One of my favorite articles I read most days is “This Day In History.” When I read the article for October 9, my mind raced back 32 years. On that day, my husband and I arrived at our favorite theater early in order to get good seats for what was to be a packed theater. We settled into watch this movie in the large audience. We, along with over 1,000 others, were immediately spellbound for over three hours. You could have heard a pin drop. Then, at the close of the movie, no one moved … no one spoke. What we had just witnessed was gut-wrenching. The movie was Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg.
This movie tells the story of Oskar Schindler. He was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi party. When World War II began, Schindler took over stolen Jewish-owned businesses and benefitted from Jewish forced labor. Schindler was initially all about making money, but later took on personal and financial risks to protect Jews at his factory from harm. Schindler’s factory employed Jewish forced laborers from the Kraków ghetto. After witnessing the Nazis’ brutality and violence against Jews, Schindler decided to protect as many Jewish forced laborers as he could. His list (“Schindler’s List”) helped save more than 1,200 Jewish forced laborers during the Holocaust. Those who were put on this list were sent to Schindler’s new factory. They were not only protected from terrible conditions, but saved from a likely death in concentration camps.
How did this happen you ask? In 1939, Schindler acquired an enamelware factory in Kraków, Poland, which employed at its peak in 1944 about 1,750 workers, of whom 1,000 were Jews. His German Abwehr connections helped him protect his Jewish workers from deportation and death in the Nazi concentration camps. As time went on, he had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe.
By July 1944, Germany was losing the war; the Nazi SS began closing down the easternmost concentration camps and deporting the remaining prisoners westward. Many were murdered at Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen concentration camps. Schindler convinced the SS commandant to allow him to move his factory to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which spared his workers certain death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Using names provided by a Jewish Ghetto Police officer, a list was compiled of 1,200 Jews who travelled to Brünnlitz in October 1944. Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent execution of his workers until the end of World War II in Europe in May of 1945. By this time Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black market purchases of supplies to save his workers.
During the Holocaust, many people chose to help Jews for any number of reasons. Many cited their religious beliefs or their moral or ethical principles, but Oskar Schindler was not religious. Nothing in his history suggests a man of moral integrity. He was a greedy opportunist, a German spy, and a member of the Nazi Party. He had numerous extramarital affairs. He repeatedly mismanaged his finances and failed to pay back loans. Schindler was 31 years old when he came to Kraków in German-occupied Poland, intent on getting rich. But over the course of his years in Kraków, Schindler underwent a slow transformation. He ultimately used his wealth and his position of influence to help Jews.
After Schindler’s death on October 9, 1974 in Germany, numerous mournful Jewish survivors brought the remains of their rescuer to Israel to be laid to eternal rest in the Catholic Cemetery of Jerusalem. The inscription on his grave says: ‘The unforgettable rescuer of 1,200 persecuted Jews”. Then in 1962, a tree was planted in Schindler’s honor in the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem. On June 24, 1993, Yad Vashem officially recognized Emilie and Oskar Schindler as “Righteous Among the Nations.”
What did I learn from “This Day in History on October 9, 1974”? I was reminded about this imperfect man who, in the face of great evil, provided life, safety and mercy to many Jewish lives. I was reminded that later in his life he became a committed Christian. It reminds me that no matter how imperfect we are, God can still use us. His is a powerful story of struggle, change and redemption. There are countless thousands of Jewish descendants who honor Oskar Schindler.
Debby Efurd is co-founder of Cary John Efurd Ministries of Pittsburg, TX. She has been a contributor to Bound for Life and written numerous articles published in LifeNews, Christian Post and the Baptist Standard, and is the author of Go Tell It! Debby can be contacted at caryjohnefurdinistries@gmail.com. Visit her at the Second Mile blog at https://debbyefurd.com.
Tagged: grief and loss, world war II
