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Schindler's List 25th Anniversary Trailer

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Schindler's List 25th Anniversary Trailer

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Schindler's List 25th Anniversary - Official Trailer - In Theaters December 7

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Oskar Schindler was born on April 28th, 1908. Although ethnically German, he lived in Moravia, which was eventually brought into Czechoslovak territory, giving him Czech citizenship (The Holocaust Museum).

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Schindler was raised in a German Catholic family of four, with him, his parents, and his younger sister Elfriede (Biography). His mother, Louisa, was a homemaker, and his father, Hans, was a farm-equipment manufacturer (Jewish Virtual Library).

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After leaving school in 1924, Schindler worked at a wide array of odd jobs, trying to find a way to be successful. After finishing military service, he worked at his dad's factory until the economic depression hit in the 1930s (Biography).

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https://www.holocaustmatters.org/who-was-oskar-schindler/

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Once Hitler invaded Poland, Schindler found a new opportunity to be successful. He became experienced in the black market and could successfully bribe German soldiers. He decided to obtain a Jewish enamelware factory to expand his business interests (Biography).

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The factory started with 45 employees but eventually grew to 1,700 at its peak in 1944 (Biography). At first, Schindler hired Jewish people because they made easy profit. However, after seeing a group of innocent Jewish people being transported to Auschwitz, he began to sympathize with and care for the Jews. (Jewish Virtual Library) However, this came with a risk, because he was arrested three times. However, he was not ever charged (The Holocaust Museum).

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In 1993, Steven Spielberg released the movie, "Schindler's List" in theaters. The movie is one of the most well known Holocaust movies, and it shows the horrific casualties in a very realistic manner (IMDb).

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"Oskar Schindler Biography," The Biography.com Website, 15 May 2015, Last Updated 9 July 2020.
https://www.biography.com/activist/oskar-schindler

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Synopsis

Oskar Schindler was born into a German Catholic family on April 28, 1908. After attending trade schools, he worked for his father's farm machinery company. He worked for German intelligence and later joined the Nazi Party. An opportunist businessman with a taste for the finer things in life, he seemed an unlikely candidate to become a wartime hero. During the war, however, he operated a factory that employed more than 1,000 Polish Jews, saving them from concentration camps and extermination. In 1993 his story was made into the Steven Spielberg feature film Schindler's List.

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Early Years

Oskar Schindler was born April 28, 1908, in the city of Svitavy [Zwittau], in the Sudetenland, now part of the Czech Republic. The eldest of two children, Oskar's father, Hans Schindler, was a farm-equipment manufacturer, his mother, Louisa, was a homemaker. Oskar and his sister, Elfriede, attended a German-language school where he was popular, though not an exceptional student. Forgoing the opportunity to attend college, he went to trade school instead, taking courses in several areas.

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Oskar Schindler left school in 1924, taking odd jobs and trying to find a direction in life. In 1928, he met and married Emilie Pelzl and soon after was called into military service. Afterward, he worked for his father's company until the business failed in the economic depression of the 1930s. When not working, Schindler excelled at drinking and philandering, a lifestyle he would maintain throughout much of his life.

From Spy to Black Market Entrepreneur

In the 1930s, the political landscape of Europe changed dramatically with the rise of Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi Party. Sensing the shift in political momentum, Schindler joined a local pro-Nazi organization and began collecting intelligence for the German military. He was arrested by Czech authorities in 1938, charged with spying and sentenced to death but was released shortly thereafter, when Germany annexed the Sudetenland. Schindler would take advantage of this second chance.

In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. Schindler left his wife and traveled to Krakow, hoping to profit from the impending war. Looking for business opportunities, he quickly became involved in the black market. By October, Schindler used his charm and doled out "gifts of gratitude" (contraband goods) to bribe high-ranking German officers. Wanting to expand his business interests, Schindler obtained a former Jewish enamelware factory to produce goods for the German military.

The Enamelware Factory

Oskar Schindler renamed the factory Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik (German Enamelware Factory) and started production with a small staff. Possessing a certain panache for business and engaging in influence peddling, Schindler secured numerous German army contracts for kitchenware. He soon met Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant, who connected Schindler with Krakow's Jewish community to staff the factory.

Starting out with 45 employees, the company grew to more than 1,700 at its peak in 1944. Initially, Schindler hired Jewish workers because they were a less expensive Polish workforce. But as Nazi atrocities against the Jewish community increased, Schindler's attitude changed. With the help of Stern, he found reasons to hire more Jewish workers, regardless of their abilities. By 1942, nearly half of his employees were Jewish and were known as Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews). When the Nazis began to relocate Krakow's Jews to labor camps, Itzhak Stern and several hundred other employees were among them. Schindler raced to the train station and confronted an SS officer, arguing that his workers were essential to the war effort. After several tense minutes of dropping names and making veiled threats, Schindler was able to free his workers and escort them back to the factory.

