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                           Table of Contents
                                    
  *   THE RIGHTEOUS GENTILES
  *     YAD VASHEM
  *     
  *   BACKGROUND OF THOMAS KENEALLY'S SCHINDLER'S LIST
  *   
  *   A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF OSKAR SCHINDLER
  *   
  *   OSKAR SCHINDLER BEFORE THE SECOND WORLD WAR
  *     WORLD WAR I
  *     THE RISE OF HITLER
  *     THE MUNICH CONFERENCE
  *     SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
  *     
  *   SCHINDLER DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR
  *     PRIVATE BUSINESSMAN
  *     THE POLISH JEWS
  *     ARYANIZATION
  *     ITZHAK STERN
  *     WAR-PROFITEER
  *     THE KRAKOW GHETTO
  *     THE JUDENRAT AND THE GHETTO POLICE
  *     THE CHILD IN RED
  *     "ESSENTIAL WORKERS"
  *     "RESETTLEMENT"
  *     THE DEATH CAMPS
  *     MARCH 13, 1943
  *     JEWISH RESISTANCE
  *     ZEGOTA
  *     AMON GOETH
  *     THE BUREAUCRATS
  *     THE GOETH-SCHINDLER RELATIONSHIP
  *     "JUDENFREI"
  *     THE "LIST"
  *     AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
  *     BRUNNLITZ
  *     MAY 8, 1945
  *     
  *   SCHINDLER AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
  *     SOUTH AMERICA
  *     RETURN TO WEST GERMANY
  *     ISRAEL
  *     RIGHTEOUS GENTILE
  *     THE LAST YEARS
  *     
  *   EMILIE SCHINDLER AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
  *   
  *   SCHINDLERJUDEN: WHY DID HE DO IT?
  *   
  *   ALTRUISM IN WAR
  *   
  *   OBSTACLES TO RESCUE
  *     TERROR
  *     INFORMERS
  *     CULTURE
  *     "JEWISH TRAITS"
  *     "ARYAN PAPERS"
  *     
  *   ALTRUISTICALLY INCLINED: SCHOLARLY INTERPRETATIONS
  *   
  *     NECHAMA TEC
  *     TEC'S CONCLUSIONS
  *     EVA FOGELMAN
  *     FOGELMAN'S CONCLUSIONS
  *     CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOR
  *     
  *   Schindler's List : STUDENT DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
  *   
  *   GLOSSARY A-P
  *   
  *   GLOSSARY Q-Z
  *   
  *   SCHINDLER CHRONOLOGY
  *   
  *   THE HOLOCAUST
  *   
  *   PRE-SCREENING INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
  *   
  *   POST-SCREENING INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
  *   
  *   BIBLIOGRAPHY
  *   
  *   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  *   
  *   

Schindler's List Teaching Guide

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THE RIGHTEOUS GENTILES

He who saves one life, it is as if he saves the world entire.
--Jewish Talmud  When the German armed forces surrendered on May 8, 
1945, Europe was a vast Jewish cemetery in which the Nazis had uprooted 
even the stones.
In Poland, the setting of the Holocaust, cities where tens of thousands 
of Jews had lived were now wholly devoid of even a hint of Jewish life. 
So great was the destruction and so immense the human cruelty that few 
scholars gave a thought to the rescuers, a relative handful of Gentiles 
(non-Jews) who protected a relative handful of Jews from Nazi 
annihilation.
Rescue was the exception, destruction the rule. As sociologist Nechama 
Tec has observed, "It is only natural and expected that those who 
studied the tragic events focused first on the typical experience 
rather than the rare exception." It was not until th e 1980's that the 
stories of the rescuers began to attract wide attention.
The rescuers themselves did not publicize their actions. They were, 
generally speaking, a most unassuming lot and did not view their 
actions as "heroic." In addition, anti-Semitism persisted in Europe 
after World War II, and it was perhaps more intense af ter the war than 
it had been before. Jewish life had little value for six long years. 
Many of the rescuers feared alienation and even death at the hands of 
those anti-Semitic countrymen who viewed their actions dimly.
The moral outrage that today accompanies the Holocaust is very much a 
latter-day reaction.

YAD VASHEM

In 1953, Israel established Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in 
Jerusalem. Yad Vashem honors the Jews who perished in the Holocaust and 
"the high-minded Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews." The 
formal Hebrew title for these saviors is Hasidei Umot Ha-Olam, 
literally "the Righteous Ones of the Nations of the World." They are 
the "spiritual heirs" to the Lamed Vav, the thirty-seven Gentiles 
mentioned in Jewish legend whose purpose in every generation, unknown 
to themselves or to others,  is to a ssist their fellow man in his hour 
of greatest despair.
The Righteous Gentiles cited in Hasidic teachings were mostly poor, 
simple people, but "the world is supported by them . . . the vessels 
into which the suffering of the whole world flows . . . If even one of 
them were not here, the world would perish with suffering."
In 1963, Yad Vashem honored its first rescuer, Ludwig Woerl, a German 
political prisoner who helped Jewish inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
During the Second World War, seven thousand Jews survived in Germany 
and in Austria, hiding with the aid of Gentile b enefactors. Yad Vashem 
has honored roughly one hundred Germans and Austrians for their rescue 
efforts, Oskar Schindler among them.
Schindler was responsible for the rescue of 1,200 Jews, referred to as 
the "Schindlerjuden" (Schindler Jews). This was a very large number of 
Jews saved by anyone, but it is important to view Schindler's rescue 
efforts in perspective. Thomas Keneally, aut hor of  Schindler's List, 
quite accurately has written, "Oskar was only a minor god of rescue." 
Similarly, Danka Dresner, one of the Schindlerjuden, has said, "We owe 
our lives to him. But I wouldn't glorify a German because of what he 
did for us. There is no proportion."
The vast majority of the Gentiles honored by Yad Vashem have been Poles 
and Dutchmen. In all, more than 11,000 Gentiles have received the 
distinction of Righteous Gentile, a small percentage of the number who 
were actually involved in Jewish rescue. It sh ould be emphasized, 
however, that significantly less than one percent of the non-Jewish 
population in Nazi-occupied Europe embarked upon the path of Jewish 
rescue. Many people were afraid to help the Jews, knowing well the Nazi 
penalties. Many  were indif ferent to the Jewish destruction. Many were 
delighted by it.
The term Righteous Gentile is controversial in itself. In Poland, where 
three million Polish Catholics perished during the war in addition to 
the three million Polish Jews who were exterminated, a great number of 
people resent the implication that Poles w ho failed to help 
beleaguered Jews were somehow not Righteous. Indignantly, the Poles 
have turned the argument around: The Jews did not have the "right" to 
ask to be rescued; after all, the request implicitly endangered the 
Gentiles and their families. Th us does recrimination fill the void 
left by the destruction.
In Poland, the Nazis made it very clear that death was the punishment 
for any Gentile who assisted Jews; death for the rescuer, and death for 
"abettors and accomplices." In western Europe, the Nazi policy was 
different. The Gentile caught sheltering a Jew was sent to a 
concentration camp where there was the possibility of survival. In 
Poland, the Nazis had no inhibitions: The Gentile was hung in the town 
square, or put up against a wall and shot. The list of those executed, 
with red borders, was publicize d on the street.
Petitions for recognition of Righteous Gentiles generally come from the 
Jews who were rescued, although surviving witnesses and documents are 
accepted. "Ordinary acts of charity" are not considered. Those who 
profited materially from the rescue of Jews ar e rejected, even if they 
accepted payment to defray the expenses of hiding a Jew.
The exact wording of Yad Vashem's requirement to be honored as a 
Righteous Gentile is as follows:
Extending help in saving a life; endangering one's own life; absence of 
reward, monetary and otherwise, and similar considerations which make 
the rescuer's deeds stand out above and beyond what can be termed 
ordinary help.
Yad Vashem  honors the Righteous Gentiles with a medal which quotes, in 
Hebrew  and  in French, a verse from the Jewish Talmud: "He who saves 
one life, it is as if he has saved the entire world."
The Righteous Gentiles are invited to plant a carob tree along the 
Avenue of the Righteous which leads to Yad Vashem's museum (and 
memorial) in Jerusalem. A plaque with the rescuer's name is affixed to 
the tree. Rescuers in dire financial straits are awar ded a small 
stipend.
Yad Vashem honored Oskar Schindler as a Righteous Gentile on April 28, 
1962, his fifty-fourth birthday. When Schindler died in October, 1974, 
in West Germany, his wish of being buried in Israel was honored. He was 
laid to rest at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
On his tombstone are written the words in Hebrew: "The unforgettable 
life savior of 1,200 oppressed Jews."

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BACKGROUND OF THOMAS KENEALLY'S SCHINDLER'S LIST

The film Schindler's List, by Stephen Spielberg, is based on the 
"docu-novel" by Thomas Keneally, an Australian novelist.
In the author's note at the beginning of the book, Keneally recalled 
the day in 1980 when he visited a luggage store in Beverly Hills, 
California.
The owner of the store, Leopold Page, was a Schindlerjuden, that is, a 
Jew saved by Oskar Schindler in a world far removed from the blue skies 
of southern California. In the former world,  Leopold Page answered to 
the name of Poldek Pfefferberg.
"It was beneath Pfefferberg's shelves of imported Italian leather goods 
that I first heard of Oskar Schindler," Keneally remembered. For thirty 
years, Pfefferberg had tried to interest every writer who entered his 
shop with the story of Oskar Schindler. U ntil Keneally, nobody was 
interested. Indeed, until the 1980's the Holocaust interested few 
people in the United States, least of all in Hollywood.
Keneally published his book, Schindler's List, in 1982. Twelve years 
later, when the film Schindler's List made its remarkable debut, 
Pfefferberg told an interviewer, "A single person, a human being, can 
change the world."
To research the story of Oskar Schindler, Keneally interviewed fifty 
Schindlerjuden in seven nations. He read the documents and the 
testimonies at Yad Vashem in Israel (and elsewhere), consulted 
Schindler's postwar friends as well as his wartime associate s "who can 
still be reached," and visited Poland, the setting of the Nazi genocide 
and of Schindler's efforts.
In his "Author's Note," Keneally writes, "It has sometimes been 
necessary to make reasonable constructs of conversations of which Oskar 
and others have left only the briefest record. But most exchanges and 
conversations, and all events, are based on the d etailed recollections 
of the Schindlerjuden, of Schindler himself, and of other witnesses to 
Oskar's acts of outrageous rescue."
Keneally also offers thanks to those who "gave interviews and 
generously contributed information through letters and documents." The 
first person Keneally lists is "Frau Emilie Schindler," Schindler's 
wife. In the book, however, the role of Emilie Schindl er and her 
influence upon her husband in the rescue of Jews are touched upon only 
lightly. She appears to  have been quoted one time not from an 
interview Keneally conducted with her but from a 1973 West German 
documentary on her husband. The story of Em ilie Schindler remains 
largely untold.
With unconcealed bitterness after the film opened, she said, "The Jews 
he saved, me he abandoned."
Pfefferberg, who accompanied Keneally on the trip to Poland, was the 
author's guiding spirit. The book is dedicated both to Pfefferberg and 
to Schindler. Keneally also acknowledges the help of two other 
Schindlerjuden: Mosche Bejski and Mieczyslaw Pemper.
During the war, Bejski had been an expert forger of German documents, a 
skill of inestimable value. He later became an Israeli supreme court 
justice and (to turn a full circle) is today the director of the 
special commission of Righteous Gentiles at Yad V ashem.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF OSKAR SCHINDLER

April 28, 1908  - Oskar Schindler is born in present-day Czechoslovakia
1914-1918  - World War I; Czechoslovakia is established November 1918
1927  - Schindler marries Emilie after a six week courtship
1935  - Schindler family business goes bankrupt; father abandons mother
September 1938  - Munich Conference, Sudetenland ceded to Nazi Germany
September 1, 1939  - Nazi Germany invades Poland
September 17, 1939  - Soviet Union invades Poland; Poland partitioned 
between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union
October 26, 1939  - Krakow becomes capital of German-occupied Poland, 
the so-called General Government
November 1O, 1939  - Krakow Jews forced to wear blue-white armband with 
Star of David
December 1939  - Schindler purchases enamel factory
March  20, 1941  - Germans establish ghetto in suburb of Krakow
June 1942  - Germans begin construction of labor camp at Plaszow
June 2, 1942  - First deportations of Jews from Krakow to Belzec death 
camp
October 28, 1942  - Second wave of deportations to Belzec
March 13, 1943  - Final liquidation of ghetto
September 1944  - Schindler's factory is closed; Schindlerjuden are 
taken to Plaszow
October 1944  - Schindler prepares "list" of Jews he takes to 
Brunnlitz, Czechoslovakia
November 1944  - Schindler rescues Jewish women from Auschwitz-Birkenau
May 8, 1945  - Second World War ends; Brunnlitz camp liberated 
following day
April 28, 1962  - Schindler named Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem
October 9, 1974  - Schindler dies in Frankfurt, West Germany; buried in 
Israel

