An ethnic German living in Moravia, Czechoslovakia, he joined the Nazi party in 1939. In the wake of the German invasion of Poland, Schindler went to Krakow. He assumed responsibility for the operation of two formerly Jewish-owned manufacturers of enamel kitchenware and then established his own enamel works in Zablocie, outside Krakow. Through army contracts and the exploitation of cheap labor from the Krakow ghetto, he amassed a fortune. Dealing on the black market, he lived in high style.
By dropping the names of some of his Nazi friends and making a couple of threats, he was finally able to rescue the workers and escort them safely back to his factory. In early 1943 the Nazis ordered the final evacuation of the Krakow ghetto. The man put in charge of the operation was a young SS officer named Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow forced labor camp just outside the city. Jews who were healthy
* He believed Germans belonged to the master race. (Aryan race) * He called the men who signed the Versailles Treaty traitors – November criminals * Hitler wanted to build a Third Reich and to expand Germany’s territories eastward to create living space lebensraum. * He wanted all Germans to be united in one country. Hitler comes to power After the 1st world war, Germany had a democratic government (Weimar republic). But Germans blamed it for signing the Versailles treaty and for hunger and unemployment.
These relationships enabled him to take advantage of the German occupation program to “’Aryanize’ and ‘Germanize’ Jewish-owned and Polish-owned business…” (Crowe). In 1939 he secured a run down, bankrupt enamel factory, which he named Emalia, and was provided with Jews to serve as slave labor (Crowe; Karesh). Through his ability to charm and manipulate people, and through his various connections, he was awarded numerous contracts to supply the German military with pots and pans and kitchen accessories manufactured by his factory, and his business became extremely profitable (Vashem). It was during this time that he began to realize the seriousness of the situation and the grave danger his Jewish workers would probably be facing. He began to truly care about
This was knocked down before 1945, but a reconstruction was built after the war in memory of those who diedAuschwitz III - Monowitz * Auschwitz III camp, also known as Monowitz, * most important to the Nazis because of its factories which were essential to the German war effort. * The Monowitz industrial complex was built by Auschwitz inmates, beginning in April 1941. * Initially, the workers walked from the Auschwitz main camp to the building site, a distance of 4 - 6 kilometers each way. * Slave labor was used to make improvements to the town. * The Jews who were sent to Auschwitz, and then assigned to work at Monowitz, * better chance of survival because the factory workers were considered too valuable to send to the gas chambers * three Auschwitz camps showed a total of 67,012 prisoners * more than half were the workers in the Buna plant at Monowitz * Prisoners worked more slowly than the German construction workers, even with being beaten.
Parish churches and the Interior Ministry supported the genocide by presenting birth records showing who was Jewish; the Post Office delivered the deportation and denaturalization orders; the Finance Ministry took away Jewish property; German businesses fired Jewish workers and took away stock that belonged to the Jews. The universities refused to admit Jews, denied degrees to those already studying, and fired Jewish academics; government transport offices organized the trains that were scheduled for the deportation to the camps; German pharmacist
Oskar asked Amon Goeth ( a SS officer in charge of the Plaszow camp where Oskar’s Jews were being held) that these Jews who continued to work in his factory be placed in their own sub-camp, closer to the plant, "to save time in getting to the job." Once Oskars Jews had their own sub-camp it became less dangerous for him to have food and medicine smuggled into the barracks. At the point when Oskars ambitions were realized, he could have walked away from the war a wealthy man, while his Jews would have died in Plaszow and Auschwitz, Schindler did not walk away. He spent every penny of his money bribing Amon Goeth and the other Nazi officials in order to protect and, save his Jews. Schindler spent all his money that he had made while using Jewish labor.
The Real Oskar Schindler The Real Oskar Schindler The Holocaust had countless well-known and unknown heroes. These heroes sacrificed their lives in order to help others by shielding them from the Nazi reign of terror. Among them was a German man by the name of Oskar Schindler. Schindler, as famously publicized by the movie, Schindler’s List, was responsible for saving the lives of over 1000 Jews. As a businessman, Schindler was able to offer to select Jews, refuge by working in his factories.
There are no definite numbers known of people who were killed during the time but it was estimated 6 million perished during these horrific 6 years. Schindler was a profiteer and a womanizer during the war, but as the film progressed, Schindler begun to show gratitude towards the Jews and made his goal to save as many as he could. Schindler did this by writing a list and buying as many Jews as he could so they could work in his factories. Schindler went through many obstacles to be able to do this and by the end of the war he was broke. In the end he saved 1,100 Jews, this may seem insignificant but these 1,100 Jews grew to 6000 descendants.
It stated that anyone with anyone of the following hereditary diseases could be sterilized: Schizophrenia, manic depression, hereditary deafness and so on. Chronic alcoholism was also classed as hereditary and such suffers were sterilized. In the next 12 years about 350,000 were sterilized, with about 100 people dying because of the “Hitler Cut”. This act was the first of a series, which geared up to the holocaust, each shielding the German people from the horrors of genocide and making them more anti-Semitic. By 1939, the policy of reducing the numbers of mentally ill by sterilization developed into one of murder called “mercy killing” or euthanasia.