This
is the true story of one remarkable man who outwitted Hitler
and the Nazis to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other
during World War II.
It is the story of Oscar Schindler who surfaced from the chaos of madness,
spent millions bribing and paying off the SS and eventually risked his
life to rescue 1200 Jews in the shadow of Auschwitz. In those years,
millions of Jews died in the Nazi death camps, but Schindler's
Jews miraculously survived.
Oscar Schindler was all that stood between them and death at the hands of
the Nazis.
A man all too human, full of flaws like the rest of us. The unlikeliest of
all role models - a Nazi, a womanisor, a war profiteer. An ordinary man
who answered the call of conscience. Even in the worst of circumstances
Oscar Schindler did extraordinary things, matched by no one. He remained
true to his Jews, the workers he referred to as my children. He
kept the SS out and everyone alive.
In a 1964 interview, standing in front of his dingy apartment Am Hauptbahn
No. 4 in Frankfurt Am Main, West Germany, Oscar Schindler for once
commented on what he did:
"The persecution of Jews in occupied Poland meant that we could see
horror emerging gradually in many ways. In 1939, they were forced to wear
Jewish stars, and people were herded and shut up into ghettos. Then, in
the years '41 and '42 there was plenty of public evidence of pure sadism.
With people behaving like pigs, I felt the Jews were being destroyed. I
had to help them. There was no choice."
When
asked, Schindler told that his metamorphosis during the war was sparked by
the shocking immensity of the Final Solution. In his own words: "I
hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just
couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had
to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it.
Really, nothing more."
Oscar
Schindler - with his wife Emilie
Schindler - spent millions to protect and save the Schindler-Jews, everything he
possessed. He died penniless. But he earned the everlasting gratitude of
his Jews ... One of them was little
Leyson.