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OSKAR SCHINDLER
BEFORE THE SECOND WORLD WAR

It is not immediately easy to find in Oskar's family history the 
origins of his impulse toward rescue.
--Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List
Oskar Schindler was born on April 28, 1908, in Zwittau, an industrial 
city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was baptized in the Catholic 
church. Today the city of Schindler's birth is Zvitava in the province 
of Moravia of the Czech Republic.
At the beginning of the 16th century, the Schindler family emigrated to 
Zwittau from Vienna, the capital of the Austrian (Habsburg) Empire.  
The region, heavily populated by Germans, became known as the 
Sudetenland, after the nearby Sudeten Mountains.
Schindler's father, Hans, was the owner of a factory which produced 
farm machinery, and Oskar and his sister, Elfriede, were raised in 
privileged circumstances, a fact of considerable importance.
The typical young man in the regimented Austro-Hungarian Empire had to 
follow societal rules if he expected to land a job after his schooling. 
But Oskar Schindler was not typical. He was guaranteed a position with 
the family business--whether or not he co mplied with societal rules. 
This economic security gave Schindler patrician self-assurance and, 
perhaps, a willingness to flaunt the rules he believed did not apply to 
him. In a word, Schindler's privileged upbringing allowed him to be 
different.
Schindler's mother, Louisa, who he adored, was a deeply religious 
women, forever "redolent of incense" from her frequent visits to the 
Catholic church. His father, Hans, preferred sipping cognac in the 
local coffee house to attending services at the Catho lic church, a 
preference he bequeathed to his son, who spoke little of God. The 
extent of the elder Schindler's political involvement seems to have 
been lighting a candle each year to honor the birth of the 
Austro-Hungarian Kaiser (or Emperor) Franz Josef , beloved by the Jews 
of his empire.
As Austrians living amidst a subject people (the Czechs), the Schindler 
family ranked high among the social and economic elite of Zwittau. 
Schindler's early life was pleasant, at least from the material point 
of view. His father gave him an extravagant bi rthday gift; a powerful 
motorcycle. The teenage Schindler entered several racing contests. He 
was adventuresome, reckless, and a daredevil. A tall young man with 
charm and good looks, he was a womanizer of the first order, even after 
he married Emilie Sch indler in 1927.
Emilie was educated in a Catholic convent, and, like Schindler's 
mother, she was deeply religious. She and Schindler met in 1927 when he 
made a sales trip to her father's farm. At the time Schindler was 
selling electric motors for the family business.
It is not surprising that Schindler took a fancy to Emilie. Her early 
photographs show a  beautiful woman. Her widowed father, a "gentleman 
farmer" and a man of  wealth, disapproved of his daughter's marriage to 
Oskar Schindler, knowing well his reputatio n. Schindler's father also 
opposed the  marriage, believing his son too young and the betrothal 
too sudden.
After a six week courtship, the two were married. At a young age, 
Schindler was long accustomed to getting what he wanted. Emilie's 
father refused to give Schindler the traditional dowry, a bitter point 
with  the son-in-law.  The marriage became rocky aft er a short while, 
as Schindler resumed his drinking and womanizing.
Oskar Schindler and Emilie did not have children, but Schindler had two 
children outside of the marriage.
If Schindler's youth had been one of privileges, the privileges did not 
include a warm and loving relationship between his parents. In 1935, 
the Schindler factory went bankrupt due to the worldwide depression 
triggered by Wall Street's collapse in 1929. J ust as economic disaster 
struck the family business, Schindler's father abandoned his wife. 
Schindler's mother died not long after his father left home.
The family business in ruins, Schindler became a salesman for another 
machinery company, a job that took him to nearby Poland. Though raised 
in privileged circumstances,  young Oskar had made little of his life. 
He was known as a delightful personality, b ut not a serious person. 
The thought of work made him tired. He slept late, had a roving eye for 
beautiful women, and could not decline a drink.

WORLD WAR I

The First World War (1914-1918) dealt a crippling blow to the 
privileged status of the Schindler family in Zwittau. At the end of the 
war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, and several newly 
independent nations emerged, including Hungary, Poland, and 
Czechoslovakia. Old ethnic hatreds intensified. The Schindler family, 
and the other Germans in the new Czechoslovakia, became a minority 
group within the nation dominated by the Czechs.
It was a stunning reversal of fortune. Oskar Schindler was ten years 
old.
The German minority in Czechoslovakia  was accorded limited cultural 
and political rights by the Prague government, but resentment towards 
the new Czechoslovak state was always present. It could not have been 
otherwise. The lord does not become a subject with grace and 
equanimity. The best jobs in government now went to the Czechs as 
formerly the best jobs had gone to the Germans. The hard feelings 
between the two people intensified following the world depression in 
1929 and Hitler's seizure of power in n eighboring Germany in 1933.

THE RISE OF HITLER

Many Sudeten Germans became ardent Nazis because of their resentment 
towards the Czechs, whom they viewed as an inferior people, a notch 
above the Poles, two notches above the Jews. Living so close to the 
German Reich yet not a part of it, these Sudeten G ermans, in 
compensation, often became more nationalistic than the average German.
Out of this dissatisfaction and bitterness emerged the Sudeten German 
Party under Konrad Henlein, himself a Sudeten German. Henlein, later 
one of the most brutal Nazis, was a disciple of Hitler and took his 
orders directly from the Fuehrer's chancellery i n Berlin. Oskar 
Schindler, who at the time was working as a salesman in the 
Sudetenland, joined the Sudeten German Party. His finely tailored suits 
now sported a Henlein badge in the lapel.
The author Keneally suggests that Schindler joined the Henlein party 
less for political reasons than for reasons of personal advancement. 
After all, very few Sudeten Germans did not join, or at least support, 
Henlein's party. "All things being equal," Ken eally writes, "when you 
went in to see a German company manager wearing the (Henlein) badge, 
you got the order."
The reader of Keneally's book might be led to believe that Schindler 
was interested not so much in politics as he was in profit; that he was 
an opportunist of the first order. However close to the mark, the 
argument  too easily dismisses the very genuine appeal Hitler exerted 
upon the Sudeten Germans, Schindler included.
There was a great deal about Hitler's program that resonated in the 
soul of the Sudeten German. Hitler promised to restore the Reich to its 
former glory. He pledged to end unemployment and usher in a new era of 
economic prosperity and security. He vowed t o destroy the communists. 
And he offered a scapegoat for Germany's problems: The Jews. It was a 
rare Sudeten German who did not respond to Hitler's message.
Schindler's wife, Emilie,  was one of them. She despised the Nazis from 
the start. According to Keneally, she believed "simply that the man 
(Hitler) would be punished for making himself God." Schindler's father 
also despised the Nazis, but because he sens ed that they would lose 
the war Hitler intended to launch.
His silent dissent was more practical than moral.

THE MUNICH CONFERENCE

On September 30, 1938, Hitler signed the Munich Pact with 
representatives of England and France, which forced Czechoslovakia to 
cede the German populated Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. The two Western 
democracies, which had been allies of  democratic Czecho slovakia, 
sought to "appease" Hitler's ambitions by abandoning the Central 
European nation. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain described 
this as "peace in our time, peace with honor." Ultimately, appeasement 
failed, and the term "Munich" has come to symbolize betrayal.
When the German army occupied the Sudetenland, the local German 
populace greeted it rapturously. The Czechs and the Jews of the region, 
however, were less enthusiastic. Almost immediately they were expelled 
and their property confiscated. The Nazi Aktion was conducted with 
characteristic brutality, and Schindler, according to Keneally, was 
repulsed by the Nazis' behavior.
But  moral indignation did not interfere with opportunity. After all, 
he quickly joined the Nazi Party and began wearing the Nazi swastika on 
his lapel. In the late autumn of 1938, Schindler joined the Abwehr 
(German military intelligence). Schindler was an ideal operative, a 
bon-vivant who could strike up a conversation with anyone, preferably 
in a bar. He travelled frequently to Poland on business and returned 
with information about Poland's military preparedness. It is noteworthy 
that Schindler's Abweh r membership excused him from active military 
service.

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

In the early morning hours of September 1, 1939, the Second World War 
began with the German attack on Poland. The Poles, valiant but 
disorganized, their army utterly antiquated, were quickly overwhelmed 
by the German tactics of "blitzkreig" or "lightning war." This new type 
of warfare involved close coordination between the German tanks 
(panzers) and the air force (Luftwaffe). The effect was devastating in 
Poland, as it would be a year later in France and two years later on 
the steppes of Russia.
On September 6, 1939, German armored forces captured the southern 
Polish city of Krakow, the ancient seat of Polish kings. Shortly 
thereafter the Nazis established in Krakow their government for 
Nazi-occupied Poland, known as the General-Government. Hans Frank, 
Hitler's longtime lawyer, became Reichsfuehrer of the 
General-Government and  immediately issued a decree for the "voluntary 
departure" of all but the "economically indispensable" Jews. He could 
not abide the thought of Germans breathing the same a ir as Jews.
In the wake of the German army, Oskar Schindler arrived in Krakow. A 
Sudeten-German businessman, a member of the Nazi Party, and a failure 
in life, Schindler was determined to reverse his fortunes in 
Nazi-occupied Poland.
He was thirty-one years old.


SCHINDLER DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

I knew the people who worked for me. When you know people, you have to 
behave towards them like human beings.

--Oskar Schindler

When the Nazis seized power in Germany, unlike the Communists in 
Russia, they did not completely abolish private enterprise.  Hitler, 
who viewed life in terms of a pseudo-Darwinist "struggle of survival," 
believed that the "captains of industry" were at the top of their 
professions because they had demonstrated the greatest ability and 
ruthlessness. As a result, the Nazis not only preserved elements of the 
private sector but used those elements to the advantage of the Nazi 
state.

PRIVATE BUSINESSMAN

During the Second World War, private businessmen like Oskar Schindler 
operated factories in Nazi-occupied Poland, exploiting both Polish 
labor and Jewish slave labor for the benefit of both the German war 
machine and  (not coincidentally) the factory owners.

Arriving in Krakow during the first week of the Second World War, 
Schindler quickly won the friendship of key officers in both the SS 
(Nazi elite) and the Wehrmacht (German army). He won their friendship 
by his unusually personable manner and by his seemingly inexhaustible 
supply of desired goods: cognac, cigars, coffee, and women. Most of 
these items Schindler obtained from the thriving black market in Krakow.

True to his roots in the old Habsburg Empire, Schindler knew how to 
make a bribe seem like an act of friendship. His friends in high places 
would assure Schindler a steady flow of army contracts. Now Schindler 
had to locate a factory to produce the desired goods.

For this he turned to the Jews.

THE POLISH JEWS

When the Second World War began in 1939, three and a half million Jews 
lived in Poland, fully ten percent of the population. Krakow was home 
to 56,000 Jews, a size equal to that of the entire Jewish population of 
Italy. The majority of the Polish Jews were utterly impoverished, as 
were the Poles. But the relatively few wealthy Jews, and the 
omnipresent Jewish store on the corner, gave rise to the generalization 
that the Jews were "rich." At the same time, however, the Jews were 
identified with communism, although most of the Polish Jews were 
Orthodox and far removed from the atheist world of communism.

Under the fairly benevolent rule of the Austrians before the First 
World War, Krakow had developed a reputation as a "liberal" city. The 
Jews were allowed to pursue their lives with more freedom than in the 
Russian and Prussian  (German) controlled regions of Poland. The Krakow 
Jews were mostly middle class and had lived in Krakow since the early 
14th century. They began speaking Polish (as opposed to Yiddish or 
Hebrew) in the early 19th century. In 1867, Emperor Franz Josef 
ascended the throne in Vienna, and the Jews were permitted to live 
outside the ghetto for the first time. The local Polish and German 
middle classes bitterly protested this relative freedom given to their 
economic competitors.

The Jews of Krakow lived  mostly in Kasmierz, a suburb of the city 
named for 'Kasmierz the Great,' the 14th century Polish king who had 
invited German Jews to Poland at the time of great pogroms (or 
outbursts of  anti-Jewish violence) in the German lands. Kasmierz built 
the Krakow suburb for which he was named, and, more significantly, he 
issued a charter which protected Jewish "liberties." In sharp contrast 
to the abattoir it became, Poland was originally a haven for Jews.

In November 1939, one month into the brutal occupation that would last 
five years, the Nazis issued a decree demanding that all Jews over the 
age of nine wear a blue and white armband emblazoned with the Star of 
David. Thus, the first step in the destruction of the Jews had been 
taken.

ARYANIZATION

In Poland, the Nazis quickly expropriated Jewish businesses. Through a 
process termed "Aryanization," Jewish property was sold to "Aryans" 
(i.e., Germans) for a considerably reduced price. The Jews, of course, 
had no right to protest this virtual confiscation.

In this manner, Schindler located a formerly Jewish-owned factory on 
the outskirts of Krakow, which, after retooling, would produce enamel 
pots and pans and, later, in 1941, munitions. Through the good graces 
of his high ranking friends and with the usual bribes, Schindler won 
lucrative contracts to supply his kitchenware to the German army.

The name of Schindler's factory was Deutsche Email Fabrik, or Emalia. 
The building still stands and is occupied by another factory. Since the 
film, it has become a tourist mecca, to the bewilderment of local Poles 
who see it as just another soot covered building in a soot covered city.

ITZHAK STERN

Having found a Jewish factory, Schindler next located the capital 
necessary to purchase it and to get operations underway. His key 
contact was a Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern (played by Ben Kingsley 
in the film).

According to Stern's postwar recollection, he immediately recognized 
that Schindler was that rare item in Nazi-occupied Poland: The "good" 
German. When Schindler commented that it must be hard to be a priest 
during times like these, when life did not have "the value of a pack of 
cigarettes," Stern seized the moment to recite the Talmudic verse: "He 
who saves one life, it is as if he has saved the entire world." 
Schindler replied, "Of course, of course."

Keneally writes, "Itzhak, rightly or wrongly, always believed that it 
was at that moment that he had dropped the right seed in the furrow."

The influence of Itzhak Stern is of decisive importance in 
understanding Schindler's evolution from war-profiteer to rescuer of 
Jews. When Stern was buried in 1969, Schindler stood at the graveside, 
crying like a child.

Stern was the first person to inform Schindler that Jewish slave labor 
cost less than Polish labor. Schindler, with an eye towards a profit, 
recognized the advantage of Jewish labor. Thus began his relationship 
with the Jews. He would be Herr Direktor, they would be his employees. 
He would always have a kind word for them. In the end, he would save 
many of them from annihilation.

The first indication that Schindler was of a different breed came on 
December 3, 1939. He whispered less than ambiguous words into Stern's 
ear: "Tomorrow, it's going to start. Jozefa and Izaaka Streets are 
going to know all about it." Talk like this was highly dangerous. 
Coming from a German, it was bewildering.

Jozefa and Izaaka Streets were located in Kazimierz, the Jewish 
quarter. Here,  the SS staged a terror-filled Aktion or "strike" the 
next day, beating, humiliating, robbing, and killing Jews in a 
seemingly haphazard manner.

