Oskar Schindler: Whose story inspired premise for the Oscar-winning film

Meet Oskar —

A successful German businessman.

He was greedy. He was a womanizer. He was a member of the Nazi Party. At one point, he was serving as a spy for them. He profited off the war.

Even in the deep uncertainty of World War II, Oskar was positioned to live a long, wealthy life — the life of a greedy villain who was an asset to Hitler’s army.

The first half of his life was not the life lived of a good man, but the second half would be far different.

Everything changed when he visited the Płaszów concentration camp. He witnessed firsthand the extermination camps, the torture, and the murder of Jews.

He quickly began hiring Jews at his factory. He hired women, children, the disabled, people who were virtually worthless as workers, just to give them exemption from being drafted into the concentration camps.

He lobbied Jewish groups to help raise funds to hire more Jews. Often, troops came to summon his employees to concentration camps. He lied to them, bribed them, put his life on the line over and over again to prevent people from being turned into white smoke.

Oskar was safe. He didn’t have to do anything. He was a member of an elite class. He could have just ridden out the war and moved on. But he didn’t.

Oskar blew every dollar he owned and is credited with saving the lives of 1200+ Jews during World War II. His story was the premise for the Oscar-winning film:

We like to dice up and divide people as good and evil like they are Disney characters, easy to digest, easy to fit into a bucket.

I’ve always been a fan of the anti-hero, the guy who doesn’t fit the mold, who lives in that grey area of good and evil. It more closely fits what a person really is. What I am and you are. We make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes. But we always have a chance to change. To become something different than we once were.

Oskar Schindler wasn’t a perfect man. But he came up big and did the right thing when it counted. Rather than dying a wealthy man who lived for himself, he died broke so that others could live.

His grave is now found in Israel:

His Hebrew inscription says “Righteous among the Nations.”