Among the heroes of the Holocaust, the German industrialist Oskar Schindler cuts a curious figure. Not a man of evident faith or even conventional virtue, he was in fact an opportunist, a philanderer, a member of the Nazi Party who made a fortune employing Jewish slave labor in occupied Poland. But at some point his moral compass shifted. His factory became a haven; the rescue and preservation of “his Jews” became, in fact, his only real business.  

To this end he used his considerable wiles, desperately widening the tenuous circle of life. The personal dangers he faced only emboldened him in his audacious mission. As the Jewish population in Poland was steadily decimated, Schindler transferred his entire workforce of 1,100 to Czechoslovakia. The “armaments” factory was a con game. Though guarded by SS troops and run with apparent efficiency, it produced nothing. Schindler spent his entire fortune to keep the operation running until May 1945 when the war ended. He shamed the guards into disobeying their orders to exterminate the surviving workers.  

No one, least of all “Schindler’s Jews,” doubts that what he did was good. But why did he do it? His Catholic upbringing supplies no clear explanation. He lived out his life in obscurity. But as his story became known, he was inducted into the list of Righteous Gentiles. After his death in 1974 he was buried, by his request, in Jerusalem.  

“He who saves one life saves the entire world.”

—Words from the Talmud, inscribed in a gold ring presented to Schindler by his Jewish workers