Schindler had taken a first step, however tenuous, towards rescue.

WAR-PROFITEER

To get the ball rolling, Stern introduced Schindler to a group of 
wealthy Krakow Jews. These Jews had managed to retain their wealth 
despite the Nazis' best efforts to seize it. With few options, these 
Jews invested their capital in Schindler's factory, but with the 
provision that they would work in the factory and, apparently, be 
spared the uncertain future (which, in the film, Schindler bluntly and 
indeed cruelly cites in order to strengthen his bargaining position).

Schindler, who arrived in Krakow with little more than his natural 
panache and the swastika on his lapel, had acquired a Jewish factory, 
Jewish capital, Jewish labor, and Jewish expertise, all with very 
little if any personal investment.

"You have done well here," Emilie tells her husband (in the film) when 
she arrives in Krakow for a short visit. "Always before there was 
something missing," he says, explaining his lack of financial success 
prior to September 1, 1939. "Luck?" she asks naively. "No," he replies. 
"War."

Schindler was the quintessential war-profiteer. Initially, he was able 
to overlook the dehumanized condition of the Jews under Nazi rule. He 
was interested in profit, and he was not above exploiting the Jews to 
this end.

Spielberg's film focuses on Schindler's evolving relationship with the 
Jews. A central theme emerges: In the pursuit of profit, Schindler 
becomes dependent on the Jews for their expertise--particularly, it 
seems, on Itzhak Stern--and as he becomes dependent upon the Jews, 
Schindler begins to know them as human beings. They appear to be quite 
different from the Nazi propaganda's depiction of Jews as "vermin" and 
as "rats." Schindler has a financial investment in his Jewish workers, 
but at the same time he develops an investment in them as human beings.

Twenty years after the war, with the benefit of hindsight, Schindler 
explained his rescue of Jews this way: "I knew the people who worked 
for me. When you know people, you have to behave towards them like 
human beings."

On another occasion, Schindler described his behavior differently: 
"There was no choice. If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, 
wouldn't you help him?"

THE KRAKOW GHETTO

On March 3, 1941, the Nazis established a Jewish ghetto--an area into 
which Jews were segregated--in Podgorze, a suburb of Krakow across the 
Vistula River. A wall was constructed to enclose the ghetto, and the 
Jews watched ominously as the wall was shaped in the form of  Jewish 
grave stones. The ghetto comprised three hundred and twenty apartment 
buildings into which a Jewish population of about seventeen thousand 
was crammed. The rest of the Jews in Krakow had already been expelled 
to the neighboring countryside. The overcrowding in the ghetto was 
severe, as families were forced to live together in cramped apartments. 
This contributed significantly to Jewish demoralization, a key German 
tactic.

Fearing for the safety of the Jews, Stern implored Schindler to hire 
more Jewish workers. Schindler agreed.

When the Jewish workers arrived at his factory, Schindler told them, 
much to their astonishment: "You'll be safe working here. If you work 
here, then you'll live through the war."
One of the remarkable witnesses to the horror of the Krakow ghetto was 
a Polish Catholic, Tadeusz Pankiewicz (pronounced Ta-de-ush 
Pan-ke-ie-vitsch). Pankiewicz managed to keep his pharmacy operating in 
the Krakow ghetto presumably because the Germans feared the outbreak of 
typhus and believed that a modicum of medicines administered to the 
ghetto inhabitants would keep the disease at a distance. Ironically,  
the German fear of disease was one of the few weapons available to the 
Jews.

Pankiewicz wrote of Schindler's factory, "The Jews there were treated 
humanely."

THE JUDENRAT AND THE GHETTO POLICE

One of the first directives the Nazis issued was for the establishment 
of a Judenrat, or a Jewish Council. This was the device the Nazis 
utilized for governing the ghetto. When the Nazis issued a decree, the 
Judenrat implemented it. The Nazis established a Judenrat in all the 
Jewish localities in Poland, and its role during the German occupation 
is controversial in the extreme. Some view it as a traitorous extension 
of the Nazi machinery of death, while others believe the Judenrat did 
its best to alleviate Jewish suffering in an impossible situation.

In Krakow, the Judenrat, initially comprising twenty-four eminent 
members of the prewar Jewish leadership, was located in the main police 
station under the supervision of the Gestapo.

The director of the Judenrat in Krakow was Dr. Arthur Rosenzweig, a 
lawyer with an impeccable reputation. At the time of the first 
deportation of Krakow Jews in June 1942, Rosenzweig refused to do the 
Nazis' bidding, and as a result he and his family were placed on the 
transport to the Belzec death camp. The Germans subsequently found a 
compliant Judenrat director, David Gutter.

The Germans also created a ghetto police force, the so-called "OD" or 
"Ordnungsdienst," meaning "the service for keeping order." The 
commander of the ghetto police was Symcha Spira, a classic psychopath 
whom the Germans dressed up in an immaculate uniform festooned with all 
sorts of ridiculous insignia. Spira carried out the Nazi orders blindly 
and with ruthless zeal.

As portrayed in the film, the Jewish police were distinguished by their 
coats buttoned to the neck and by their truncheons which they swung 
ruthlessly. In the futile effort to save their own lives and the lives 
of their families, the Jewish police assisted the Nazis in rounding up 
Ghetto Jews for deportation. Not all of the Jewish police were 
scoundrels. When the Krakow ghetto was "liquidated" in March 1943, two 
policemen defied German orders and helped Jewish mothers smuggle their 
children into the Plaszow camp.

The Judenrat members and Jewish police were ultimately murdered by the 
Nazis, who wanted no witnesses. The Judenrat and the "OD" had earned 
the privilege of being the last to die.

THE CHILD IN RED

In June 1942, Schindler inadvertently witnessed an Aktion in the Krakow 
ghetto. The Aktionen were Nazi "strikes" on the ghetto to round up Jews 
for deportation to the death camps. They were meticulously planned and 
usually the Nazis were assisted by their foreign collaborators 
(Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian) and by local collaborators 
(Polish "blue" police and Jewish ghetto police).

At the time, Schindler and his mistress were out for a pleasant 
horseback ride on a hilltop when the macabre Aktion opened directly 
below them. Astonished by the Nazi ferocity, Schindler's eye was drawn 
to a little girl clad in red who, alone, stood out from the mass of 
Jews being herded to the trains and to their death.

In Spielberg's otherwise black and white film, this child's coat 
appears in red, making her stand out all the more. The important 
question is: Why?

Many years later, with a certitude perhaps bolstered by distance, 
Schindler looked back on this Aktion and 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."

"ESSENTIAL WORKERS"

The Jews  who were deemed "essential workers" for the German war 
effort, including the Jews who worked for Schindler, were temporarily 
spared deportation.

In the early years of the Second World War, the Germans waged a fierce 
debate among themselves regarding the fate of the "essential 
worker"-Jews. Hitler and the hard-core Nazis wanted to destroy all of 
the Jews, but the less ideological Nazis, with many German businessmen 
as their allies, argued that it was impractical to murder a people 
whose labor was absolutely essential to the war effort (and to their 
own profits).

Ironically, there were some SS officers who also chimed in on behalf of 
the "essential-workers." If all of the Jews were destroyed and the 
camps liquidated, the SS rightly feared they would have nothing to do 
in occupied-Poland and would be sent to fight on the Russian Front. 
Much to the relief of the German industrialists, the SS, and, not 
least, the Jews, Hitler begrudgingly agreed to spare the Jewish 
"essential workers," but only for the time being. As SS leader Heinrich 
Himmler noted in September 1942, "One day even these Jews must 
disappear, in accordance with the Fuehrer's wish."

On March 13, 1943, at the time of the final "liquidation" of the Krakow 
ghetto, the Jewish "essential workers" in Krakow were sent to the labor 
camp at Plaszow. It was constructed just outside of Krakow on the 
grounds of two uprooted Jewish cemeteries. Jewish tombstones were used 
as pavement slabs by the Germans.

"RESETTLEMENT"

On June 2, 1942, the first deportation, or "resettlement," from the 
Krakow ghetto began. The Germans planted the rumor that the ghetto was 
too crowded and the Jews not fit for labor had to be removed. It seemed 
a plausible explanation. The ghetto was overcrowded.
Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the Polish pharmacist in the Krakow ghetto, 
witnessed the June 1942 deportations. In his book, The Krakow Ghetto 
Pharmacy, he wrote, "The nightmare began. Like apparitions in a horror 
novel, they [the Jews] moved with faltering steps, carrying all their 
possessions on their weary backs, as heavy as the tragic burden of the 
fate they were facing."

The deportation lasted three days, until the morning of June 4, 1942. 
The heat  was unbearable. "Fire seemed to fall from the skies," 
Pankiewicz wrote. And the Germans were brutal beyond their usual 
standards. "Apparently blood exacerbated their bestial and sadistic 
instincts."

During the first deportation from Krakow, seven thousand Jews were sent 
by train to the Belzec death camp in eastern Poland. In this early 
stage of the destruction process, the Jews had no idea what awaited 
them.

On October 28, 1942, the Nazis struck the Krakow ghetto a second time. 
Pankiewicz writes, "It was a beautiful, almost spring-like day, the 
cloudless sky reminded one of the time of the June deportations." The 
Nazis informed the ghetto that only "essential workers" would be spared 
deportation. The Jews desperately tried to secure for themselves a 
"blue card" denoting  status as an "essential worker." It held the 
illusion of survival. Not infrequently, the Jew clasping a "blue card" 
was also sent to the trains. The Germans operated in a brutal fashion 
that was both methodical and whimsical.

Like the June deportations, the Nazis removed seven thousand Jews from 
the ghetto. Pankiewicz wrote, "Everything was done to remove valuable 
objects, destroy and burn them, so that they would not fall into German 
hands." Six hundred Jews were shot on the spot. "The Spartan like 
silence of the victims drove them (the Germans) crazy." The Jews 
rounded up in the second deportation were also sent to the Belzec death 
camp.

THE DEATH CAMPS

In the early stages of the destruction process, the Jews did not know 
that death awaited them. Shrewdly, the Nazis explained that the Jews 
were being "resettled" further to the east. There were rumors of work 
camps in Ukraine. This was a deliberate effort by the Germans to hide 
their murderous intent. German and Polish railroad employees partook of 
the charade, explaining to apprehensive Jews that comfortable 
facilities awaited them at the end of the line. "Only the young will 
have to work," the rumors said.

Today, fifty years later, it is relatively easy to conjure up images of 
the death camps. We have the Nazi example before us. In 1942, however, 
who could imagine that "the nation of philosophers and poets" was 
capable of building an assembly line of death?

News of the death camps reached Krakow in November 1942, after the two 
waves of deportations were complete. A female relative wrote a letter 
to a Jewish doctor in Krakow who was "passing" as a Polish Christian 
outside the ghetto on the so-called Aryan side. She was living in Lvov, 
the present-day capital of Ukraine. Her train trip to Lvov had taken 
her by the Belzec death camp, which was located on a main railroad 
line. This letter was the first confirmation of what hitherto had only 
been rumored: The Jews were being physically destroyed.
In a 1994 interview, Emilie Schindler said, "At first we knew nothing 
about the Jews. Eventually everyone in Krakow knew that they were 
killing Jews. My God, how could we not know?"

Still, the general belief in the ghetto affirmed the possibility of 
survival: "Whoever endures will live." Miriam Peleg-Marianska, a young 
Jewish woman "passing" as a Christian in Krakow, has written that 
"hopeful rumors" were "shared by the Jews like bread by the starving."

MARCH 13, 1943

The final "liquidation" of the Krakow ghetto occurred on March 13, 
1943. It was conducted with characteristic Nazi brutality. "The German 
proclivity for viciousness," Panankiewicz wrote, "was limitless." The 
last of the Krakow Jews were either deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau or, 
if deemed "essential workers," they were sent to the Plaszow labor camp 
outside of Krakow.

The Germans tried to prevent Jewish parents from smuggling their 
children to Plaszow, but nonetheless three hundred children reached the 
camp.

Even in this late hour, many of the Jews still "deluded themselves," 
according to Pankiewicz, "that they might live, that the papers would 
be needed, reactions similar to the death twitches and convulsive 
quivering of a hanged man."

The Schindlerjuden who were living in a sub-camp at Schindler's enamel 
factory were allowed to remain there . . . for the time-being. 
Schindler had doubtless resorted to the usual means of bribery to 
prevent the "liquidation" of his camp.

Many German industrialists using Jewish slave labor in Krakow went to 
great lengths to have these workers excluded from deportation. 
Panankiewicz writes, "Occasionally there were cases of sincere sympathy 
and willingness to help individual Jews, as I could judge from the 
stories of those directly concerned. Usually, each of the Germans acted 
in his own interests because the loss of workers and first class 
specialists could cause the liquidation of the shop, resulting in 
consignment of the manager to the front. Each was interested, 
therefore, in protecting his Jews from deportation."

At this stage of the destruction process, where did Schindler stand? 
Was he interested in saving "his" Jews for humanitarian reasons? Or was 
he interested in saving them for reasons of profit? Or both?

JEWISH RESISTANCE

In the autumn of 1942, the Jewish Fighting Organization, known by its 
acronym ZOB, emerged. It had secret cells in several Polish cities, 
including Krakow. The Jewish resistance in Krakow comprised members of 
the prewar Zionist youth movement Akiba. Its leaders were Adolf  
Liebeskind, Simon Draenger and his wife Gusta Dawidsohn,  Maniek 
Eisenstein, and Abraham Leibowicz.

Abika purchased a handful of weapons on the black market. They also 
received weapons from the small Polish communist resistance movement 
known as the People's Guard. The major Polish resistance movement, the 
Home Army, or "AK," was largely unfriendly to Jews and, in any event, 
was weak in the Krakow region.

The first action of the Jewish fighters in Krakow occurred in August 
1942 when they derailed a military train between Krakow and Bochnia. 
Lacking explosives, the Jews simply unscrewed the rails. In September, 
the Jewish fighters killed a number of  lone German soldiers on the 
streets of Krakow and added to Akiba's fledgling stockpile of weapons. 
They also assassinated the German director of the Price Control and 
Price Administration Board in Nazi-occupied Poland. His death caused 
quite a stir in the Krakow region, although the Germans said he died in 
a car accident.

