The Holocaust

• Jews were kept in concentration camps during the Holocaust.ruins of concentration camp in poland image by Lukasz Kalwa from Fotolia.com
  
  World War II, from 1939 to 1945, saw atrocities carried out against the Jewish populations of Germany and Eastern Europe. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, a regime of mass genocide was started. Hitler aimed to create what he considered to be a master race of blond-haired, blue-eyed people. The Jewish Virtual Library explains in its History of the Holocaust that 6 million Jews were murdered, 1.5 million of which were children.
  
  

Who Was Oskar Schindler?

• Symbols of Nazi rule still cause controversy.croix gamm??e image by rachid amrous-spleen from Fotolia.com
  
  By the time war broke out, Oskar Schindler, who had been born into a wealthy Catholic family on April 28, 1908, in Zwittau, Austria-Hungary, had gambled away most of his family's fortune. The United States Holocaust Museum depicts Schindler as an unlikely hero, describing him as "a renowned womaniser." Using the war as an opportunity to make money, Schindler went to Poland and made himself useful to the local SS officers, helping them find women and black-market goods. He took the opportunity to buy a munitions factory at a knocked-down price and used Jewish labor because it was so cheap.
  
  

Why Was Schindler a Hero?

• As the war progressed, Schindler became aware of the atrocities against the Jews. He designated jobs in his factory as essential war work so that his workers could not be taken away to the death camps. In 1944, Schindler persuaded Nazi officials to let him move his 1,100 Jewish workers, who became known as Schindler's list, to a new factory location in Bramec, thus saving them from almost certain death. There he took over another former Jewish factory meant to produce missiles and bullets, but during his seven months, not a single weapon produced was in working condition. Schindler used his amassed fortune to bribe officials and care for his workers, and by the end of the war his money was gone.
  
  In an interview 20 years after the war, Moshe Bejski, a Schindler Jew, asked Schindler why he did it. "I knew the people who worked for me. When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings," Schindler said.
  
  Schindler died penniless on October 9, 1974.