Photo. Schindler's Factory, Emalia plant runned by Oskar Schindler from 1939 to 1944, has been recently turned into a museum. © Travel Explorations.
The movie from 1993 is based on a true story about Oscar Schindler, a German-Catholic industrialist, that Steven Spielberg turned into a seven Academy Award-winning film. In Poland during World War II, Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis.
Schindler saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.
The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern. The movie was awarded with seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Score, as well as numerous other awards. In 2007, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked the film eighth on its list of the 100 best American films of all time (up one position from its 9th place listing on the 1998 list). Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler's_List
At the point when Schindler`s ambitions have been realized and he could walk away from the war a rich man while "his Jews" die in Plazow and Auschwitz, Oscar Schindler desperately spends every penny he has bribing and paying off Nazi officials to protect and save his Jews.
Later accounts have revealed that Schindler spent something like 4 million German marks keeping his Jews out of the death camps - an enormous sum of money for those times.
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Image from the movie "Schindler`s List".
The movie tells the incredible true story of the enigmatic and opportunistic businessman Oskar Schindler, who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. Schindler's List chronicles the trials and triumph of one man who made a difference and the tribulations of those who survived one of the darkest chapters in human history because of his actions. The movie did a huge touching impression on me, and its still haunts me.
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Oscar Schindler used all means at his disposal to ensure the safety of his Schindler-Jews, even Emilie Schindler`s jewels were sold, to bribe, to buy food, clothes, and medicine. He set up a secret sanatorium in the factory with medical equipment purchased on the black market. Here Emilie Schindler looked after the sick.
With his life as the stakes, he employed all his powers of persuasion, he bribed uninhibitedly, fought, begged to save his Jews from the gas chambers.
In those years, millions of Jews died in camps like Treblinka, Majdanek, Sorbibor, Chelmno, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen - but Schindler`s Jews miraculously survived.
Oscar Schindler and his wife Emilie emigrated to Argentina in 1949. Eight years later, he left his wife and returned to Germany.
Oscar Schindler died in Frankfurt on the 9th of October, 1974, at an age of 66. From 1939 to the day he died he was such in love with his Jewish people, that he wanted to be buried in Jerusalem.
Stein Morten Lund, 19 July 2009
Additional information
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