The Jewish resistance in Krakow also published two clandestine 
newspapers, one of which was the "Hekhalutz Halokhem" ("The Fighting 
Pioneer").  One issue exhorted the Jews to flee from the ghettoes 
because "each flight from the executioner's hands is today a fighting 
action. We must make it difficult for him to carry out his work of 
extermination. Do not lay your own head on the block."

In October 1942, Akiba members dug a tunnel into a German garage and 
set fire to several military vehicles. On November 2, 1942, the Jewish 
fighters attempted to assassinate Marcel Gruner, a Jewish informer 
working for the Gestapo. The attempt failed, but a second attempt did 
not.

On December 22, 1942, in one of the first and most spectacular 
guerrilla actions in Poland during the war, Jewish fighters bombed the 
coffee house Cyganerja and two other cafes which were frequented by 
German officers. At the Cyganerja, eleven Germans were killed and 
thirteen others seriously wounded. The Jews also attacked an officers' 
mess, but apparently the bomb did not explode, and, according to the 
German account, the Jews "tried to achieve their aims by using 
firearms."

Hitler was enraged by the Jewish actions in  the capital of the 
General-Gouvernment, and he ordered the high-ranking Gestapo agent, 
Heinrich Mueller, to Krakow. The Nazi manhunt for the resistance 
fighters was merciless, and virtually the entire ZOB organization in 
Krakow was wiped out. As a result of betrayal by two  ZOB members,  
Leibowicz, dressed in the uniform of a German officer, was captured. 
The Gestapo pounced on Judah Tenenbaum, but the Jewish fighter snatched 
a German's pistol and killed him before being felled by machine-gun 
fire. The Abika leader Liebeskind was surrounded by German police. He 
killed two Germans and wounded two others before being shot himself. 
The other Jews who were captured later escaped from a truck driving 
them to the site of their execution at Plaszow. Eventually, they were 
hunted down and slaughtered.

"We are fighting for three lines in the history books," Liebeskind said 
a few weeks before his death. His wife, Rivka, escaped from Krakow with 
several other Jewish fighters, hoping, as she later said, "to set up 
hideouts, to work in forests, and to enable Jews to hide --because they 
still hoped that the war would end." The aim, she said, "was to save at 
least someone to relate our story."

For eight months in 1942-'43, the Jewish resistance waged urban 
guerrilla warfare against the Germans in the very heart of the 
Nazi-occupied Poland.

ZEGOTA

In December 1942, the Council for Aid to the Jews, known clandestinely 
as Zegota, was established in Warsaw. This small, highly unique Polish  
organization was dedicated to saving the remnant of Polish Jewry. With 
a handful of courageous and indefatigable workers, Zegota provided 
funds to Jews in hiding, produced false documents, smuggled food and 
other goods into the Nazi camps, and rescued an estimated 2,500 Jewish 
children by hiding them in Catholic orphanages and convents.

Zegota was founded by Zofia Kossack, a prewar novelist and a member of 
the wartime Catholic organization, "Front for the Rebirth of Poland." 
In September 1942, Kossack issued an illegal leaflet which decried both 
the annihilation of the Jews and the silence of the Poles, and which, 
at the same time, demonstrated that even those who acted to rescue Jews 
were not without the anti-Semitic sentiments deeply imbedded in the 
cultural milieu. Kossack wrote:

Our feeling toward the Jews has not changed. We continue to deem them 
political, economic, and ideological enemies of Poland . . . But we 
protest from the bottom of our hearts filled with pity, indignation, 
and horror. This protest is demanded of us by God, who does not allow 
us to kill. It is demanded by our Christian conscience . . . Who does 
not support the protest with us, is not a Catholic.

Kossack, who employed her children in Zegota's rescue efforts, was 
suspected of resistance activities by the Germans and sent to 
Auschwitz. They did not suspect that her activities included the rescue 
of Jews, or she would have been executed forthwith. In the end, Kossack 
was ransomed out of Auschwitz by her friends, whereupon she resumed her 
efforts on behalf of the relatively few Jews left alive in Poland.

In April 1943, Zegota opened a secret office in Krakow. It was directed 
by Stanislaw Dobrowolski, a member of the Socialist Party. He helped 
find sanctuary for Jewish children and was also instrumental in 
smuggling food and clothing into the Plaszow camp. Later, he helped 
direct the smuggling of goods into Schindler's factory at Brunnlitz, 
Czechoslovakia.

Dobrowolski's opinion of Schindler was scathing. He described the 
businessman as "a benefactor out of fear," one of the many 
war-profiteers in Krakow "who had for long years employed for a token 
fee the slave labor supplied by the camp commandant and, toward the end 
of the war, when at last they took alarm, let themselves be terrorized 
to the point of acting as intermediaries in smuggling whole cart-loads 
of bread and clogs, purchased by Zegota," into the Plaszow camp.

AMON GOETH

The SS officer Amon Goeth (pronounced Gert) commanded the Plaszow labor 
camp. He had orchestrated the final "liquidation" of the Krakow ghetto 
as well as the ghettoes in several provincial towns, including  nearby 
Tarnow. Goeth had additional experience at three death camps in eastern 
Poland, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1908, Goeth came from a family 
well-established in the printing industry, and he hailed from that 
nation which supplied an inordinately large number of Nazi criminals to 
the destruction process. The long list includes Adolf Eichmann, the SS 
officer who organized the deportation of Jews from all of Europe to the 
death camps in Poland (and who was executed by the Israelis in 1962 
after being captured and smuggled out of Argentina).

"I knew Goeth," said Anna Duklauer Perl, a Jewish survivor. "One day he 
hung a friend of mine just because he had once been rich. He was the 
devil."

Pankiewicz observed Goeth at work in the Krakow ghetto: "Tall, 
handsome, heavy set with thin legs, head in proportion, and eyes of 
blue, he was about forty years old. He was dressed in a black leather 
coat, held a riding crop in one hand and a short automatic rifle in the 
other; close to him were two huge dogs."

"When you saw Goeth, you saw death," said Poldek Pfefferberg, one of 
the Schindlerjuden.

THE BUREAUCRATS

As a Nazi, Goeth was both typical yet unusual. Sadists abounded in 
Nazi-occupied Poland, but they could not have done their work without 
the countless and faceless "desk-bound murderers" who enjoyed the 
warmth of an office in Berlin (and elsewhere), had emotionally stable 
family lives, and never set foot into a concentration camp.

The bureaucrats, comprising every branch of the German civil service, 
arranged for the expropriation of Jewish property. They scheduled the 
trains taking the Jews to the death camps, as though they were a 
trainload of vacationing Germans bound for Italy or the Greek islands. 
They arranged for the delivery of the Jewish property to bombed-out 
German civilians, including bloodstained clothing. They took orders. 
They issued decrees.

Organized murder on so vast a scale as implemented by the Nazis 
required teamwork. The bureaucrats were team players, as integral to 
the murder of Jews as Goeth himself. The majority of the government 
bureaucrats in Nazi Germany had been at their jobs long before the 
Nazis seized power in 1933. Indeed, relatively few were members of the 
Nazi Party.

The impassive bureaucrats share responsibility for the Holocaust. For 
the victims, there was no difference between Goeth and his 
administrative accomplices.

The sadist murders with his hands, the bureaucrat with his pen.

THE GOETH-SCHINDLER RELATIONSHIP

Initially, the Schindlerjuden were allowed to live in a sub-camp at 
Schindler's factory. In August 1944 they were forced to move to the 
Plaszow labor camp. According to Keneally, Schindler befriended Goeth 
for the purpose of protecting his workers and keeping his profits 
rolling in. After all, the murder of the Jews meant the end of his 
thriving business. The exact nature of the Schindler-Goeth relationship 
is unknown, but it is not implausible that Schindler and Goeth were 
friends. Schindler enjoyed friendly relations with the top SS and 
Gestapo people in Krakow. He spent virtually all of his time in the 
company of murderers.

After the war, when Schindler was visiting some of the Schindlerjuden 
in Israel, a journalist asked,  "How do you explain the fact that you 
knew all the senior SS men in the Krakow region and had regular 
dealings with them?" Schindler answered evasively with characteristic 
wit : "At that stage in history, it was rather difficult to discuss the 
fate of Jews with the chief rabbi of Jerusalem."

A great many of the Nazis were susceptible to bribery, Goeth among 
them. Feathering his nest, Schindler plied Goeth with money and the 
usual variety of black market goods. The SS arrested Goeth in September 
1944, charging him with theft of Jewish property (which 'belonged to' 
the Reich and should have been forwarded to Berlin). After the war, on 
September 13, 1945, Goeth was hung  by Polish authorities at the site 
of the former camp at Plaszow. He died unrepentant.

In a 1994 interview, Helen Rosenzweig, a Jewish woman whom Goeth chose 
as one of his personal servants, remembered Schindler as a frequent 
guest at Goeth's villa overlooking Plaszow. "He was a jolly, kind man 
and he liked to drink. Many times he would come into the kitchen and 
with a smile on his face he would pat my hair and say, 'Don't worry. I 
will take care of you. You will be free. You will get rid of this 
hell.' He called me 'kindchen,' which in German means 'little child.' I 
couldn't make him out."

"JUDENFREI"

In July 1943, the Nazis declared the region of Selisia in southern 
Poland  to be "Judenfrei" or "Free of Jews." In fact, a remanent of 
Polish Jewry survived in a handful of labor camps, Plaszow among them.

As the Soviet armies advanced from the east towards Poland, Hitler 
ordered the extermination of the hitherto protected "essential worker." 
In effect, Hitler decided that it was more important for the Jews to be 
destroyed than it was for the essential war factories to continue 
operating. The war against the Jews took precedent over that against 
the Allies.

In the summer of 1944, trains deporting the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz 
received right-of-way over war transports to the Russian front. Indeed, 
Auschwitz's most lethal period was during the last months of the war 
when the German army was retreating on all fronts and Allied bombs were 
daily falling on the Reich.

Once the tide had changed, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of 
their killing. At death camps like Belzec, Treblinka, and Sobibor, the 
Nazis ordered commandos of Jewish slaves to unearth the thousands upon 
thousands of bodies that been buried. The bodies were burned in huge 
bonfires (as depicted in the film). Pine forests were planted where the 
gas chambers had stood, and a Ukrainian guard was stationed in the 
vicinity to prevent local Poles and Ukrainians from uprooting the 
remains in search of the fabled "Jewish gold."

In the effort to destroy the evidence of their work, the Nazis were the 
first Holocaust-deniers. In an October 1943 speech, the SS leader 
Heinrich Himmler acknowledged that the German people themselves would 
not understand the murder of millions of Jews.

THE "LIST"

On September 4, 1944, as the Eastern Front crumbled and the Soviet Red 
Army approached Krakow, the Nazis closed the Jewish camp at Schindler's 
factory. The Schindlerjuden were sent to Plaszow. On October 15, 1944, 
Plaszow itself was "liquidated." It was at this point that Schindler 
established his "list." Hitherto, Schindler's actions on behalf of Jews 
had been subtle and the result of self-interest. In the autumn of 1944, 
that changed.

Determined to save his Jewish workers from extermination, Schindler 
bribed Goeth to send the Schindlerjuden to a new factory that Schindler 
planned to establish at Brunnlitz in Czechoslovakia, near his hometown 
of Zwittau. The site was directly over the Sudeten mountains from 
Auschwitz-Birkenau.

To strengthen his argument, Schindler insisted that his Schindlerjuden 
were needed to build  the "secret weapons" that Hitler had promised 
would win the war. It was a clever argument; many Germans held out the 
hope that the Fuehrer would produce yet another miracle.

Schindler's "list" comprised the names of the Jewish workers who were 
ostensibly needed to operate Schindler's "war essential" factory. It 
was, in essence, a list of those who would live and, by exclusion, 
those who would not. The Nazis reduced life to a brutal equation: I 
want to live; hence, you must die.

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

The Schindlerjuden were transported by train from Krakow to the new 
factory in Czechoslovakia, but three hundred Jewish women were 
mistakenly routed to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The rescue 
of these Jewish women has never been satisfactorily explained. After 
the war, in 1949, Schindler and Stern told a journalist that the women 
had been sent to Gross-Rosen, a concentration camp in eastern Germany. 
In his book, Keneally acknowledges that the entire affair is clouded 
with uncertainty.

To effect the rescue, Schindler had resorted to bribery. It is not 
unreasonable to suspect that Schindler dealt with Nazi officials who, 
recognizing that the war was coming to an end, were determined to 
fatten their wallets prior to escaping to South America.  The Nazi 
criminals who were so efficient at killing an unarmed people were also 
remarkably efficient in making good their post-war escape, an escape 
financed by the wealth of those they had murdered.

In any event, Schindler did rescue these women from a Nazi camp, a fact 
to which many of the women have testified. That "was something nobody 
else did," said Johnathan Dresner, a Tel Aviv dentist, whose mother was 
among the rescued.

BRUNNLITZ

The Jews who arrived at Schindler's new factory at Brunnlitz numbered 
over a thousand. Schindler also rescued an estimated 85 Jews who had 
been sent from Auschwitz-Birkenau to a nearby Nazi labor camp at 
Golleschau. The Jews were put to work at the factory producing 
munitions, but it is said that Schindler sabotaged the production line 
so that little of any value ever left the factory.

The main problem at Brunnlitz was food. The neighboring German 
community was not in the least bit interested in a Jewish labor camp in 
the vicinity and were loath to share what little food was available 
with the despised Jews.

It is in Brunnlitz that the role of Emilie Schindler became paramount. 
"It was so little that they [the Nazis] gave the people to eat," Emilie 
Schindler said in a 1993 interview. "To everyone, not just the Jews. No 
matter who they were. For everyone it was very little." Emilie recalled 
that within ten days the Jews had consumed their monthly allotment of 
food. For the next twenty days, they had nothing to eat but "air."

