Oskar Schindler

The Holocaust:
The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews during WW2. In 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe, later occupied by Germany. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. But Jews were not the only group singled out for persecution by the Nazi regime. Gypsies, Soviet prisoners-of-war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, Social Democrats and Communists were also victims of the hate and aggression carried out by the Nazis.

To more than 1200 Jews Oskar Schindler was all that stood between them and death at the hands of the Nazis. A man full of flaws like the rest of us - the unlikeliest of all role models who started by earning millions as a war profiteer and ended by spending his last pfennig and risking his life to save his Jews. An ordinary man who even in the worst of circumstances did extraordinary things, matched by no one. He remained true to his Jews, the workers he referred to as my children. In the shadow of Auschwitz he kept the SS out and everyone alive.

Oskar Schindler was an inspiring evidence of courage and human decency during the Holocaust - a story to bear witness to goodness, love and compassion.

Today there are more than 8,000 descendants of the Schindler-Jews living in US and Europe, many in Israel. Before World War II, the Jewish population of Poland was 3.5 million. Today there are between 10,000 and 15,000 left.

Schindler spent millions to protect and save his Jews, everything he possessed. He died penniless. But he earned the everlasting gratitude of the Schindler-Jews. Today his name is known as a household word for courage in a world of brutality.

Oskar Schindler died in Hildesheim in Germany October 9, 1974. He wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. As he said: My children are here ..

- Louis Bülow

The Children:
The number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.