Schindler's Life-Saving List

In early 1943, the Nazis implemented the liquidation of the Krakow Jewish population and opened up the Plaszow work camp, run by the notoriously sadistic commandant, Amon Göth. Schindler cultivated a relationship with Göth, and whenever any of his workers were threatened with deportation to a concentration camp or execution, Schindler managed to provide a black-market gift or bribe to save their lives.

In 1944, Plaszow transitioned from a labor camp to a concentration camp and all Jews were to be sent to the death camp at Auschwitz. Schindler requested Göth allow him to relocate his factory to Brnĕnec, in the Sudetenland, and produce war goods. He was told to draw up a list of workers he wanted to take with him. With Stern's help, Schindler created a list of 1,100 Jewish names he deemed "essential" for the new factory. Permission was granted and the factory was moved. Not wanting to contribute to the German war effort, Schindler ordered his workers to purposefully make defective products that would fail inspection. The employees spent the remaining months of the war in the factory.

Later Life & Death

During the war, Emilie joined Oskar in Krakow, and by the war's end, the couple was penniless, having used his fortune to bribe authorities and save his workers. The day after the war ended, Schindler and his wife fled to Argentina with the help of the Schindlerjuden to avoid prosecution for his previous spying activities. For more than a decade, Schindler tried farming, only to declare bankruptcy in 1957. He left his wife and traveled to West Germany, where he made an unsuccessful attempt in the cement business. Schindler spent the rest of his life supported by donations from the Schindlerjuden. He was named a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in 1962, and after his death in 1974, at age 66, Oskar Schindler was interred in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. In 1993, Steven Spielberg brought the story of Oskar Schindler to the big screen with his film, Schindler's List.

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Oskar Schindler was born into a German Catholic family on April 28, 1908. After attending trade schools, he worked for his father's farm machinery company. He worked for German intelligence and later joined the Nazi Party. An opportunist businessman with a taste for the finer things in life, he seemed an unlikely candidate to become a wartime hero.

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"Oskar Schindler," Jewish Virtual Library.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/oskar-schindler

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Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist, former member of the Nazi Party and possibly the most famous " Righteous Gentile" who is credited with saving as many as 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. His story was brought to international acclaim by the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and the 1993 film, Schindler's List.

Schindler was born April 28, 1908, in Zwittau, Austria- Hungary, what is now Moravia in the Czech Republic. He grew up in a Catholic well-to-do family with all the privileges money could buy.

He married Emilie Schindler at nineteen, but was never without a mistress or two. He had presided over the demise of his family business and become a salesman when opportunity came knocking in the guise of the war.

Never one to miss a chance to make money, he marched into Poland on the heels of the SS. He dived headfirst into the black-market and the underworld and soon made friends with the local Gestapo bigwigs, softening them up with women, money and illicit booze. His newfound connections helped him acquire a factory which he ran with the cheapest labor around: Jewish.

Schindler (center) with German army officers.

At first he seemed like every other usurping German industrialist, driven by profit and unmoved by the means of his profiteering. But somewhere along the line, something changed.

In December 1939, as occupied Poland was being torn apart by the savagery of the Holocaust, Schindler took his first faltering steps from the darkness of Nazism towards the light of heroism. "If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car," he said later of his wartime actions, "wouldn't you help him?"

Before the outbreak of war, Poland had been a relative haven for European Jews - Krakow's Jewish population numbered over 50,000. But when Germany invaded, destruction began immediately and it was merciless. Jews were herded into crowded ghettos, randomly beaten and humiliated, capriciously killed. Jewish property and businesses were summarily destroyed, or appropriated by the SS and 'sold' to Nazi 'investors', one of whom was the fast talking, womanizing, money hungry Schindler.

Not long after acquiring his "Emalia" factory - which produced enamel goods and munitions to supply the German front - the removal of Jews to death camps began in earnest. Schindler's Jewish accountant put him in touch with the few Jews with any remaining wealth. They invested in his factory, and in return they would be able to work there and perhaps be spared. He was persuaded to hire more Jewish workers, designating their skills as "essential," paying off the Nazis so they would allow them to stay in Kraków. Schindler was making money, but everyone in his factory was fed, no-one was beaten, no-one was killed. It became an oasis of humanity in a desert of moral torpor.

Schindler with a group of "Schindlerjuden.

As the brutality of the Holocaust escalated, Schindler's protection of his Jewish workers became increasingly active. In the summer of 1942, he witnessed a German raid on the Jewish ghetto. Watching innocent people being packed onto trains bound for certain death, something awakened in him.

"Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen," he said later. "I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system."

By the autumn of 1944, Germany's hold on Poland had weakened. As the Russian army approached, the Nazi's tried desperately to complete their program of liquidation and sent all remaining Jews to die. But Schindler remained true to the " Schindlerjuden," the workers he referred to as "my children."

After the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto and the transfer of many Jews to the Plaszow concentration camp, Schindler used his influence to set up a branch of the camp for 900 Jewish workers in his factory compound in Zablocie and made his now famous list of the workers he would need for its operation.

The factory operated in its new location a year, making defective bullets for German guns. Conditions were grim, for the Schindlers as well as the workers. But Schindler saved most of these workers when he transferred his factory to Brunnlitz (Sudetenland) in October 1944.