Emilie Schindler worked indefatigably to secure food for the Brunnlitz 
camp. Emilie insists that there was much more to Oskar Schindler than 
the altruist depicted in the book and movie. She says that Oskar 
Schindler, who abandoned her after the war, procured no food for the 
camp. "I don't recognize it when he lies. You know, when he says that 
he brought the food? No, nothing did he bring! All the food, I brought! 
. . . All the food that the Jews ate, that the Germans ate, that the SS 
ate, I brought. Not him. He brought nothing."

MAY 8, 1945

On May 8, 1945, the war in Europe ended. Schindler gathered his Jews 
before him. One of them, Murray Pantirer, recalled the words of Herr 
Direktor: "He said, 'Mein kinder (my children), you are saved. Germany 
has lost the war."

A day later, the 1,200 Schindlerjuden were liberated by a lone Russian 
officer on horseback, the vanguard of the Soviet Red Army. The officer, 
who was Jewish, said, "I don't know where you ought to go. Don't go 
east --that much I can tell you. But don't go west either. They don't 
like us anywhere."

Two thirds of European Jewry had been exterminated, and the few words 
spoken by a Russian officer summarized the Jewish lesson of the Second 
World War. Upon those words the nation of Israel was founded.

Before he and Emilie fled west in the direction of American forces 
(dressed in prison garb, under the "protection" of eight 
Schindlerjuden, and with a letter in Hebrew testifying to his 
lifesaving actions), Schindler received a gift from his grateful Jews: 
A ring made from gold fillings extracted from one of the grateful Jews. 
The ring was inscribed with the Talmudic verse: "He who saves one life, 
it is as if he saved the entire world."

The fate of the gold ring symbolized Schindler's frailties and 
contradictions that rendered his heroism even more perplexing. Several 
years after the war, a Schindlerjuden asked him what he had done with 
the gold ring? "Schnapps," Schindler replied, referring to the liquor 
which he had gotten in exchange for the gold ring.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

SCHINDLER AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

If we sent him three thousand to four thousand dollars, he spent it in 
two or three weeks. Then he phoned to say he didn't have a penny.

--Mosche Bejski , a Schindlerjuden

Not unlike before the war, Oskar Schindler's postwar life was 
characterized by a notable lack of achievement. In fact, Schindler was 
a failure in everything he attempted. Immediately after the war, he 
tried to produce a film. The effort failed. In 1949, the Jewish 
Distribution Committee ("Joint") made Schindler an ex gratia payment of 
$15,000 in appreciation of his wartime efforts. In addition, Schindler 
received one hundred thousand marks from the West German government as 
indemnification for his property confiscated by the communists in the 
east.

SOUTH AMERICA

With this tidy sum (and with his wife Emilie, his mistress, and half a 
dozen Schindlerjuden families), Schindler emigrated to Argentina, the 
destination of many former Nazis. There he purchased a farm and tried 
his hand at raising chickens and nutria, the latter a small animal 
whose fur was deemed a luxury item. The effort failed. Nutria fur did 
not become popular, and, in any event, Schindler squandered his money.

What did he spend it on? "Idiocies," said his wife. When Emilie was 
asked what Schindler did for a living, she replied, "Schindler doesn't 
do anything. He just runs around with young women in luxury hotels and 
spends money."

By 1957, a bankrupt Schindler and his wife lived in a house outside of 
Buenos Aires provided by the Jewish organization B'nai B'rith.

RETURN TO WEST GERMANY

In 1958, Schindler left Argentina for West Germany. He never returned, 
abandoning both his wife and mistress. The two became close friends.

"The first thing he did was sell his return ticket," Emilie said. She 
was left in very difficult straits and lost the farm when she was 
unable to pay the mortgage. Emilie then raised dairy cows on a small 
plot of rented land.

With additional money given to him by "Joint" and by grateful Jews, 
Schindler tried to establish a cement factory. It failed. Explaining 
this series of financial debacles, Keneally has written that Schindler 
had "a low tolerance for routine."

In the late 1950's, Schindler lived in a cheap apartment overlooking 
the train station in Frankfurt, West Germany. It was hardly an enviable 
setting for the man accustomed to a beautiful woman on the arm of one 
of his tailored suits. Schindler's life had turned a full circle since 
his glory days in Krakow when he boasted to his wife that he had 350 
employees in contrast to his father who in his heyday had only 50.

Schindler's subsistence was now based on gifts from the grateful Jews 
he saved, and his spirits reflected the reversal of fortune. Poldek 
Pfefferberg, urging the Schindlerjuden to donate at least a day's 
earnings per year to their savior, described Schindler's mental state 
as one of "discouragement, loneliness, disillusion."

One of the Schindlerjuden, Mosche Bejski, the forger of Nazi documents 
who later became an Israeli supreme court justice, said, "If we sent 
him three thousand to four thousand dollars, he spent it in two or 
three weeks. Then he phoned to say he didn't have a penny."

ISRAEL

In 1961, a group of Schindlerjuden invited Schindler to Israel for a 
visit. This was the year that Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who 
organized the deportation of Jews to the death camps, was tried in 
Jerusalem. One of the witnesses against Eichmann was a German civilian 
engineer named Herman Grabbe. He had rescued Jews in Ukraine. Grabbe 
had previously testified against Nazi war criminals at the 
International War Crimes Tribunal at Nuremberg after the war; the 
subsequent publicity caused Grabbe and his family to be ostracized in 
West Germany.

During the Eichmann trial, Grabbe's testimony highlighted the existence 
of the non-Jews who had risked their lives to rescue Jews, a subject 
that hitherto had enjoyed little publicity. In turn, the contrast 
between Eichmann and Schindler, who was then vacationing in Israel, was 
noted by the Israeli press, and an effort began to honor Schindler as a 
Righteous Gentile.

RIGHTEOUS GENTILE

The honor came on his birthday in 1962. Yad Vashem bestowed upon 
Schindler the medal inscribed with the Talmudic verse (in Hebrew and 
French): "He who saves one life, it is as if he saves the entire word." 
In addition, Schindler was invited to plant a carob tree (with a plaque 
bearing his name) on the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.

The surviving Schindlerjuden turned out in great number to honor their 
wartime savior, but, as with Herman Grabbe, reaction in West Germany 
was not exactly cordial.

As with many Righteous Gentiles after the war, Schindler was ostracized 
by many of his countrymen precisely because he had saved Jews. His 
postwar testimony against Nazi war criminals compounded the hatred many 
Germans had for him. Schindler was hissed at on the streets of 
Frankfurt. Stones were thrown at him. "Too bad you didn't burn with the 
Jews!" a group of workmen shouted. In 1963, Schindler punched a factory 
worker who called him "a Jew kisser." Schindler was dragged into a 
local court, given a lecture by the judge, and ordered to pay damages. 
"I would kill myself," Schindler wrote to one of the Schindlerjuden, 
"if it wouldn't give them so much satisfaction."

THE LAST YEARS

Each spring, from 1961 to his death in 1974, the Schindlerjuden invited 
Schindler to Israel. His Jewish friends paid his expenses. Usually 
accompanied by a mistress, Schindler invariably slept late, never 
arising before eleven in the morning. Each day he "held court" with 
friends at a street-side cafe in Tel Aviv.

On April 28th of each year, the Schindlerjuden gathered to celebrate 
Schindler's birthday. He always waited until everybody was seated 
before he made a grand entrance "like a prime minister," as a 
Schindlerjuden recalled. "He loved children. He saw all the children 
and grandchildren of those he had rescued as his own family."

Today, the descendents of the 1,200 Schindlerjuden number 6,000.

Schindler, whose raspy voice and ruddy face were the marks of a 
drunkard, followed his pleasures to the grave. He died of liver failure 
on October 9, 1974, at age sixty-six. At his side was a mistress, this 
time the wife of his doctor.

"One of the church's least observant sons," Keneally writes, was buried 
at the Catholic cemetery in Jerusalem. Five hundred Schindlerjuden 
stood at his grave, paying last respects to the enigmatic man to whom 
they owed their lives.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EMILIE SCHINDLER
AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The Jews he saved, me he abandoned.
-- Emilie Schindler

In a 1994 interview, Helen Rosensweig, a Schindlerjuden, remembered 
Emilie Schindler as "a very quiet, subdued, refined looking lady."

Today Emilie Schindler, age 87, lives in San Vincente, a suburb of 
Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is a one room cottage that the Jewish 
organization B'nai B'rith provides her. Emilie spends the twilight of 
her life taking care of her dog, seventeen stray cats, and a rose 
garden. Her bones ache and she walks slowly. Now, since the film  
Schindler's List, her life has been interrupted by curious journalists. 
"They can make a movie if they like," she said in a December 1993 
interview. "It doesn't interest me. I have been forty-three years in 
Argentina and nobody remembers me . . . I don't remember much myself."

One thing Emilie Schindler does remember is the high-handed manner in 
which her husband abandoned her. In 1957, he decided to return to West 
Germany for a visit, but he never returned. According to Emilie, 
"Schindler was supposed to come back, but I think the first thing he 
did was sell the return ticket. He had mortgaged our farm, so I had to 
sell it off to pay the bills."

Emilie Schindler does not refer to her late husband as "Oskar" but only 
as "Schindler." It is a measure of her contempt. "Schindler never sent 
anything. He spent the money on women."

The world has come to admire Oskar Schindler, but Emilie despises him. 
Was he a saint or the devil? "A saint of the devil," she replied.

The savior of the Jews was a scoundrel: "He did have his things, eh? 
For the Jews he did much, no? But I don't recognize it when he lies."

Schindler was a lazy, self-indulgent man. "With that money," Emilie 
said, referring to Jewish gifts and a payment from the German 
government for lost property, "he could have become rich. He didn't 
want to. Here he had a good job offer. He didn't want that either."

Is she bitter? "People who are no good don't make me mad."

Was there ever happiness in the marriage? "No. People who don't like to 
work, I don't like."

What explains Schindler's rescue efforts on behalf of the Jews? Emilie 
gives credit to the Jews who influenced him. In a 1973 interview, she 
said that Schindler "had done nothing astounding before the war, and 
had been unexceptional since. He was fortunate to have people in that 
short fierce era who summoned forth his deeper talents."

Her opinion of the book? "For a novel, it's awfully clear," Emilie 
says, referring to the depiction of Schindler's promiscuous life-style 
which she believes has no part in the story. She would have preferred 
that the story stick to "the serious things, what happened . . . Leave 
the other apart."

Does she feel like a celebrity now that the movie is out and has been 
so well received? "Never. I am not for those things, you know? What I 
did I did for humanity. I don't need publicity. I don't need songs or 
whatever. I'm very simple in that sense."

"They make him a star that shines. He was. But now he is not."

Emilie travelled to Schindler's grave in Jerusalem for the filming of 
the cemetery scene which closes the film. "I hardly knew anyone," she 
recalled. "The Jews know me, they all know me. But . . . I can't keep 
them in my head . . . They all knew me because they came in contact for 
food and everything . . . One says this, the other says that, gives me 
this: I can't remember anything."

Like many who assisted Jews during the war, Emilie minimizes her 
courageous acts: "They say in that book (Keneally's Schindler's List) 
that I gave the Jews the food in their mouths. I never had time to find 
out who was sick and who had to be fed (by hand). I am no good as a 
nurse, I tell you frankly. I have no talent for nursing . . . I bought 
the food for everyone."

Emilie Schindler did not receive Yad Vashem's distinction of being 
honored as a Righteous Gentile. Her deeds, which came largely at the 
end of the war when the Schindlerjuden had been transferred from 
Plaszow to Brunnlitz, did not constitute, according to Yad Vashem's 
strict criteria, actions that went beyond "ordinary acts of charity."

In December 1993, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., awarded 
Emilie Schindler a medal for her wartime efforts. She had her 
photograph taken beside Miep Dies, one of the protectors of Anne Frank 
in Amsterdamn. Stephen Spielberg was present. He described Emilie 
Schindler combing through the dead bodies in a railroad car, searching 
for Jews who might have survived.

In German, she replied with the modesty typical of a Good Samaritan: 
"We just tried to do what we could."
 

SCHINDLERJUDEN: WHY DID HE DO IT?

In his book Schindler's List, Thomas Keneally writes, "At some point in 
any discussion of Schindler, the surviving friends of Herr Direktor 
will blink and shake their heads and begin the almost mathematical 
business of finding the sum of his motives.

'I don't know why he did it,' they say. 'Oskar was a gambler, was a 
sentimentalist who loved the transparency, the simplicity to ridicule 
the system; that beneath the hearty sensuality lay a capacity to be 
outraged by human savagery, to react to it, and not to be overwhelmed.'"

Since the release of Spielberg's film, the surviving Schindlerjuden 
have been asked to describe Oskar Schindler and, often, the question 
arises: Why did he do it?

Johnathan Dresner: "He was an adventurer. He was like an actor who 
always wanted to be centre stage. He got into a play, and he couldn't 
get out of it."

Mosche Bejski: "Schindler was a drunkard. Schindler was a womanizer. 
His relations with his wife were bad. He often had not one but several 
girlfriends. Everything he did put him in jeopardy. If Schindler had 
been a normal man, he would not have done what he did."

Danka Dresner: "We owe our lives to him. But I wouldn't glorify a 
German because of what he did for us. There is no proportion."

Ludwik Feigenbaum: "I don't know what his motives were, even though I 
knew him very well. I asked him and I never got a clear answer and the 
film doesn't make it clear, either. But I don't give a damn. What's 
important is that he saved our lives."

Helen Rosenzweig: "I couldn't make him out . . . I think he felt sorry 
for me."

Eva Scheuer, one of Schindler's secretaries: "He was larger than life, 
likable and gallant."

Abraham Zuckerman: "The movie didn't show all the little things he did; 
he came around and greeted you. I had food, protection, and hope."

Helen Beck, one of the women rescued from Auschwitz: "I will never 
forget the sight of Oskar Schindler standing in the doorway (at 
Brunnlitz). I will never forget his voice - `Don't worry, you are now 
with me.' We gave up many times, but he always lifted our spirits . . . 
Schindler tried to help people however he could. That is what we 
remember."

