Emilie Schindler

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Emilie Schindler
Schindler in 2000
Born
Emilie Pelzl

(1907-10-22)22 October 1907
Died5 October 2001(2001-10-05) (aged 93)
Strausberg, Germany
NationalityGerman
Known forHumanitarian work
Spouse
(m. 1928; died 1974)
Notes

Emilie Schindler (German:

munitions factories, providing them immunity from the Nazis. She was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem
in 1994.

Early life

She was born in the village of Maletín in Czechoslovakia, to Sudeten German farmers Josef and Marie Pelzl. She had an older brother, Franz, with whom she was very close.[2]

Schindler's early life in Alt Moletein was idyllic, and she was quite fond of nature and animals. She was also interested in the Romani who would camp near the village for a few days at a time; their nomadic lifestyle, their music, and their stories fascinated her.[3]

Marriage

Emilie Pelzl first met Oskar Schindler in 1928, when he came to Alt Moletein to sell electric motors to her father. After dating for six weeks, the couple married on 6 March 1928 in an inn on the outskirts of Svitavy, Schindler's hometown.[4]

In spite of his flaws, Oskar had a big heart and was always ready to help whoever was in need. He was affable, kind, extremely generous and charitable, but at the same time, not mature at all. He constantly lied and deceived me, and later returned feeling sorry, like a boy caught in mischief, asking to be forgiven one more time—and then we would start all over again ... [5]

World War II

Schindler's factory at Brněnec in 2004

In 1938, the unemployed Oskar Schindler joined the Nazi Party and moved to Kraków, leaving his wife in Svitavy. There he gained ownership of an enamelware factory that had lain idle and in bankruptcy for many years and that he renamed Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik, where he principally employed Jewish workers because they were the cheapest.[6] However, he soon realized the true brutalities of the Nazis, and the Schindlers started protecting his Jewish laborers. Initially, they saved the workers by bribing the SS guards; later, they listed their employees as essential factory workers, manufacturing munitions for the Reich. When conditions worsened and they started running out of money, she sold her jewels to buy food, clothes, and medicine. She looked after sick workers in a secret sanatorium in the camp in Brněnec, Czech Protectorate, with medical equipment purchased on the black market.[5]

One of the survivors, Maurice Markheim, later recalled:

She got a whole truck of bread from somewhere on the black market. They called me to unload it. She was talking to the SS and because of the way she turned around and talked, I could slip a loaf under my shirt. I saw she did this on purpose. A loaf of bread at that point was gold ... There is an old expression: Behind the man, there is the woman, and I believe she was the great human being.[5]

The Schindlers saved more than 1,200 Jews from

extermination camps. In May 1945, when the Soviets moved into Brünnlitz, the Schindlers left the Jews in the factory and went into hiding, in fear of being prosecuted because of Oskar's ties with the Nazi party.[5]

Life after the war

The Schindlers fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a dozen of the Schindler Jews. In 1949, they settled there as farmers and were supported financially by a Jewish organization.[7]

In 1957, a bankrupt Oskar Schindler abandoned his wife and returned to Germany, where he died in 1974.[8] Although they never divorced, they also never saw each other again. In 1993, during the production of the film Schindler's List, Emilie Schindler and a number of surviving Schindler Jews visited her husband's grave in Jerusalem; she was accompanied by Caroline Goodall, the actress who portrayed her in the film.

At last we meet again ... I have received no answer, my dear, I do not know why you abandoned me ... But what not even your death or my old age can change is that we are still married, this is how we are before God. I have forgiven you everything, everything ...[5]

After the film's release, Emilie's close friend and biographer,

Holocaust Project, to honor and preserve the memories of the survivors?"[10][11]

Schindler lived with her 50 pets for many years in her small house in San Vicente, 40 kilometres south-west of Buenos Aires. She received a small pension from Israel and Germany. Uniformed Argentinian police were posted 24 hours a day to protect her from anti-Semitic extremist groups. She formed friendships with many of the soldiers.[5]

Death

In July 2001, during a visit to Berlin, Schindler told reporters that it was her "greatest and last wish" to spend her final years in Germany, adding that she had become increasingly homesick.[5] She died at the age of 93 from the effects of a stroke in Märkisch-Oderland Hospital, Strausberg, on the night of 5 October 2001, 2½ weeks before her 94th birthday.[12] Her only relative was a niece in Bavaria. She is buried at the cemetery in Waldkraiburg, Germany, about an hour away from Munich. Her tombstone includes the words from the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5, Wer einen Menschen rettet, rettet die Ganze Welt ("Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.").[13]

Legacy

Schindler was honored by several Jewish organizations for her efforts during World War II. In May 1994, she and her husband received the Righteous Among the Nations award from Yad Vashem,[14][15] along with Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family in the Netherlands during the war. In 1995, she was decorated with the Order of May, the highest honor given to foreigners who are not heads of state in Argentina.[5] Her life inspired Erika Rosenberg's book Where Light and Shadow Meet, first published in Spanish in 1992 and later made available in English and German translations.

She appears in the Thomas Keneally novel Schindler's Ark and the 1993 film based on it, Schindler's List, in which she is played by Caroline Goodall.

She is the subject of the opera Frau Schindler by composer Thomas Morse, which premiered in 2017 at the Gärtnerplatz Theater in Munich.[16] The following year a new production of the opera, directed by Vladimir Alenikov, was produced at the Stanislavsky Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre for their hundredth anniversary season.[17]

See also

  • Individuals and groups assisting Jews during the Holocaust
  • List of Righteous among the Nations by country

References

  1. ^ The Independent 2001.
  2. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 4.
  3. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 4–5.
  4. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 6.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Bülow 2005.
  6. ^ Steinhouse 1994.
  7. ^ Crowe 2004, pp. 488, 494–495.
  8. ^ Thompson 2002, p. 25.
  9. ^ Keneally 2008, p. 265.
  10. ^ a b Ebert 2002.
  11. ^ Ebert, Roger. "In Praise of Love Movie Review (2002) | Roger Ebert". rogerebert.com. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
  12. ^ New York Times 2001.
  13. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 622.
  14. ^ Emilie Schindler at Yad Vashem website
  15. ^ Crowe 2004, p. 604.
  16. ^ "Umjubelte Uraufführung der Oper "Frau Schindler"". MUSIK HEUTE (in German). 10 March 2017. Retrieved 19 March 2019.
  17. ^ "Frau Schindler". stanmus.com. Retrieved 19 March 2019.

Sources

External links