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Preface
Schindler's Regret
In 1936, a Czech citizen named Oskar Schindler enlisted as a spy for the secret intelligence service of the Nazi Party. Schindler was a banker and businessman and, although he was not German himself, his family had German roots. As the drums of war began to beat, fueled by the fiery speeches of Adolf Hitler and mass propaganda from the Nazi regime, Schindler went to work collecting information on troop movements and military installations in Czechoslovakia in preparation for a possible German invasion.
In July of 1938, Schindler was arrested by the Czech government and jailed for espionage. Had Germany chosen not to invade that country, the story for Schindler – and many others – may have ended there, in a dismal Czech prison. But just three months later Germany invaded and took control of large portions of the country. Schindler was sprung from his cell, praised for his work, and promptly sent on to Poland to continue his espionage in advance of another planned invasion.
A businessman at heart, Schindler wasn't content to merely pass the time in Poland taking notes and sending them on to the Nazi regime. So while there, he decided to also resume his life's main pursuit: making money. After searching for opportunities, Schindler came across an enamelware factory that had been put up for sale by a group of bankrupt Jewish businessmen. To Schindler, it seemed like a straightforward business opportunity. He would take over a failing factory and use his connections and experience to turn a hefty profit. That is exactly what Schindler did, earning an impressive income and living luxuriously in Poland for the next few years.
As World War II wore on, though, Schindler became disillusioned and eventually disgusted with what the Nazi Party was doing. The final straw for Schindler came in 1942 when the Nazis began to empty Kraków, a Jewish ghetto in Poland. Over a period of months the area's Jewish inhabitants were rounded up and shipped off to extermination or concentration camps elsewhere in Poland and Germany.
It just so happened that Schindler's enamelware factory was located not far from Kraków. In fact, a number of his workers lived there. Schindler, who was made aware of the planned action ahead of time thanks to his connections with the Nazi Party, was sickened by the thought of what was being done. The fact that it would be done to his own workers, people he saw every day toiling away at his factory, was more than he could stomach.
So Schindler, in his first act of secret defiance against the Nazi regime, had his Jewish workers start to sleep overnight at the factory in order to spare them from being rounded up and shipped off. His quick thinking saved the lives of his workers, and the experience left Schindler a changed man. From that point forward, the businessman who up until now had lived a life of luxury shifted his attention to a new goal: saving as many Jews as he could from the Holocaust that was underway.
Schindler began to employ more and more Jewish individuals as workers in his factory, not because he needed them (the overstaffing certainly cut into his profits), but because by doing so he could prevent them from being shipped off to extermination camps. Those added to the payroll included women, children, and the disabled, with Schindler assuring Nazi officials that all of them played important skilled roles in the manufacturing process. When those lies didn't succeed, Schindler used cash, diamonds, and luxury gifts he had obtained on the black market to bribe officials to allow him to continue hiring and retaining as many Jewish workers as possible. At its height in 1944, his factory “employed” over 1,000 Jewish workers.
As the war took a turn for the worse for Germany in 1944, the Nazi government decided that all German factories in Poland should be relocated inside the gates of the Polish concentration camps. Schindler knew that if his enamelware factory was moved inside a concentration camp, it would mean all of his Jewish workers would be forced to endure the brutality of the camp as well. So, once again using his cunning and the bribes that his wealth allowed, Schindler managed to talk his way into not only keeping his factory where it was, but also into being able to house hundreds of additional workers from other nearby factories at his plant.
A number of months later, as the Russian army began to advance on Poland, the Nazi government ordered Schindler's factory to close. Once more, Schindler used bribes and his skills of persuasion to obtain special permission to keep his factory open and have it moved to the German-controlled portion of Czechoslovakia. When, during the relocation process, several trainloads of workers were accidentally sent to concentration camps, Schindler used still more bribes of black market goods and diamonds to secure their release.
As part of the deal allowing him to keep his factory, Schindler had to agree to transition from an enamelware producer to a munitions producer and supply anti-tank grenades to the German war effort. Of course, this presented a major problem for Schindler. He didn't want to support the German war effort by producing grenade shells. But his hands were tied; had he refused, his factory would have been shuttered and his Jewish workers all shipped off to concentration camps.
So once more the crafty businessman turned to subterfuge. Schindler instructed his workers to produce only a very small number of useable artillery shells. When Nazi officials eventually caught wind that something might be amiss and came to question him about why he was producing such a small number of shells, Schindler purchased pre-made shells from the black market and told officials they had been made at his own factory. It was enough to buy him the time he and his Jewish workers needed to ride out the end of World War II in safety.
By the time the War ended in 1945, Schindler had spent over one million dollars of his own money to protect his Jewish workers. Completely broke, he would go on to spend the remaining decades of his life running a series of failed businesses, dependent on financial assistance from Jewish organizations and from individuals whom he had saved during the war. Schindler's body now lies buried on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem beneath a tombstone that reads “The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews.”
Given the number of people he saved, we would expect that in looking back on what he had done Schindler would have, while no doubt horrified by the Holocaust that had occurred, at least been proud of his own actions and accomplishments. He had put himself at extreme personal risk. If high-ranking officials in the Nazi party had caught on to what he was doing, Schindler would undoubtedly have been executed. Furthermore, he had selflessly used up his entire fortune to feed and care for his Jewish workers and to bribe officials into allowing him to continue to keep them in his factory where they would be safe from harm. Thanks to his courageous work, he had saved over one thousand people from being murdered.
Yet, as the war ended, his work successfully completed, Schindler did not look back on what he had done with pride. In fact, he looked back on his work with another emotion entirely: regret.
Many of us are familiar with Schindler's story thanks to the blockbuster 1993 film Schindler's List, which depicts Schindler's heroic wartime actions. While fictionalized in some ways, the film is based in large part on extensive research and interviews with Jewish individuals who had been saved by Schindler.
At the conclusion of the film, Schindler laments to his close Jewish friend Itzhak Stern his regret about not having done more to help the Jewish people. While the dialogue used in the film is fictionalized, the sentiment expressed was one that Schindler truly felt: that he was in many ways a failure because he could have helped more people but failed to do so. The film's dialogue goes as follows:
Oskar Schindler:
I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just…I could have got more.
Itzhak Stern:
Oskar, there are eleven hundred people