It all started when Schindler saw a money-making opportunity and followed the German SS into Poland. Even though he claimed himself to be Catholic, he never had a problem breaking rules. He soon became a major figure in the black-market of Poland and began making friends with German Gestapo officers by providing them with drugs, money, and women. In return, he acquired a factory with Jews as workers. This first factory, "Emalia", produced enamel goods and munitions for the German front.



He started out like all the other new factory owners: bent on making a profit by any means necessary. Then the mass deportations of Jews started. Luckily, Schindler had a Jewish accountant named Itzhak Stern contacted all the rich Jewish friends he knew and had them invest in the factory in exchange for a job. Thus Schindler prospered and they were saved. Also, the accountant persudaded Schindler to look at how essential Jewish workers were, how much harder they worked than others, and to hire more of them. Schindler paid off the Nazis so that his workers could stay in Poland to work in the factories. After paying the Nazis for the Jews and the Jews for the work, Schindler still made money. More importantly, everyone in the factory was well-fed and well-treated; no one was killed. Compared to the lives of the rest of the Jews across Poland, Schindler's workers were working in heaven.



In 1942, the Holocaust got worse, and Schindler had to work harder to keep his Jews alive. Oskar was beginning to soften up, also. He witnessed the emptying of a Jewish ghetto in the summer of that year, and it horrified him. Later he said, "Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system." And that he did. He spent millions trying to keep his 1,300 Jews alive. In 1944, the Russians started to close in on Poland and the Nazis panicked. They transfered all remaining Jews in Poland to the concentration camps to die. He lost his workers, which he by now called "Schindlerjuden", or "my childern".



When he learned that many of the Jews in his city, Krakow, were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp, he black-mailed his way there and called upon those high-ranking Nazis who owed him favors to set up a factory compound in Zablocie as a branch of the camp. He then made up a list of the 900 Jewsish workers he would need to operate the factory. This list has been made very famous over time, most war-movie fans will know it as "Schindler's List". The factory ran for about a year, making defective bullets for the German front. During this time, Schindler was risking his life by fighting for the lives of these Jews. Conditions were grim, even for Schindler and his wife, but Schindler saved most of the Jews when he moved his factory and all the workers in it to Brunnlitz in October 1944. There are now about 3,500 Jews living in Poland. There are now about 7,000 Jews who are descendants of the Schindlerjuden.



After the war, Schindler took a few "Schindlerjuden" and his wife and fled to Argentina, where he bought a farm and laid low. In 1958, he abandoned everything, including his wife, and returned to Germany. He spent the remaining life in Germany and Israel, where he was honored and taken care of by his "Schindlerjuden". It was the gratitude of these "Schindlerjuden" that caused his story to live on. His story acts a beacon of hope by showing us that when the going gets tough, ordinary people can act bravely. After all, if Oskar Schindler, mean and nothing-but-money-minded as he was, could do it, then we surely can.