Remembering Oskar Schindler
KRAKOW TOURS – On the day that the world is remembering and reminiscing about John Lennon (today would have been his 70th birthday), another internationally famous figure should be remembered also.
On this day (9th October) in 1974 Oskar Schindler died.
Oskar Schindler rose to the highest level of humanity, walked through the bloody mud of the Holocaust without soiling his soul, his compassion, his respect for human life - and gave his Jews a second chance at life. He miraculously managed to do it and pulled it off by using the very same talents that made him a war profiteer – his flair for presentation, bribery, and grand gestures.
In those years, millions of Jews died in the Nazi death camps like Auschwitz, but Schindler’s Jews miraculously survived.
To more than 1200 Jews Oscar 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 and his wife Emilie Schindler were inspiring evidence of courage and human decency during the Holocaust. Emilie was not only a strong woman working alongside her husband but a heroine in her own right. She worked indefatigably to save the Schindler-Jews – a story to bear witness to goodness, love and compassion.
Today there are more than 7,000 descendants of the Schindler-Jews living in US and Europe, many in Israel. Before the Second World War, the Jewish population of Poland was 3.5 million. Today there are between 3,000 and 4,000 left.
Oskar 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 – a hero who saved hundreds of Jews from Hitler’s gas chambers.
Schindler died in Hildesheim in Germany October 9, 1974. He wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. As he said: My children are here ..
When Hollywood Becomes History
Some fantastic photographs here of the area in and around the Liban Quarry, site of one of the working quarries used by the nazi’s for the prisoners from the nearby work camp of Płaszów. And used during the filming of Shindlers List as a mock up of the Płaszów camp.
Krakow Tours’ Schindlers Steps walk takes you through this area and includes many other interesting sites from Schindlers time in the area seen and locations used in Spielberg’s film.
Tatra Beer is big problem for the Slovakians – sorry I mean Bear
KRAKOW TOURS – A large bear is rampaging on the Polish-Slovakian border, in the Tatra National Park (TPN), and has already attacked some horses and two lumberjacks, one on either side of the border.
The Slovakians have apparently issued orders to shoot the animal if found on their side of the mountains, but the Poles have a more humane approach to the problem. Workers from the TPN have prepared a special cage which they hope to lure the aggressive mammal into.
“If he goes into the cage, we’ll put him to sleep for a while, carry out some genetic testing, establish its sex, age and weight, attach a collar and then wake him up and let him go. Then we’ll know from an online signal where the bear is to an accuracy of 5m,” park director Pawel Skawinski told reporters.
This will enable TPN workers to manage the animal and enable them to warn tourists and mountain walkers away from areas where the bear is active. In extreme circumstances, park officers are ready to use plastic bullets against the marauding beast. “He won’t be killed by us,” Skawinski guaranteed.
The park director has three hypotheses as to why the animal is behaving so aggressively: either the bear is injured, or it has been fed by people and no longer fears them, or – an extremely rare occurrence – the bear is a natural born killer.
Auschwitz thieves NO SHOW for prison sentence.
KRAKOW TOURS - The three men jailed for stealing the Auschwitz sign are missing after being let out of jail on compassionate leave.Two of the men, brothers Lukasz and Rodoslaw M., had been entrusted with weekend passes in order to visit their ill mother. The third man, Pawel S., had also been allowed out, to organise wedding plans with his fiancée. But police have confirmed that all three have failed to return to the jail in Wroclaw and arrest warrants have now been issued by Krakow’s District Court.
The men had been sentenced for their roles in the theft of the famous ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign that sits above the entrance gate to the Nazi death camp in December last year.
Police are now worried that their no show could affect the outcome of the case against Anders Hogstrom, the man who is believed to have plotted and staged the entire theft. Hogstrom, who founded Sweden’s anti-immigrant National Socialist Front in 1994, was extradited to Poland this month to face trial – with most of the evidence based on statements from the men who are now missing.
The former neo-Nazi leader has pleaded innocent, stating that he was merely asked to collect the sign from the Polish gang in order to pass it onto a buyer. If convicted of the crime, he faces up to 10 years in prison.
Schindler’s List For Sale $2.2 Million
KRAKOW TOURS - Oskar 
Schindler, the Czech businessman made famous by Stephen Spielberg for saving 1,200 Jews from the concentration camps, made 7 copies of his life-saving list.
The whereabouts of two of them are unknown, the Israeli Holocaust Museum has two, another is in a public archive in Koblenz, Germany, another is in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., and the final extant list belongs to the Stern family, descendants of Schindler’s accountant and right hand man, Itzhak Stern.
After two years of negotiations with historic document dealer Gary Zimet of MomentsInTime.com, the Stern family has put that last known privately-held copy on the market. The price is a cool $2.2 million.
“It’s printed on onion-skin paper,” Zimet said. “It’s remarkable given the age and the paper. It’s in excellent shape.”
“This is the only remaining copy left in private hands,” Zimet said. “The rest are in museums.”
While Zimet expects that many museums will be interested in obtaining the list, he notes that the high price will require a patron to step forward. “These days, museums are all broke,” Zimet said.
Several copies of the list were made between 1944 and 1945. Every time Schindler submitted a new (and longer) list of employees to be spared the camps, he kept a carbon copy. According to the Stern family, this particular list of 801 names dated 18/04/1945 was the second to last one Schindler made.
Here’s hoping someone with cash could use the tax write-off and donate it to a public institution.
Krakow Ghetto opened 69 years ago this week
IN SCHINDLERS STEPS - This day in history – 1941 - The beginning of the Jewish ghetto in Krakow
One of the five main ghettos created by Nazi Germany during their occupation of Poland in WWII. Before the war, the city was an influential cultural centre for the 60,000 – 80,000 Jews that resided there.
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