Salomon Pila: "I don't know why he was so good to us, but I would say, 
`Thank you very much,' because he saved my life."

Ludmilla Page: "To know the man was to love him. For us, he was a God."

Abraham Zuckerman, pointing to a photograph of Schindler taken at the 
Wailing Wall in Jerusalem: "Look at that face. Can't you fall in love 
with a guy like that?"

Helen Beck, referring to racial tension and conflict today: "It hurts 
us very much. You see the world, they have not learned so much from the 
past."

Mrs. Wertheim, referring to a conversation with her grandson who had 
just seen the film with some of his friends: "He said everyone of them, 
and they were not only Jewish boys, were all taken by that film. They 
didn't believe that something like that could happen. I told him he 
should go more often, with more friends. I want everyone should see 
what can happen."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALTRUISM IN WAR

The hand of compassion was faster than the calculus of reason.
-- Otto Springer,  rescuer

Webster's Dictionary defines altruism as "an unselfish regard for or 
devotion to the welfare of others." In war, however, the term assumes a 
power words cannot measure.

Why did they do it? Why did a small number of Gentiles risk their lives 
to rescue a small number of Jews during the Nazi-occupation of Europe?

The question is difficult to answer. The historian can ask sundry 
questions of surviving rescuers, delving into the past with expert 
knowledge, but it is impossible to return to the moment in 1942 when a 
beleaguered Jew knocked on the door and begged his Gentile neighbor for 
shelter from the Nazi storm. The  Nazis' penalty for a non-Jew 
assisting a Jew was death. Death for you, death for you family.

It is impossible to enter the soul of another person, to explain the 
matter of conscience.

In her book, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews 
in Nazi-Occupied Poland, Nechama Tec tells the story of a Polish family 
that momentarily sheltered a Jewish girl "whose Semitic features 
spelled doom." The father of the Polish family insisted that the risk 
was too great. His daughter, Zofia, who wanted to keep the Jewish 
child, described her father's attitude this way: "He was a realist; he 
saw things more clearly and perhaps this is why he was more afraid." 
The Jewish girl was asked to leave. She survived elsewhere, and felt 
grateful for the few days Zofia's family had given her.

To many, the idea of rescuing a Jew was the furthest thing from their 
minds. In Poland, the Jew had been defined as the chief villain long 
before the Germans arrived in 1939. Miriam Peleg-Marianska, a Jewish 
woman who worked clandestinely for Zegota (Council for Aid to the Jews) 
in Krakow during the occupation, has written, "The sowing of hatred 
would not yield a harvest of compassion."

When studying the behavior of non-Jews during the Holocaust, we stand 
at the moral precipice. It is important to avoid a rush to judgement, a 
quick condemnation. The task is to understand, not to condemn. As Maria 
Peleg-Marianska has said of the rescuers, "One is challenged to think 
whether in similar circumstances one would have found the inner 
resources to act as they did."

What would I have done? It is a question everyone who studies this 
subject must ask themselves. It is, however, a question with a loud 
echo but no answer. Only the moment can decide. An individual, however 
selfless and humanitarian in previous circumstances, does not know how 
he or she will react until the knock on the door forces a decision. The 
student who knows the answer does not yet understand the question.

To explore what motivated the rare Gentile to risk his life for a Jew 
is a useful  exercise in empathy.  In December 1940, on the eve of the 
Nazi destruction of the Jews, the writer John Dos Passos wrote, "Our 
only hope will lie in the frail web of understanding of one person for 
the pain of another."

Magda Trocme, who with her husband Andre saved Jews in the French 
(Protestant) village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, recognized the value of 
studying the events of fifty years ago. She said, "Remember that in 
your life there will be lots of circumstances that will need a kind of 
courage, a kind of decision of your own, not about other people but 
about yourself."

It is said that history repeats itself. This might be stated otherwise: 
Human nature remains the same. Let us turn our attention to that very 
subject.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

OBSTACLES TO RESCUE

"He was a realist; he saw things more clearly and perhaps this is why 
he was more afraid."
-- Zofia, a Polish girl whose father refused to hide a Jewish girl

There were many obstacles confronting the Gentiles who would offer 
succor to the outcast Jews of Nazi-dominated Europe.

1. TERROR:

The Germans had relatively few men to spare for the 
occupied-territories,  fewer still for the task of annihilating the 
Jews. The majority of young healthy German men were required at the 
front. Thus, the Nazis ruled by terror first and foremost. Hanna Arndt, 
in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, wrote, "There exist many things 
considerably worse than death, and the SS saw to it that none of them 
was ever very far from their victims' minds and imaginations."

In 1942, the year in which the majority of Polish Jews were 
slaughtered, there were only 12,000 German policemen in all of 
Nazi-occupied Poland. In addition, there were 12,000 Polish "blue" 
police and between 1,500 and 1,800 Ukrainian police. Both groups served 
the Nazis in the annihilation of the Jews. Also serving the Nazis 
during the "liquidations" of the Jewish ghettoes were foreign 
auxiliaries from Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. The list of 
Nazi collaborators constituted a host of nation.

Terror was omnipresent  in each of the countries under Nazi domination. 
But the Nazis viewed the people of western Europe quite differently 
from the people of eastern Europe. The people in the East were treated 
as sub-humans ("untermensch"). Whereas the French intelligentsia was 
left relatively untouched, the Polish intelligentsia was wiped out 
first thing. Destroy the leadership class, the Nazi logic followed, and 
it is easier to subjugate the nation.

Poland was the setting of the Holocaust. Here the Nazis built the six 
death camps to which they transported and murdered Jews from all the 
countries of Europe. In Poland, the Nazis dealt with the prospect of 
Gentile assistance to Jews in terms that admitted no ambiguity. On 
October 15, 1941, they issued the following decree:

Jews who, without authorization, leave the residential district [i.e., 
the ghetto] to which they have been assigned will be punished by death. 
The same punishment applies to persons who knowingly provide hiding 
places for such Jews. Abettors and accomplices will be punished in the 
same way as the perpetrator, and an attempted act in the same way as an 
accomplished one.

Few people were inclined to brave the collective punishment 
administered  by the Nazis. The rescuer's family, neighbors, and fellow 
townspeople were subject to summary execution. To render assistance to 
a Jew meant risking the lives of  loved ones--a daunting prospect for 
the most heroic of individuals. Paradoxically, to be selfless required 
a certain selfishness.

In contrast, Schindler had greater resources than ordinary rescuers.  
For example, the Gestapo arrested Oskar Schindler three times. The 
first time he was charged with black market activities. The second time 
he was charged with kissing a Jewish girl at his birthday party, a 
violation of the Nazi race laws. The third time Amon Goeth, the 
commandant of the Plaszow labor camp, tried to save himself from 
imprisonment by informing the Gestapo that Schindler had bribed him 
with 80,000 Reichmarks to "go easy on" the Jews.

Each time he was arrested, Schindler resorted to friendly connections 
with high ranking SS and Wehrmacht officers, and to bribery. Thus did 
he manage to elude the Gestapo. At the time of his third arrest, true 
to his bon-vivant character, Schindler demanded the return of his 
80,000 Reichsmarks bribe to Goeth, describing it as a business expense!

Three times arrested, three times released. Inherent advantages such as 
those Schindler enjoyed were far beyond the reach of the average Pole.

2. INFORMERS:
The Gentiles who decided on the path of rescue had to contend with 
native collaborators. In Poland, there was a professional class of 
scoundrels known as the Schmalzownicki (blackmailers). This class, the 
lowest dregs of Polish society, sought out Jews in hiding and betrayed 
them to the Germans for a meager reward of money, vodka and sugar. 
Outside of every ghetto in Poland the Schmalzownicki lurked in the 
shadows, waiting to blackmail the Jew trying to escape to the "Aryan 
side." "You Poles are a strange people," an SS man is reported to have 
said during the occupation. "Nowhere in the world is there another 
nation which has so many heroes and so many denouncers."

The rescuer of Jews also had to contend with the neighbor who simply 
did not like Jews, the neighbor who believed the destruction of the 
Jews was God's wrath in the guise of Hitler, the neighbor who feared 
the presence of hidden Jews would provoke the Nazis to retaliate by 
punishing everyone in the building.

The rescuers also had to contend with Jewish informers. "Was I afraid 
of Jews?" asked Miriam Peleg-Marianska, a Jewish woman who worked for 
Zegota, the Council for Aid to the Jews. "I must admit I was. There 
were all sorts and we were often warned to be on our guard . . . one 
had to live through such infamy."

In Krakow, particularly nefarious was a Mrs. Chilowicz. Her task was to 
inform the Germans where Jewish children were hidden in the Plaszow 
camp. Like most informers, she betrayed others to save herself, and 
then perished with those she had betrayed.

At no time and in no place was the Jew or the rescuer safe in Nazi 
dominated Europe. Informers were everywhere, waiting to turn a profit 
by denouncing the Jew.

3. CULTURE:

Anti-Semitism (hatred of Jews) played an important role in discouraging 
sympathy and aid for the Jews. Anti-Semitism was no invention of the 
Nazis. It is deeply rooted in Western culture.

The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg has noted: "The Nazis did not 
discard the past, they built on it. They did not begin a development. 
They completed it . . . The missionaries of Christianity had said in 
effect, 'You have no right to live among us as Jews.' The secular 
rulers who followed had proclaimed, 'You have no right to live among 
us.' The German Nazis at last decreed, 'You have no right to live.'"

Once the Jews were reduced to a symbol of all that was bad, they were, 
as historian Helen Fein has said, pushed beyond the "boundaries of 
moral obligation."

For centuries, many organized Christian religions instructed the 
faithful that the Jews--not the Romans--were responsible for the death 
of Christ. The theological basis for anti-Semitism was the account of 
Christ's crucifixion in the New Testament, St. Matthew 27.

And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out 
the more, saying, Let him be crucified.

When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult 
was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, 
saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it.

Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our 
children.

In Poland before the war, Gentile children leaving church on Easter 
Sunday or at Christmas often shouted "Christ killer! Christ killer!" at 
Jewish shops and Jewish homes, the windows of which were boarded up in 
anticipation of the Christian holiday.

Mordecai Peleg, a Polish Jew "passing" as a Christian in Krakow, once 
encountered a Polish youth who made a business of denouncing Jews to 
the Nazis. Peleg turned to the boy's father, "What do you think about 
what your son is doing, denouncing people to their death?'' The father 
was neither indignant nor embarrassed.  "It clearly says here in the 
Old Testament that the Jews must perish for their sins! The Jewish 
prophets themselves have said it!"

Since World War II, the Catholic Church has made efforts to reverse 
these teachings. In 1965, the Second Vatican Council stated 
definitively that the Jews were not to be held responsible for the 
death of Christ. Under the leadership of Pope John Paul II, himself a 
Pole, the Vatican has apologized for Catholic anti-Semitism, 
acknowledging that its teaching helped foster the prejudice.

The Polish church, in addition, apologized for Poland's wartime 
anti-Semitism and for the actions of those who were "evildoers."

It is difficult to imagine the degree of anti-Semitism that existed in 
Europe and in the United States before the Second World War. The 1929 
depression inflicted economic dislocation and vast insecurity, which, 
combined with the spread of Nazi propaganda, heightened the ancient 
argument that the Jews were responsible for the misfortunes of mankind.

Jews were blamed for the depression of the 1930s. In Poland, Jews were 
prominent in the economy; the majority of stores and taverns were 
Jewish owned. This presence made them convenient scapegoats for 
economic decline. Miriam Peleg-Marianska described the Polish view of 
the Jews: "They were work shy, they cheated their customers, they saved 
a few grams of sugar on each kilogram they sold and got rich that way."

Additionally, the Jews were linked in the popular imagination with 
communism. The number of Jews in the communist party was relatively 
few, but often the relatively few occupied positions of great 
visibility. The great majority of Polish Jews were Orthodox, and 
communist atheism did not appeal to them.

The capitalist disliked the Jew because he was a communist.  The 
communists disliked the Jew because he was a capitalist. The Christians 
disliked the Jew because he was a Jew.

For centuries, anti-Semitism was based upon religion. In the latter 
part of the 19th century, however, this changed. Dislike of Jews became 
based on a racial or ideological philosophy (in addition to religion). 
This was a critical shift. As a result, the Jews were redefined as "a 
diseased race" which thus rendered the "Jewish problem" susceptible to 
biomedical solutions.

As Robert Proctor has written, "By the late 1930's, German medical 
science had constructed an elaborate world view equating mental 
infirmity, moral depravity, criminality, and racial impurity. This 
complex of identifications was then used to justify the destruction of 
the Jews on medical, moral, criminological, and anthropological 
grounds. To be Jewish was to be both sick and criminal: Nazi medical 
science and policy united to help 'solve' this problem."

It is of note that the overwhelming majority of the German medical 
establishment endorsed the Nazi racial doctrines wholeheartedly. SS 
doctors at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other extermination camps were in 
charge of "selecting" who would live and who would die. Mengele, the 
most notorious of the SS doctors, described the destruction of Jews at 
Auschwitz-Birkenau as "applied biology."

Polish anti-Semitism was quite different from German anti-Semitism. The 
Israeli historian has described it this way: "Polish anti-Semitism, 
like every variant of that phenomenon, had its detestable and cruel 
characteristics. It did, however, differ from ideological anti-Semitism 
which was based on a racist philosophy. The Polish anti-Semite 
ridiculed and humiliated the Jew, he saw in the Jew a foreign and 
unnecessary ballast, and in extreme cases attacked him, but in my 
opinion, he was not capable of planned and systematic genocide."

Then Gutman offers the following indictment of the Poles: "In an 
atmosphere which resulted in the isolation and elimination of Jews from 
the ranks of the human community, indifference, the turning of one's 
back, and silence in the face of tragedy --even callous acquiescence, 
or here and there active cooperation in the stealing of property and 
crimes --came to be possible."

