- German attack on September 1939 came to it's quick conclusion in few weeks, Krakow with it's numerous Jewish population was among the first cities to be occupied by the German army. The destruction of Jews began immediately after that. They were beaten, humiliated and had to endure all kind of restrictions to their lives, including confiscation of their property. Finally they were herded into Ghettos and the only destination from there, was the concentration camps. To this kind of place, a Sudeten German man appeared and the rest is history, told very well in the book and movie: Schindler´s List.

- Oskar Schindler was born 28th of April, 1908 in a town of Zwittau which back then was part of Austro-Hungary, later part of Czechoslovakia and the so-called Sudetenland.

- Originally Oskar Schindler came to Krakow to make money. He had acquired a factory from the Podgorze district of Krakow. The labor force in the factory were the Jews as they were cheap and readily available in the city, which before the war had held more than 50,000 Jews.

- The Schindler factory, Deutsche Emalienwaren "Emalia" or just DEF, produced enamel goods and munitions for the German army. It seemed that Schindler´s dream of making money from the war had come true. However, somewhere along the journey, he started to change and profit and productivity were not the first thing to consider anymore. Above all, the worry of the fate of "his Jews", became the priority number one. Most likely the thing that changed his values, was the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto. Innocent people were loaded into trains and sent to a certain death, if not killed already in the ghetto. During the liquidation of the ghetto, some of the Jews were sent to the nearby Plaszow concentration camp, including all of the workers from the Schindler´s factory. 

- The conditions in KL Plaszow were awful to say the least and Schindler used all of the available means to negotiate about the establishment of a sub-camp to his factory. In the end, he succeeded in persuading the Nazi officials, using different kind of expensive gifts, to let him have his own camp in the factory. The memory from this event, is the list, which contains 1 200 names, which Schindler named as vital for the war effort and thus, saved them.

- By the autumn of 1944, the luck for German armed forces had turned and the Red Army was already inside the Polish borders. Schindler was able to evacuate most of  "his Jews" to a new location in Brunnlitz. The war finally came to and end if May 1945 and Schindler, along with his wife, fled to Argentina. The different business opportunities he tried after the war, were not very succesful and in 1958 he moved back to West-Germany, where he died in 1974, as a poor man, but achieved something much more valuable, than money could have ever given to him. 

- Oscar Schindler is buried at the Catholic churchyard on Mount Zion, in Jerusalem Israel.

The Original Schindler´s List

...Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire...