A hero can be anyone. You, me, or the person next to you. To me a here is defined in Oskar Schindler he is a altruistic person who gave up all of his fortune for human life. However this wasn’t always the case for him. Early in his life his only concerns were himself, money and power. Oskar was a very successful business man and achieved his goals of making a large fortune.
Oskar was born in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Chechoslouvaka in 1908. As he got older he held several jobs in sales. He opened a few of his own business, but they didn’t do so well. He decided to leave Czechoslovakia. He and his wife Emile Pelz, with only about 60 dollars and a suit case full of belongings ventured to Germany. His mind was set to make as much money as a man could make. People saw him as arrogant, confident and rich, he was noticed by everyone. Every where he went people would ask around and say “Who’s that?’’ . He became a very well liked and popular person. He was a member of three political parties; The Sudeten German party, The German Military and the Nazi awhile later he was part of the German military.
In 1939, during the German invasion of Poland. All of the Jewish lost there business. There for Schindler got the idea to buy a factory. The only problem was that he had no money. He reached out to a Jewish man by the name of Stern. Schindler threw out the idea that if Stern gave him money for the factory he would let Stern run it and Schindler would just step back and make all of the big decisions. Schindler called his new factory “Plerwaza Malotska Fabykroya.” also called DEF for short. What the factory did was make pots and pans. With the help of Stern, they hired 1,000 Jews to do the work, because hiring Jews was cheaper then hiring Polish. The Jewish saw this as their way out, their only way to live. The workers were chosen for the job if they had a special skill and who knew how to do the work. If they were chosen for the job and had kids they were able to take the kids with them.
One day he was out with his wife Emili they witnessed a horrible scene. The SS Guards were rampaging around and killing the Jews for many reasons such as taking a brake, sitting down, not being fast enough or not doing something right. This changed the way he felt towards the Jewish, that’s when he secretly decided to help them.
While he was part of the Nazi party he was strongly respected. He was smart, he made friends with the enemies to benefit him with helping his Jews. One thing Schindler could not be tolerate, was witnessing little kids and the Jews that worked for him be murdered right in front of him. Even if his workers weren’t doing any good for his factory or weren’t beneficial to him in any way he would still say they were, just to keep them safe.
After his first Factory Closed all of his Jews were sent back to the concentration camp. Schindler lived up to his goal of “making more than enough money than one man could spend in a life time.” Schindler knew he had to get his Jews back to safety. He collected all of his money and bought another factory, this factory was to going to build shells and casings for bullets. Before he started, he decided he was going to run this factory differently he would not allow any of the shells to pass inspections, he didn’t want any one else to be killed by guns.
Schindler and Stern got together to make a list of all his Jews. It ended up being about six pages long and he still wanted more. He spent most of his money buying his Jews back. He didn’t mind it thought, he’s Jews began to be the most important thing to him. He returned to his hometown in Czechoslovakia and started his factory there. He sent for all this Jews, the men and woman separately. Due the paper work getting routed wrong Schindler lost three hundred of his woman Jews. Instead of it going to his new factory in Czechoslovakia it was routed to Auschwitz, another concentration camp.
Schindler in my eyes is a hero. He started off as a money hungry, selfish man, to a caring helpful loving man. Spending all of his money to keep the Jewish safe. Offering up his belongings right off of is body such as his expensive watch for lives! If I could find one word to describe Oskar Schindler it would be altruistic, unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the well fare of others. At the end of the war he beat his self up over not saving more of the Jewish people. He is one of my heroes!