Not infrequently, the Righteous Gentiles were not free of the 
anti-Semitic images and values that influenced European life as a 
whole. Righteous Gentiles did not rescue Jews because they were free of 
anti-Semitic prejudice; rather, they rescued Jews because they were 
able to put the life of an individual before their anti-Semitic 
prejudice.

In Poland, the best example is Zofia Kossack, the Catholic woman who 
established Zegota (Council for Aid to the Jews) in 1942. Her dislike 
of the Jews was manifest, but her sense of Christian duty led her to 
risk her life (and the lives of her children) to save them.

In order to save lives, Righteous Gentiles often had to sever the bonds 
linking them to  their own culture. It is for this reason that many 
Righteous Gentiles, including Schindler, were ostracized by their 
countrymen when their deeds became public after the war.

Not entirely unique was the Righteous Gentile who bade his saved Jew 
good-bye with the firm admonition: Don't tell anybody what I did.


4. "JEWISH TRAITS"

A wide variety of groups comprise world Jewry, each with physical 
traits ranging from blond-hair to black skin. Despite this diversity, 
there were unique characteristics that frequently betrayed a person of 
Jewish origin, particularly in Eastern Europe where the Jews were less 
assimilated than in Western Europe.

Rescuers found it dangerous to help Jews "pass" as Christians if the 
Jews possessed stereotypical "Jewish looks." For example, red hair was 
a telltale sign of Jewish ancestry. And few Hasidic Jews, with their 
long beards and earlocks, survived.

Little habits, almost unnoticeable, gave the Jews away. In Poland, 
where the majority of Jews spoke Yiddish as their first language, the 
wrong Polish accent, or a typical Yiddish phrase translated into 
Polish, was enough to betray a person as Jewish. Drinking vodka was a 
Polish habit, but not a Jewish one. If a "passing" Jew did not accept a 
drink,  he might arouse suspicion. Jews appeared to have a facility 
with language which Poles lacked. The ability to pick up the German 
language quickly was perceived as a Jewish trait, often leading to dire 
consequences.

It was frequently difficult for "passing" Jews to hide their sadness. 
Their world had been uprooted, their families destroyed. Even though 
Poles also suffered, a mournful expression was seen as particularly 
Jewish. Eyes betrayed the inner sadness. The "passing" Jew had to avoid 
what became known as "Jewish eyes."

Miriam Peleg-Marianska, a Jewish woman who had blue eyes and blond 
hair, often travelled by train in her work for Zegota. Her typically 
"Aryan" features gave her a sense of confidence and security, but the 
Jewish tragedy took its toil. "My ability to hide my despair," she 
wrote, "was failing me. I noticed that people were looking at me with 
interest on tram journeys and it made me nervous: This was dangerous."

The practice of circumcision was largely restricted to Jews prior to 
World War II, consequently making it easy for Nazis to identify Jewish 
men. As Miriam Peleg-Marianska has said, "Men carried their death 
sentence with them, ready for inspection."

5. "ARYAN PAPERS"

Essential for a Jew "passing" as a Christian was a complete set of 
documents, including a birth certificate, a ration card, a work card, a 
residence card, a travel permit, etc. All of these documents had to 
forged by an expert in the field, but if a Jew had "Jewish features," 
the best documents were of little value. These conditions made it 
hazardous for rescuers to conceal the identity of Jews they might take 
into their homes.

One of Zegota's tasks was supplying illegal documents to Jews. By the 
time Zegota began its operations, however, the majority of Polish Jewry 
was already dead.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE ALTRUISTICALLY INCLINED:
SCHOLARLY INTERPRETATIONS

"The Jews were abandoned by governments, by church hierarchies, by 
existing societal structures. But they were not abandoned by all of 
humanity . . . There were thousands upon thousands of people in Europe 
who risked their life for the Jews. They were priests, nuns, workers, 
peasants, enlightened ones, simpletons, from all walks of life. They 
were good people, very simply. We have more good people than probably 
we think we have in humanity."
--Jan Karski,  a Righteous Gentile

This section draws on the writings of two scholars who have studied the 
Righteous Gentiles for insight into the behavior of the altruistically 
inclined. Who were the rescuers? What was their background?

Tadeusz Pankiewicz, the Polish pharmacist in the Krakow ghetto, said, 
"Not everybody is born a genius, not everybody is a hero."
The section should be read with Oskar Schindler in mind. What applies 
to him? What does not?

NECHAMA TEC

Nechama Tec, born in Lublin, Poland, in 1931, survived the Second World 
War "passing" as a Christian girl with the help of those she describes 
as "decent" Poles. Their "main motivation," she writes, "was money; 
only with time did bonds of affection develop between us."

Today, Tec is professor of sociology at Connecticut University and 
author of several books about the Holocaust, including her 
autobiographical account of surviving the Nazis in Poland, Dry Tears: 
The Story of a Lost Childhood, and her study of Righteous Gentiles, 
When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in 
Nazi-Occupied Poland.

Tec's conclusions are based upon her study of Righteous Gentiles in 
Nazi-occupied Poland. In this land, for almost a thousand years, Poles 
and Jews had lived side by side one another, but at a distance; they 
had been neighbors, but they never viewed each other as countrymen; 
they inhabited separate, insular worlds, and, for the most part, each 
group preferred it that way. They were immensely familiar to one 
another, but immensely alien.

The actions of Christian Poles during the Holocaust have been bitterly 
debated in recent years. Many scholars, and the majority of Jews, argue 
that the Poles were indifferent to the annihillation of the Jews. In 
turn, Poles point to the dangers of aiding Jews, and to their own 
suffering at the hands of the Nazis: Three million Polish Christians 
perished during the war.

The Jewish woman Miriam Peleg-Marianska has written, "Only by 
comparison with the terminal tragedy of the Jews does the fate of the 
Polish people appear tolerable. By any other standards their 
sacrifices, their suffering, and their losses during the war mark them 
out as the great victims of their history, and geography."

Both Poles and Jews suffered grievously under the Nazis, but with an 
important distinction. As Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner 
Elie Wiesel has noted: "Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were 
victims."

At the end of the war, the "biological substance" of the Polish people 
remained. The same could not be said of Polish Jewry. Over 99% of 
Polish Jewish children had been annihilated.

There were Poles who defied the Nazi terror, and their own culture, to 
rescue Jews. Nechama Tec describes these Righteous Gentiles as "dormant 
heroes, often indistinguishable from those around them." Numbering 
about 4,000, Poles represent the greatest number of people honored by 
Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles.

"We live in a shaky and uncertain world," Tec writes, "a world that 
offers little help in choosing life values. In such a setting, 
knowledge and awareness about noble and self-sacrificing behaviors may 
help restore some shattered illusions. Indeed, mere awareness that in 
the midst of ultimate human degradation some people were willing to 
risk their lives for others denies the inevitable supremacy of evil. 
With this denial comes hope."

TEC'S CONCLUSIONS:

1.    INDIVIDUALISTS

The rescuers were all "individualists." They displayed striking 
self-reliance in pursuing personal values (versus cultural values) in 
their rescue efforts.

2.   DEVOUT CATHOLICS

Among the rescuers were devout Catholics. Tec argues that Catholic 
teaching served paradoxical ends: On one hand, the church said that the 
Jews were responsible for the death of Christ and, presumably, should 
be punished; on the other hand, the church instructed the faithful, 
"Love thy neighbor."

In this argument, Tec draws on a broader theory of the conflict between 
ethnic hatred and Christian precepts of love, compassion, charity, and 
forgiveness. Humanistic Christian teachings can undermine bigotry 
sanctioned by religion. Moral values are a nation's conscience.
Many priests and nuns took the teachings of compassion to heart and 
assisted in rescue activities. But the Catholic church's hierarchy in 
Poland remained silent on the subject, giving no instructions one way 
or the other.

3.   UNPLANNED RESCUE

Often the rescuers did not previously know the Jews they saved. In this 
type of situation, the Gentile frequently acted "spontaneously" and 
even "impulsively" to help a Jew. The first assistance rendered was 
often "unplanned" and "gradual."

4.   UNIVERSALISTIC PERCEPTIONS

The rescuers had "universalistic perceptions of the needy that 
overshadowed all other attributes except their dependence on aid." They 
viewed Jews not as dehumanized symbols--with the resultant negative 
stereotypes--but simply as human beings in need. "To these righteous 
Poles it mattered little who the victims were. Anyone in need qualified 
for help." One Righteous Gentile told Tec she would even have helped a 
Nazi.

5.   A MOST UNASSUMING LOT

The Righteous Gentiles were, generally speaking, a most unassuming lot. 
Extreme modesty was a foremost characteristic. They had to be prodded 
to discuss their wartime actions and were extremely reluctant to speak 
about themselves in a "heroic" light. "Saving the one whose life is in 
jeopardy is a simple human duty," said one. Typically, they managed to 
push their fears in the background. "None denied it (fear) existed, but 
they refused to focus on punishment."

The rescuers responded to a moral obligation, not to a desire for 
reward or recognition.  They had a "matter of fact views about rescue, 
which come together with the insistence that there was nothing heroic 
or extraordinary in their protection or of aiding Jews . . . to provide 
help for them [the Jews] was taken for granted, and they found it hard 
to explain."

6.   A LONG-LASTING COMMITMENT

The Righteous Gentiles often had "a long lasting commitment to aid the 
needy, a commitment that began before the war and that in the past 
infrequently involved Jews. They accepted and took for granted standing 
up for the poor and downtrodden . . . Protection was the result of an 
already established pattern of helping the needy."

"Risking lives for Jews fit into a system of values and behaviors that 
included helping the weak and the dependent . . . Only during the war 
was there a convergence between historical events demanding ultimate 
selfishness and the already established predisposition to help."

Zegota, the Polish organization devoted to Jewish rescue, was initially 
comprised of a handful of women who had worked in the prewar Social 
Welfare Department in Warsaw. Long before the Holocaust, these women 
had been devoted to the cause of poor and orphaned children.

7.   ABSENT FRIENDS

In one of her more startling conclusions, Tec writes that Gentile 
friends of Jews typically did not help their Jewish friends. "Helping 
Jews did not qualify as behavior required from friends. The rescuer of 
Jews had to be propelled by other forces, forces that went beyond the 
usual expectations of personal friendship."

8.   ON THE PERIPHERY

In what she describes as "a new theory of rescue and rescuers," Tec 
concludes that the majority of Righteous Gentiles lived on the 
"periphery" of their prewar communities. "The Poles on the periphery of 
their communities were more likely to save Jews than those who were 
well integrated into their social surroundings." Why? "Being on the 
periphery of a community means being less affected by the existing 
social controls."

In other words, the Poles given to rescue were not controlled by the 
values of the community (i.e. by its anti-Semitism). They were not 
fully integrated and thus were less likely to be constrained by 
societal prejudices and dictates such as: The Jew is "different;" the 
Jew is "the other;" what happens to the Jew is of no concern to "us."

In an interview, Tec said, "It is those who are exceptional, those that 
are different, that have the ability to enter into somebody, to 
identify with the suffering. The outsiders in a sense. If you are not 
so fully integrated into an environment, if you perceive yourself as 
different, then perhaps you are much more objective, you have an 
independent view of what is happening, and if you have a much more 
objective view of what is happening, you are much less likely to 
approve of what you see. Most of us go along with what is. We don't 
have the strength, most humans, to object and to fight and to oppose."

We could extend Tec's theory to argue that for the rescuers, as peer 
pressure and societal codes of conduct weakened, latent values of love 
and compassion were allowed to surface.

9.   DORMANT HEROES

Tec describes the Righteous Gentiles as "dormant heroes" who led 
unremarkable lives both before and after the war. Plainly, the 
characteristics that led them to rescue Jews were not characteristics 
that assured them of leadership roles and financial success in the 
postwar years.

EVA FOGELMAN

Eva Fogelman, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, is a founding 
director of the "Foundation for Christian Rescuers," an organization 
whose stated purpose is "recognition of goodness." Pursuant to that, 
the organization locates Christian rescuers, provides them with 
financial support (when necessary), and, not least, acknowledges their 
"moral courage during an immoral time." To date, the "Foundation for 
Christian Rescuers" has provided aid to more than one thousand-two 
hundred rescuers, many of whom were in dire straits.

In addition, Fogelman is author of Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of 
Jews during the Holocaust. The book, in Fogelman's words, "traces the 
psychological making of a rescuer." A great deal of emphasis is given 
to the upbringing of the person who would become a rescuer. What sort 
of parents did the rescuer have? What values did the parents instill? 
And, most important, can moral behavior be taught?

In contrast to the rescuers Nechama Tec interviewed, who were Polish, 
Fogelman's conclusions appear to be based mainly upon interviews with 
rescuers in Germany and in western Europe.

FOGELMAN'S CONCLUSIONS:

1.   JEWS AS HUMAN BEINGS

"It is the capacity to act lovingly toward people whom one does not 
even know," Fogelman argues, "that is essential for development of 
social conscience."

"They (the rescuers) saw people who were different from them and 
responded, not to these differences, but to their similarities. While 
most saw Jews as pariahs, rescuers saw them as human beings . . . 
Compassion for others rests on the recognition that the one asking for 
help differs little from the one offering it."

"In talking with rescuers from all kinds of different homes, I found 
that one quality above all others was emphasized time and again: A 
familial acceptance of people who were different. This value was the 
centerpiece of the childhood of rescuers and became the core from which 
their rescuer self evolved. From the earliest ages, rescuers were 
taught by their parents that people are inextricably linked to one 
another. No one person or group was better than any other."

2.   DIFFUSION OF RESPONSIBILITY

The act of intervention on behalf of the abused is a complicated 
procedure. The bystander must first recognize that a person needs help. 
In western Europe, the Nazis made this recognition difficult by 
concealing their murderous intentions behind a cloak of euphemisms. 
There was no talk of murder. The Jews were to be "resettled" in the 
east.

Once recognizing that a person was in danger, the bystander had to 
assume the responsibility to offer help and have the necessary 
confidence and ingenuity to come up with a plan to effect the rescue. 
The bystander had to believe that he or she could make a difference. 
Frequently, the decision to rescue was a decision that had to made very 
quickly. There was little time for physical or psychological 
preparation. The preparation had to be in place.

