After the end of Second World War almost no one wanted to remember the horror of the Nazi extermination camps. Neither those who had done anything to prevent that terrible crime, nor the survivors, who just wanted to forget. Thus, even the names of those who were later called the Righteous, men and women from different countries who saved thousands of Jews at the risk of their lives, were removed from history. Until Steven Spielberg in 1993 he decided to make a film based on the novel Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally, thus making the story of. known to the whole world Oskar Schindler, a Nazi who in his role as director of a pot factory in Krakow worked to save as many Jews as possible from the gas chambers, convincing the commanders of the concentration camps that they were valuable manpower for him aimed at war production.
Two years ago, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Oskar Schindlerwhich took place on 9 October 1974 (he was born in Zwittau, in the Sudetenland, on 28 April 1908), the biography was published Oskar Schindler. Life of the Nazi who saved the Jews (Terra Santa Edizioni), by Francesca Cosi and Alessandra Repossi, who did extensive research by making numerous trips to the places where Schindler was born and lived. A book that is not intended to be a hagiography, but rather to show the many shadows of an unscrupulous character, lover of luxury, women and alcohol. Even after the war he continued to try to enrich himself by embarking on a series of failed businesses and did not hesitate to abandon his wife Emilie, who had always been by his side despite his many infidelities, and who had played an important role in saving the Jews. But, for some inscrutable reason, this man with many defects and dubious morality really took the fate of the Jews to heart, putting his own life at risk several times.
The exact number of names contained in Schindler’s famous list is not certain, we are talking about over a thousand people.
The Schindlerjuden, as the Jews who survived thanks to him were called, at the end of a sumptuous banquet in his honor presented Oskar Schindler on 2 May 1962 in Tel Aviv with a gold ring engraved in Hebrew with the words: «Whoever saves one life saves the whole world». They later invited him to Jerusalem to plant a tree in the “Garden of the Righteous” at Yad Vashem.