Office workers from the "Emalia" factory.

When the war ended, Schindler fled to Argentina with his wife and a handful of his workers and bought a farm. In 1958, he abandoned his land, his wife and his mistress to return to Germany. He spent the remaining years of his life dividing his time between Germany and Israel, where he was honored and taken care of by his " Schindlerjuden."

He died in Hildesheim in 1974. His extraordinary story might have died with him but for their gratitude.

In trying to answer the inevitable question, why did he do it, one of the survivors said: "I don't know what his motives were... But I don't give a damn. What's important is that he saved our lives."

"He negotiated the salvation of his 1,300 Jews by operating right at the heart of the system using all the tools of the devil - bribery, black marketeering and lies," said Thomas Keneally, whose book about this paradoxical man was the basis of the movie Schindler's List.

Perhaps the question is not why he did it, but rather how could he not. And perhaps the answer is unimportant. It is his actions that matter now, testimony that even in the worst of circumstances, the most ordinary of us can act courageously. If Oskar Schindler, flawed as he was, did it, then so might we, and that is reason enough to hope.

Susan Pottinger and the Life Magazine Hall of Heroes; Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Photos also from the Holocaust Museum and The Story of Oscar Schindler

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Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist, former member of the Nazi Party and possibly the most famous " Righteous Gentile" who is credited with saving as many as 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. His story was brought to international acclaim by the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and the 1993 film, Schindler's List .

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"Oskar Schindler," United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/oskar-schindler

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Oskar Schindler | Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Oskar Schindler’s actions to protect Jews during the Holocaust saved over 1,000 Jews from deportation. Learn more about Schindler’s List.

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"Schindler's List," IMDb.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108052/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

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Storyline

Oskar Schindler is a vain and greedy German businessman who becomes an unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric German Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp, it is a testament to the good in all of us. Written by Harald Mayr <marvin@bike.augusta.de>

Did You Know?

Goofs

When the gassing story is told in the women's barracks, one woman is seen to run her hands through her hair. On her index finger is a ring. All the jewelry was confiscated. See more "

Quotes

[first lines]
[a Hebrew prayer is chanted, followed by a flashback to 1940s Poland]
Krakow registrar: Name?
See more "

Crazy Credits

The end credits are shot in black and white.

The Amblin Entertainment logo is absent and in its place instead is the credit: "From Amblin Entertainment".

The MPAA Rated R logo at the end does not have the regular blue background and is shown over the black screen. See more "

Alternate Versions

The film, as shown in most countries, had the song "Yerushalayim shel Zahav" - Jerusalem of Gold - at the end. When the film was shown in Israel, audiences laughed at this, as this song was written after the 1967 war as a pop song! They then re-dubbed a song "Eli Eli" which was written by Hannah Sennesh during WWII over the end which was more appropriate. See more "

Soundtracks

Mamatschi (Mommy, Buy Me a Pony)
Written by Oskar Schima and Franz Xaver Kappus (as F.X. Kappus)
Performed by Mimi Thoma
Courtesy of The RCA Records Label of BMG Music
See more "

User Reviews

Details

Release Date:

4 February 1994 (USA)

Also Known As:

Schindler's List

Box Office

Budget:

$22,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$656,636, 19 December 1993

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$322,287,794

Company Credits

Technical Specs

Runtime:

See full technical specs "

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Oskar Schindler is a vain and greedy German businessman who becomes an unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric German Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp, it is a testament to the good in all of us.

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In 1943, the SS re-designated Plazow as a concentration camp. Because of this, Schindler decided to persuade them to make Emaila, the factory’s location, into a sub-camp. Because of this, Schindler was able to permit hundreds of Jews, saving their lives from the hardships of Plaszow. However, this came with a risk. While he owned the factory, the SS grew suspicious and arrested him three times. However, they were unable to charge him (The Holocaust Museum).

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https://www.holocaustmatters.org/who-was-oskar-schindler/

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In October of 1944, after the Emaila Jews were transferred to Plaszow, Schindler relocated his plant to Brunnlitz, Moravia, and reopened it as an armaments factory. One of his assistants drew up a list of over 1,200 soldiers needed to work at the factory, and this would later be known as “Schindler’s List.” This camp saved the lives of all those Jews and allowed them to survive to liberation. (The Holocaust Museum).

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In German-occupied Poland during World War II, industrialist Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazis (IMDb).

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Schindler used all of his money to save his workers and bribe authorities, leaving him penniless. He and his wife fled to Argentina immediately after the war had ended. After being unsuccessful with several jobs, Schindler spent the rest of his life supported by Schindlerjuden's donations until his death in 1974 (Biography).

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“I don't know what his motives were... But I don't give a damn. What's important is that he saved our lives.” -One of Schindler's Survivors (Jewish Virtual Library).

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“There was no choice. If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?”
-Schindler to Poldek Pfefferberg (Jewish Virtual Library).

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Liam Nelson held the lead role as Oskar Schindler (IMDb).