German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving
1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died of liver failure on 9
October 1974 at the age of 66.
A member of the Nazi Party, he ran an enamel-works factory
in Krakow during the German occupation of Poland, employing
workers from the nearby Jewish ghetto.
When the ghetto was liquidated, he persuaded Nazi officials to
allow the transfer of his workers to the Plaszow labor camp,
thus saving them from deportation to the death camps.
In 1944, all Jews at Plaszow were sent to Auschwitz, but
Schindler, at great risk to himself, bribed officials into
allowing him to keep his workers and set up a factory in
a safer location in occupied Czechoslovakia. By the war’s
end, he was penniless, but he had saved many Jewish lives.
Schindler’s factory in Kraków, 2011.
Schindler’s grave in Jerusalem. The Hebrew inscription
reads: "Righteous Among the Nations"; the German
inscription reads: "The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews."
Schindler’s memorial in Svitavy, Czech Republic, his
birthplace.
