SS units, Schindler used a brilliant ring to bribe an SS police chief for a cache of weapons, which he distributed to a secret commando unit within the camp.
* The Final Speech: On the last night of the war, Schindler assembled the prisoners and the SS guards on the factory floor. He announced the German surrender, urged the prisoners to refrain from vengeance, and publicly thanked the SS guards for their “humane” conduct, effectively disarming them psychologically and ensuring a peaceful transition.

At midnight, dressed in a prisoner’s striped uniform, he fled towards the American lines, a fugitive from the advancing Soviets. In his pocket was a letter signed by his workers, and on his finger was a gold ring they had made for him, engraved with the words: “He who saves a single life saves the world entire.”

11. A Legacy of Contradiction

After the war, Oskar Schindler never found his footing again. The same larger-than-life qualities that made him a savior in wartime made him a failure in peace. He went bankrupt as a farmer in Argentina and again as a cement factory owner in Germany. He lived his final years in poverty, shuttling between a small apartment in Frankfurt and Israel, where he was supported by the charity and unwavering devotion of the Schindlerjuden.

He was honored by the state of Israel as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” planting a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem. Yet in Germany, he was sometimes ostracized and even attacked as a “Jew-kisser.” He died in 1974 and, according to his wish, was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Jerusalem. His story remains a powerful, troubling, and inspiring testament: a demonstration that in the face of absolute evil, salvation can come from the most flawed and unexpected of saviors, and that the greatest acts of goodness are not always born of purity, but sometimes of a profound and complicated humanity.