“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.”
This Talmudic quote from Itzhak Stern from the novel Schindler’s List is seraphic. A man who saves even a single life, human or not, is a savior, definitely, but what do we call a person who saves more than a thousand, a messiah? At least that’s what thousands of Schindler Jews call Oskar Schindler, a god-sent messiah.
Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German and a member of the Nazi party, comes to Krakow, Poland, to make a fortune off of Germany’s invasion of the country. Being a shrewd businessman, Schindler bribes Nazi officials and establishes a factory in the city, hires Jewish prisoners from the concentration camps, as they came for free, and maintained close relations with the top Nazi officials for his selfish desires. Being a core member of the Nazi party, he was often invited by the Nazi officials to their party’s, residences, concentration camps, and other significant events. Oskar Schindler was present in one such significant incident, the liquidation of Krakow Ghetto overseen by Amon Goeth, SS commander of the nearby Plaszow camp, a sadist who had a fondness for shooting Jew prisoners before breakfast. What he witnessed profoundly affected him, a massacre of innocent Jews, with complete disregard to their age or gender. Elderly, children, sick; none were shown mercy. One-third of the 30000 Jews in the ghetto were killed, humiliated, taunted, and shot right in the middle of the streets for being unfit to work in the concentration camps. This incident moves Schindler as he gradually starts to shift his focus from making money off the Jewish prisoners to saving as many lives as possible. Schindler spends a fortune in bribing Amon Goeth to release some 1200 prisoners, destined to be transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp for being mass executed.
He later bribes Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, to order a release of the train, which transported women and children from Amon Goeth’s Plaszow camp to Auschwitz “mistakenly.” Later on, he spends almost all of his savings in bribing Nazi officials in Czechoslovakia to stay off his factory/refugee camp for Jews and procuring essential supplies for their survival.
By the end of the war in 1945, Schindler had gone bankrupt after spending all of his fortunes on saving the lives of hundreds of Jews, who would later on call themselves Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews) out of respect for the efforts of a single man, which saved so many lives. Yet, Schindler was not content and was apologetic for not having done enough.
Schindler’s List is a must-read for every reader out there, especially in 2021, when we can see an increase in hate crime towards fellow beings, be it in America, France, China, or India. We all can learn a thing or two from the life of Oskar Schindler.
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