Biography

Hans Schindler married Franziska Luser and had two children. One of them was named Oskar Schindler who was born on April 28, 1908 in Zwittau, Moravia, Austria-Hungary. He had a younger sister named Elfriede who was very close to his heart despite the seven years age difference. The nearest neighbours were a Jewish Rabbi family, and the two sons became Oskar`s best friends. The family was one of the richest and most prominent in Zwittau, but as a result of the deep economic depression of the 1930s, the family firm became bankrupt.

When he was a teenager, he worked in their family firm that was being managed by his father. He married Emilie Pelzl, a daughter of a wealthy Sudeten German farmer from Maletein, that caused Oskar’s and his father’s relationship to deteriorate. He searched for jobs and even started various businesses but because of the Great Depression in the 1930s, they went bankrupt.

In 1935, he decided to join the separatist Sudeten German party. He was officially a Czechoslovakia citizen but he worked as a spy in the German Military Intelligence. Oscar Schindler quickly got on good terms with the local Gestapo chiefs. As a result, he was convicted by the Czech government. He was a political prisoner until the Munich Agreement was signed; he was then released and joined the Nazi party in 1939.

He left his wife Emilie in Zwittau and moved to Krakow, where he took over a Jewish family`s apartment.  He bribed people  who were in higher positions and gave him control of a Jewish-owned enameled-goods factory, Deutsch Emailwaren Fabrik, close to the Jewish ghetto, where he hired Jewish workers. At this time presumably because they were the cheapest labour. But slowly as the inhumane acts of the Nazis accelerated,  violence and terror, the plan for the total extermination of the Jews dawned on Schindler in all its horror - he came to see the Jews not only as cheap labourers, but also as innocent people who were exposed to ruthless assassination.