When most people hear the name Oskar Schindler, they think of Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award–winning film Schindler’s List, which brought his story to global prominence. Yet the real Oskar Schindler was far more complex than the figure depicted on screen. He was a German spy, businessman, bon vivant, and member of the Nazi Party.
In the early 1940s, Schindler took control of a factory in Krakow, Poland, that had been confiscated by the Nazis. Exploiting forced Jewish labor from the city’s ghetto, he amassed significant profits, which funded a lavish lifestyle of luxury cars, fine wines, and an infamous playboy reputation. However, as the German regime’s atrocities became undeniable, Schindler underwent a dramatic transformation. He turned his factory into a refuge, using bribery, manipulation, and sheer will to protect nearly 1,200 Jewish workers from deportation and certain death.
Schindler’s courageous actions earned him a unique postwar honor: burial at Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the only member of the Nazi Party to receive such recognition. A survivor he saved described him as “an extraordinary man in extraordinary times.” Historian Ralph Nurnberger explores the complex life of Oskar Schindler, uncovering how, despite his personal and professional failures—from a turbulent marriage to repeated business missteps—he rose to perform remarkable acts of heroism, ultimately saving more than a thousand lives.
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