In the fall of 1941, the Nazis began removing Jews from the ghetto, most of whom were sent to the Belzec extermination camp to be killed. On March 13, 1943, the ghetto was liquidated. 1,200 Jews, thanks to a list, were saved from the Nazi Holocaust. Whoever saves a life, saves the entire world. Poland Schindler's List Hello, how are you friends? Welcome to a new video. For those who don't know me, my name is Gabriel Herrera. Friends, as you saw in the title of this video, today we are going to talk about a chapter in the history of Poland that we could say has a happy ending. We are outside the factory of Oskar Schindler, That famous person who was a member of the Nazi party but that did not stop him from following his own ideals, his own thoughts and questioning whether what he was doing was right or wrong. And this is the story I'm going to tell you next about how 1,200 Jews, thanks to a list, were saved from the Nazi Holocaust. This is the story of Oskar Schindler. Biography of Oskar Schindler: He was an Austrian businessman who in 1936 decided to join the intelligence service of Nazi Germany and later, the Nazi party. Before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he collected information for the German government on railways and troop movements. For this reason, he was arrested by the Czech government, but shortly after he was released in compliance with the Munich agreements of 1938. Schindler continued to carry out espionage tasks for the Nazis in Poland before the German invasion of 1939, an event that triggered World War II. Here begins what represented the salvation of 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust. In 1939, Schindler acquired this enameled tribute factory here in Krakow. In it, he employed about 1,750 workers, of which about 1,000 were Jews. In 1944, as we can see, the factory is quite large, quite spacious. Look, this is the whole facade, if you saw Steven Spielberg's movie "Schindler's List", you will recognize part of the facade. Notice that here at the entrance are some of those 1,200 Jews who were saved thanks to Oskar Schindler and who here are given a fair tribute right at the entrance. Through these famous gates passed 1,750 employees that the factory came to have, coming from the Jewish ghetto here in Krakow. Currently, Oskar Schindler's factory functions as a museum, telling a bit about the history, about everything that happened, the events of World War II and you can see part of what the factory was like, how it was used, the different rooms and they have there the actual office of Oskar Schindler. But before we go inside, let's learn a bit about what were the main motivations of Oskar Schindler to acquire that factory. