Oskar Schindler opportunist or hero

OSKAR SCHINDLER OPPORTUNIST OR HERO Name Institution Affiliation Course Date of Submission Oskar Schindler Opportunist or Hero Introduction Oskar Schindler was born to a middle-class catholic family that belonged to the German speaking community in the Sudetenland in April 1908. He attended to a German grammar school to study engineering in order to follow the foot steps of his father to run the family farm-machinery plant. Most of his childhood and school friends were Jews, but he never developed a lasting relationship with each of them. Just as most of the Sudetenland youth he joined the German party that which supported the Nazi Germany that strove to for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and their union to Germany. The incorporation of Sudetenland to Nazi Germany led Oskar to become a formal member of the Nazi party. It was after the outbreak of World War II that Oskar showed up in the occupied Krakow, the ancient city that was home to thousands of Jews and a seat of the German occupation administration. The city proved to be highly productive to German entrepreneurs, as they hoped to capitalize on the adversity of the subjugated country to make a fortune. The initial motives of Oskar were to capitalize on the cheap labor available in Krakow in to his industries. He acquired a run-down enamel factory which originally belonged to a Jew, and cleverly maneuvered his steps from the advice of a commercial polish Jewish accountant to build himself a fortune. Outside Krakow, he started a factory producing kitchenware for the German army, which began to row on leaps and bounds. Within three months his factory had gathered workforce of 250 polish workers among them seven Jews. It was until 1942 that the factory expanded into a mammoth enamel and ammunition production plant. The plant occupied about 45,000 squire meters and employing almost 800 men and women of which 370 were Jews from the Krakow ghetto the Germans established after entering the city. Oskar was a hedonist and a gambler by nature but soon adopted the life of a profligate, where he caroused into small hours of the night, hobnobbing with SS officials that were high ranking and philandering with polish women. He was no different from other Germans who came to Poland as part of the administration and their associates, but the humane treatment of his workers set him apart other war-profiteers specifically the Jews. Oskar did not develop he ideologically motivated resistance against the Nazi regime, but his increasing revulsion and the horrors of the senseless brutality by the Nazi prosecuting helpless Jews population, resulted to the emergence of a curious transformation of this unprincipled German opportunist. His egoistic goal t acquire wealth was placed second to the all-consuming desires of recruiting as many Jews he was capable of the execution by Nazis. His efforts to bring Jewish workers safely amidst the war bore him fruits in the long run. Moreover, he was not only prepared to squander his money but also put his life on the line. Oskar helped his Jewish employees through the falsification of factory record by recording order people being twenty years younger and children as adults. Other professionals like doctors, lawyers and engineers were registered as metalworkers, mechanics and draughtsman, with respect to trades that were regarded as essential to war production. It is in this manner that countless lives were saved as workers were protected from extermination commissions that scrutinized Oskar’s records periodically. Most of the times, Oskar was entertaining the local SS officials cultivating influential friends in strengthening his position whenever possible. His personality and the political reliability made his popular in the Nazi circle in Krakow. Oskar’s most helpful tool in this privately considered salvage operation was his privileged status the plant was bestowed. The business was considered essential to the war effort by the Military Armaments Inspectorate in occupied Poland. This qualified him to obtain worthwhile military contracts, and also enhanced him to save on Jewish workers who were under the command of the SS administration. When Oskar’s Jewish employees were intimidated with deportation to concentration camps by the SS, he used all means possible to claim exclusions for them. He argued that the removal of Jews from the factory would seriously hinder his efforts to maintain production of essentials to the war effort. He did not at any given point recoil at falsifying the factory records by listing children, housewives, and lawyers as expert mechanics and metalworkers, and consequently, covering up for the unqualified and temporarily workers who were incapacitated. The increasing frequency of such incidents of record scrutiny in the factory, and the wickedness his eyes had witnessed at the Pfaszow camp perhaps were accountable for moving Oskar into a more active antifascist role. In the year 1943, he stopped to worry about the production of enamelware appliances for military barracks, and started to conspire, the bribery, and the shrewd outguessing of Nazi officialdom that finally was to save the lives of many Jews. Oskar had been arrested by the Gestapo several times and had to be interrogated on incriminates of irregularities and for favoring Jews. However, Oskar would not give up his mission of saving and protecting the Jews. It was in 1943, through the invitation by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee that he had to undertake a highly risk journey to Budapest, where he had to meet with two representatives of Hungarian Jewry. Oskar accounted to them regarding the distressed predicament of the Jews in Poland and discussing possible ways of relief. Some of the less hardy workers died, but the majority continued determinedly at their tasks, to turn out enamelware for the German army. Oskar and his inner-office circle had become rigid and apprehensive, as the wondered just for how long they had to continue their game of deception to factory inspectors. March 1943 was the year by which the Krakow ghetto was being liquidated, and all the Jews were being moved to the forced-labor camp of Plaszow, which was outside Krakow.  Oskar had to prevail upon SS- Amon Goeth who was the cruel camp senior officer and a personal drinking buddy, for him to allow Oskar set up a special sub-camp to cater for his own Jewish labor at the factory site in Zablocie. It is here that he was capable of keeping the Jews under somewhat bearable conditions, supplementing their below-subsistence diet with food he bought on the black market with his money. The factory compound had to be declared out of bounds for the SS guards who kept watch over the sub-camp set inside the factory. In late 1944, the concentration camp Plaszow together with all its sub-camps were ordered to be evacuated in the face of the Russian advance, as German forces were retreating from the eastern front. The camp inmates, who comprised of more than 20,000 men, women, and children were to be moved to the extermination camps. When Oskar received an order to evacuate the area he had to approach the right section in the upper command of the army, and managed to acquire official authorization for a continued operation of his factory that his family had built in Brünnlitz, their homeland. The whole workforce from Zablocie, which he had secretively inserted many new Jewish names from the Plaszow concentration camp was supposed to relocate to the new factory site. However, instead of bringing them to Brünnlitz, the 800 men who consisted among them 700 Jews, and  the 300 women on Schindler’s list had been rerouted to Gross-Rosen and to Auschwitz, respectively. On leaning this, Oskar acted at first and managed to secure the release of the men who had been rerouted to Gross-Rosen camp.  He then progressed by sending his personal factory secretary to Auschwitz to bargain for the release of the women. His secretary managed to secure the liberation of the Jewish women as he promised to be paying 7 RM daily per worker. This became the only case in the history of the extermination camp to be recorded because a great number of people were allowed to go away alive while the gas chambers were still operational. One of t...