Oskar Schindler

3/24/2009

Question: is Oskar Schindler a hero?

Answer: even though he was of major help to the Jewish community in the Plaszow concentration camp, his intentions were not as noble as they seem.

He started out as an opportunist. He came to Krakow soon after it was conquered by the Germans and was looking to profit from the war effort. Specifically, he was looking to purchase a Jewish business fir a bargain since Jews were prohibited from owning businesses. Sure enough, he found what he was looking for in a pot and pan business which he bought from the owners at a bargain price. He then hired Jewish laborers because they were much cheaper than poles. Jewish labor was supplied by the Germans and their wages were paid to the German state. So far his actions are typical of what any Nazi industrial opportunist would do given the chance to profit from the war.

What distinguished him is what happened next. The Nazi party generally treated Jews like chattel. They maximized exploitation of their labor as long as it was readily available and then “disposed” of them if and when they were no longer capable of labor. Schindler, however, who interacted with his employees on a daily basis, naturally developed feelings towards them. When it came the time do dispose of them he insisted that they were “his” employees and the state cannot take them away from him. He often claimed that they were “skilled workers” and crucial to the war effort but that was obviously not true. His major insistence was that “his” employees remain with him and that he not be forced to accept a new work force periodically. This insistence was, ironically, counterproductive to the war effort since it retained workers who were not as productive as those that could have been selected from new arrivals.

In other words, he wasn’t saving “Jews” per se; he was saving “his” Jews. The Jews that he saved certainly are indebted to him for their life but if he hadn’t saved them, other Jews likely would have been saved instead. As far as collective Jewry is concerned, then, he did not save “Jews”. In fact, while he did save a few thousand of them, that was an unintentional upshot of his desire to exploit them.