Fogelman asserts that a bystander is much less likely to intervene on 
behalf of the abused if the bystander is in a crowd. It appears to be a 
human proclivity to assume that someone else, the person beside you in 
a crowd, will be the one to intervene. It is not my responsibility, a 
bystander explains. Someone else will take care of it. Thus, by way of 
a "diffusion of responsibility," a bystander's conscience is assuaged, 
permitting the bystander to carry on his or her way.

Fogelman writes: "Like a horse shielded from sights to the left or the 
right, most bystanders were equipped with blinders . . . They kept 
their vision narrow to protect themselves and allow themselves to focus 
on surviving in this new terror filled Nazi world. Mistreatment of the 
Jews became background noise."

Describing the rescuer Irene Gut Opdyke, Fogelman says that she "had a 
keen, empathic nature that gave her a will to see what others ignored."

Of interest is Fogelman's observation that "sights, smells, and sounds 
of that moment of critical realization are etched forever in the 
rescuer's memory.

3.   NARCISSISM

In what would seem a paradox, Fogelman writes that many rescuers said 
that the terrifying  Nazi-occupation was in fact one of the most 
satisfying periods of their lives. In essence, the rescuers not only 
saved a life (or lives), but derived immense fulfillment from their 
rescue efforts. They felt better about themselves.

These rescuers may have been motivated by narcissism, that is, by love 
of self. In other words, the selfless act was based upon a selfish 
instinct.

Anna Freud, the late psychoanalyst, believed that an altruistic 
motivation does not exist. Those who help others receive personal 
gratification from their selfless behavior.

Summarizing the argument typical of psychoanalysts, Fogelman writes:

"Rescuers' acts derive from self-centered unconscious motivations. For 
example, for certain civilians the act of rescue enabled them to 
express their rage against the Third Reich. Saving lives of Jews 
provided them with narcissistic gratification of outwitting their 
oppressors and the pleasure of having a person or persons totally 
dependent on them. Most analysts would argue that self-gratification 
rather than altruism underlay rescuers' deeds."

4.   CHILDHOOD

Fogelman was particularly interested in the rescuers' family 
backgrounds, hoping to find here the clues to the altruistic behavior 
that followed. She contends that conscience or morality is the result 
of the "original nurturing situation" between children and their 
primary guardian.

"It was not a whim that led these people to risk their lives and those 
of their families," Fogelman writes, "but a response, almost a 
reflexive reaction in some cases, that came from core values developed 
and instilled in them in childhood."

When interviewing rescuers, Fogelman says that she would wait in 
anticipation of the "familiar passages," that is, the rescuer's 
recollections of the characteristic childhood experiences and 
influences that Fogelman believes molded the character of the child.

"I began after a while to wait for the recital of one or more of those 
well known passages: a nurturing, loving home: an altruistic parent or 
beloved caretaker who served as a role model for altruistic behavior; a 
tolerance for people who were different; a childhood illness or 
personal loss that tested their resilience and exposed them to special 
care; and an upbringing that emphasized independence, discipline, with 
explanations, rather than physical punishment or withdrawal of love, 
and caring."

Furthermore, Fogelman concluded that "the moral integrity" that led to 
the act of rescue was a characteristic that repeated itself throughout 
the life of the rescuer, both before the Nazi-occupation and afterwards.

CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND ALTRUISTIC BEHAVIOR

In her book, Conscience and Courage, Fogelman refers to the pertinent 
conclusions of several leading psychologists and others regarding 
altruistic behavior:

  *   1.   "From four to eight years old, children have heteronomous 
  *   morality. Their behavior is subject to another person's law. A child's 
  *   respect for authority guides his concept of what is right and wrong."
  *   
  *     --Jean Piaget, child development expert
  *     
  *   2.   "Parents who explained rules and used inductive reasoning instead 
  *   of harsh punishment tend to have children who care for and about 
  *   others. Parents who voluntarily relinquish the use of force in favor of 
  *   reasoning send their children a message about how the powerful should 
  *   treat the weak."
  *   
  *     --Eva Fogelman, summarizing a conclusion by Martin Hoffman, New York 
  *     University social psychologist
  *     
  *   3.   "Rescuers experienced a loving and trusting relationship with an 
  *   affectionate mother, had a communicative and non-authoritarian father, 
  *   and were often an only or a favored child."
  *   
  *     -- Frances Grossman, New York psychologist
  *     
  *   4.   "Altruism best and most effectively communicated in homes where 
  *   parents exerted firm control over their children. Parents tended to 
  *   explain to them the consequences of hurting other children and to do so 
  *   with an admonition such as `I don't like to be with you when you act 
  *   like that.' They reasoned rather than threatened."
  *   
  *     -- Carolyn Zahn-Waxler, developmental psychologist
  *     
  *   5.   "Rules laid down without discussion or justification. "Children 
  *   raised in this type of environment "have trouble making independent 
  *   judgments. Where there is little or no  explanation, all directives 
  *   seem from the child's perspective, arbitrary and irrational. So they 
  *   give up and do what they are told."
  *   
  *     -- Alice Miller, Swiss author
  *     
  *   6.   "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the 
  *   only thing."
  *   
  *     -- Albert Schweitzer
  *     

SCHINDLER'S LIST:
STUDENT
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What is the central theme of  Schindler's List? This is a complex 
question with no "right" answer. The film will speak to each student 
differently. But the search for the central theme will provide students 
with a framework to gain useful insights and analytical skills.

PROCEDURE:

The following questions can serve as a basis for student discussion and 
additional projects. The questions are followed by an "analysis" and a 
"follow-up" section that draws on the insights offered in previous 
sections of the manual.

PART I
Part I is devoted to the central question:

WHY DID HE DO IT?

Schindler risked his life in order to save Jews. It was a time when 
terror reigned. The Jews had been dehumanized in non-Jewish eyes by 
Nazi propaganda and brutality. Tom Keneally, the author of the book 
Schindler's List, quotes Schindler as having said that "A life is not 
worth a pack of cigarettes." Yet Schindler risked his own life. Why?

ANALYSIS: Schindler was capable of empathy. His accidental viewing of 
the Aktion in the Krakow ghetto had a profound impact upon him. The 
ability to feel the pain of another is a critical ingredient to 
altruistic behavior.

Schindler was an adventurer. He enjoyed participating in exciting 
activities, for example, his motor cycle riding in earlier years. It 
might be argued that Schindler liked living on the edge. In this sense, 
rescue of Jews appealed to him. He also appeared to be the type of 
person who liked to manipulate events, or feel like he was manipulating 
events.

Schindler might have been influenced by "a parental model of moral 
conduct." His mother, a devout woman, was apparently a beacon of moral 
conduct. Itzhak Stern, the accountant, was also an important moral 
influence. To repeat, when Stern died in 1969, Schindler wept at his 
grave.

It might be said (using Nechama Tec's point) that Schindler lived on 
"the periphery" of the German community in Krakow. As a Sudeten German, 
a German from Czechoslovakia, he was an "outsider" not  as heavily 
influenced by Nazi propaganda and not bound to typical ways. Thus, the 
argument follows, Schindler could see things with a measure of 
independence. He was not compelled, for psychological reasons, to 
conform to the existing behavior, that is, to the dehumanization and 
extermination of the Jews.

However, many Sudeten Germans were ardent Nazis precisely because they 
were not "pure" Germans. They felt a need to assert themselves in a way 
that demonstrated that their loyalty to the Nazis should not be 
questioned.

1. WHY HE SAYS HE DID IT:

Twenty years after the war, Mosche Bejski, a Schindlerjuden and later a 
Supreme Court justice in Israel, asked Schindler why he did it? 
Schindler replied, "I knew the people who worked for me. When you know 
people, you have to behave towards them like human beings."

The same question was asked by Poldek Pfefferberg, another 
Schindlerjuden. Schindler answered, "There was no choice. If you saw a 
dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?"

In a 1964 interview,  standing in front of his dingy Frankfurt 
apartment, Schindler said, "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."

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: Compare and contrast each of these quotes. Which 
one do you think most accurately explains Schindler's reason for 
assisting the Jews? How are the quotes different from one another? 
Similar?

2.   THE EVOLUTION OF A RESCUER:

Schindler did not come to Krakow to save Jews. He came to turn a 
profit, and Jews became a part of the bargain. It might be argued that 
his ideas about rescue evolved. In the book, Keneally writes that 
Schindler made the first tentative step towards assisting the Jews on 
December 3, 1939. He whispered unambiguous words into Stern's ear: 
"Tomorrow, it's going to start. Jozefa and Izaaka Streets are going to 
know all about it." He was referring to a SS Aktion which did indeed 
occur. It was a small step in the direction of rescue, but it was a 
step in that direction nonetheless.

ANALYSIS: Ervin Staub, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary and a scholar 
on altruistic behavior, has written, "Goodness, like evil, often begins 
in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren't born. Very often the recuers 
make only a small commitment at the start, to hide someone for a day or 
two. But once they had taken that step, they began to see themselves 
differently, as someone who helps. What starts as mere willingness 
becomes intense involvement."

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: Does Staub's argument apply to Schindler? When do 
you think Schindler make the decision to rescue the Jews? When does he 
take the first step? The answer is, of course, we don't know. But if 
this question is posed before the students see the movie, they can 
search for an answer while viewing it, which will make the film an 
intellectual challenge.

3.  SCHINDLER THE IMPULSIVE:
It is possible that Schindler was trapped by his own  words which, on 
occasion, slipped out with little forethought. In Keneally's book, 
Schindler is quoted as saying to the first batch of Jewish workers who 
arrived at his factory, "You'll be safe working here. If you work here 
then you'll live through the war." The Jews did not believe he could 
possibly make good on that promise. Did he believe it?

ANALYSIS: Having spoken the words, Schindler might have felt compelled 
to fulfill them. Later, during a more perilous hour, Schindler (in the 
book) declared: "I'm going to get you all out." Stern asked, "All?" 
"You anyhow," said Schindler.

4.   SCHINDLER THE NARCISSIST:

Schindler, it might be argued, embarked upon Jewish rescue because it 
gave him immense emotional and psychological satisfaction. He was a man 
with a tremendous ego. To be depicted as "a savior," a man who had the 
power to deliver life, this appealed to him in no small way. The 
psychoanalyst Anna Freud argued that no individual does anything for 
altruistic reasons. Instead, a person acts in a selfless manner for 
reasons of self-gratification.

Jonathan Dresner, one of the Schindlerjuden, has said that Schindler 
"was an adventurer. He was like an actor who always wanted to be centre 
stage. He got into a play, and he couldn't get out of it."

ANALYSIS: Luitgard Wundheiler, a psychotherapist, has investigated 
Schindler's behavior during the Second World War. His theory is as 
follows:

In Nazi-occupied Krakow, Schindler found himself in a position to 
assist those who were in a precarious state: The Jews. They had been 
dehumanized. They were on the verge of destruction. Any act of humanity 
(a job, a kind word, a place to stay) was received with exaggerated but 
understandable appreciation. "Vain and insecure," with little family 
life to speak of, Schindler was moved by the attention a desperate 
people bestowed upon him.

Initially, Schindler was motivated by friendship to individual Jews 
(specifically, it would seem, to Stern). But gradually the Nazi 
industrialist won a reputation as a kind and compassionate man. He was 
"a savior." His factory was "a haven." The Jews working in his factory 
became "his Jews," the Schindlerjuden. Schindler began to glory in his 
reputation as a kind and compassionate man. He liked the role he was 
playing. It made him feel good. It filled a psychological vacuum in his 
life. This self-definition was a motivating factor.

Wundheiler argues that Schindler, "being defined by others as a 
compassionate and caring man," began to see himself in the same light. 
As a result, he acted in line with that idea, which in turn reinforced 
others' view of him as a humanitarian, and it spiraled."

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION: In your opinion, did Schindler rescue the Jews to 
please others or did he rescue Jews out of a subconscious desire to 
please himself?

6.   SCHINDLER AND SELF-INTEREST:

The issue of Schindler and self-interest is an important one for 
students to consider. It demonstrates that a person can be a scoundrel 
yet can still be capable of selfless acts. Emilie Schindler described 
her late husband as a "saint of the devil."

Exploring Oskar Schindler's weaknesses does not detract from his 
contribution; on the contrary, the more we learn about the human 
frailties of our heroes, the more we can appreciate our own capacity 
for heroic behavior, despite our past failings and personal 
imperfections. Depending on how they are portrayed, heroes can make us 
feel either empowered or powerless. Romanticizing our heroes may help 
us feel good about the human race in general, but it can also prevent 
us from recognizing the potential for good in ourselves.

Keneally observed that Schindler and the sadist Amon Goeth may have 
been two sides of the human personality: "The reflection can hardly be 
avoided that Amon was Oskar's dark brother, was the berserk and fanatic 
executioner Oskar might by some unhappy reversal of his appetite, have 
become."

ANALYSIS: It must be emphasized that Schindler came to Krakow as a 
war-profiteer. At no point in his early life did Schindler demonstrate 
a hint of the altruistic behavior for which he is now so widely 
acclaimed. He became involved with the Jews when he realized that it 
made economic sense to employ them in his factory (formerly a Jewish 
factory). His early efforts helping the Jews, it might be argued, were 
efforts that he made to assure the continuation of his profits. In June 
1942, he rescued Jews from a transport on its way to a death camp. In 
the film, he asks Stern, "Where would I be?" if the train had departed? 
Stern, of course, might have asked the same question about himself and 
the other Jews.

Schindler's motives for dueling with the SS over the fate of the 
Schindlerjuden could be interpreted as an attempt to prevent the SS 
from treading on the good life he was leading.

"Quite skilled," Schindler tells an SS officer (in the film), referring 
to a Schindlerjuden who had only one arm and who does not appear to be 
"an essential worker."

This was a Jewish worker whose value Schindler himself had doubted. 
Schindler was not interested in the one armed machinist as a human 
being, but as a worker. Stern arranged for the machinist to thank 
Schindler personally for allowing him to work a