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THE TRUTH ABOUT OSKAR SCHINDLER:

This Oscar Schindler has been described as a cynical, greedy exploiter of slave workers during WWII, a black-marketeer, gambler, member of the Nazi party always tryin to find a way to make money, alcoholic playboy and an unfaithful husband.

Around 1960s, Oscar Schindler was honoured in Israel and declared "Righteous" and invited to plant a tree in The Avenue of the Righteous. A memorial in the Park of Heroes praises him as the Saviour of more than 1,200 Jews!

Today there are more than 6,000 descendants of Schindler`s Jews living in the USA and Europe, and many in Israel. Before WWII, the Jewish population of Poland was 3.5 million. Today there are between 3,000 and 4,000 left.

Oscar Schindler started by earning millions of German marks(money) through exploitation of Jews as slave workers and ended by spending his last penny and risking his life to save "his" 1,200 Schindler Jews from Hitler´s death camps?

Oscar Schindler was born on April 28th, 1908, in Zwittau.

In need of a job, Schindler joined the Nazi party, just like many of the other people were doing. It was opportunity. Maybe because he had seen possibilities which the war brought in its wake.

Oscar Schindler quickly got on good terms with the local Gestapo chiefs.He was a womanisor and heavy drinker, but continually risked his life to save "His" Jews from the deathcamps.

Schindler was recruited by the German Intelligence Agency to collect information about Poles and was highly esteemed for his efforts

He left his wife Emilie in Zwittau and moved to Crakow, where he took over a Jewish family`s apartment. Schindler was alson known for bribing which gave him control of a Jewish-owned factory, Deutsch Emailwaren Fabrik, close to the Jewish ghetto, where he employed Jewish workers.

Schindler noticed that the Nazis were becoming more brutal towards these Jews and he began to lose the vision of exterminating all Jews. He Came to see the Jews not only as his workers but actual people. They were mother, father and children being exposed to ruthless slaughter

So he decides to risk everything in desperate attempts to save "his" 1200 Jews from certain death in the hell of the death camps. He spent so much of his money through bribery and had many connections. He was able to get away with protecting his workers.

The SS officer Amon Goeth, had made the final liquidation of the Crakow ghetto and had experiences at three death camps in eastern Poland, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka

Goeth Made the life of Jews in Plaszow a livng nightmare. A prisoner in Plaszow would have been lucky if he survived in the camp for more than a month. The camp seen in "Schindlers List" described how condition were at these death camps

Amon Goeth got through his mornings by using his high-powered, scoped rifle to shoot at children playing in the camp. He did it so that he was able to make sure that the Jews were working. For example, some young men hauling coal were moving too slow. He shot one of them with his sniper rifle so the rest would hurry up and work harder.

Oscar Schindler outwitted Amon Goeth. When Schindler requested that those Jews who continued to work in his factory be moved into their own sub-camp near the plant, Goeth complied. From then on, Schindler found that he could have food and medicine smuggled into the barracks with less danger. The guards, of course, were bribed, and Goeth never Found out, though Oscar Schinder was arrested twice

When he realized that he could walk away from the war a rich man while "his Jews" die in Plaszow and Auschwitz, Oscar Schindler desperately spends every penny he has bribing and paying off Amon Goeth and other Nazi officials to protect and save his Jews.

From using the Jews to make his money, he spends all the money he made by exploiting the labour of Jews in buying the lives of Jews; whatever is not spent in bribing Goeth and other Nazi officials he spent it on food and protection for the Jews

At his factory, Nazi guards are instructed to stay on their side of the fence and nobody is allowed inside the factory without permission from Schindler. He spends every night in his office so he can intervene if the Gestapo come.

They were protected and saved by Oscar Schindler. In those years, millions of Jews died in Polish, but Schindler`s Jews miraculously survived in Plaszow right up to 1944. Schindler bribed the Nazis to get food and better treatment for his Jews during a time when one of the most civilized nations of the world was capable of systematic mass-murder.

Where no one would have believed it possible, Schindler succeeded. He got permission to move his whole factory from Plaszow to Brunnlitz in occupied Czechoslovakia and furthermore, unheard of before, take all his workers with him. In this way, the 1,098 workers who had been written on Schindler`s list in connection with the removal avoided sharing the fate of the other 25,000 men, women and children of Plaszow who were sent without mercy to extermination in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, only 60 kilometers from Plaszow.

By a mistake 300 of Schindler-women were routed on a train to Auschwitz. Certain death awaited. A Schindler survivor, Anna Duklauer Perl later quoted,"I knew something had gone terribly wrong, they cut our hair real short and sent us to the shower. Our only hope was Schindler would find us."

After weeks Anna and the other Schindler-women were being herded off toward the showers again. They did not know whether this was going to be water or gas. Then they heard a voice "What are you doing with these people ? These are my people." Schindler had come to rescue them, bribing the Nazis to retrieve the women on his list and bring them back. The women were released

When the women returned to Brunnlitz, weak, hungry, frostbitten, Schindler met them in the courtyard. They never forgot the sight of Schindler standing in the doorway. And they never forgot his raspy voice when he, surrounded by SS guards, gave them an unforgettable guarantee, "Now you are finally with me, you are safe now. Don't be afraid of anything. You don't have to worry anymore."

At Auschwitz the children were generally killed upon arrival. Children born in the camps were often killed on the spot, especially if the child was Jewish. Near the end of the war, in order to cut expenses and save gas, the Nazis would place living children directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning pits.

Oscar Schindler knew. He toiled through the rough waters of the confusions of war and surfaced from the chaos to save his Jews. Generations will remember him for what he did

Until the liberation of spring, 1945, Oscar Schindler used all means at his disposal to ensure the safety of his Schindler Jews. He spent every penny he had, and even Emilie Schindler`s jewels were sold, 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. Those who did not survive were given a fitting Jewish burial in a hidden graveyard, established and paid for by Schindler.

Later accounts have revealed that Schindler spent something like 4 million German marks(money) keeping his Jews out of the death camps, an enormous sum of money for those times

The factory continued to make shells for the German Wehrmacht for 7 months. In all that time not one usable shell was produced! Not one shell passed the military quality tests. Instead, false military travel passes and ration cards were produced, just as Nazi uniforms, weapons, ammunition and hand-grenades were collected. But still, Schindler succeeded in these months in persuading the Gestapo to send a further 100 Belgian, Dutch and Hungarian Jews to his factory camp with regard to the continuing war industry production.

In May, 1945, it was all over. The Russians moved into Brunnlitz. The previous evening, Schindler gathered everyone together in the factory and took a deeply emotional leave of them. He told them they were free, he was a fugitive."My children, you are saved. Germany has lost the war." He asked that they didn't go into the neighboring houses to rob and plunder. "Prove yourself worthy of the millions of victims among you and refrain from any individual acts of revenge and terror". He announced that three yards of fabric were to be given each prisoner from his warehouse stores as well as a bottle of vodka, which brought a high price on the black market.

At five after midnight, certain that his Jews finally were out of danger, Oscar Schindler left the factory. "I must leave now", Schindler said, "Auf Wiedersehen".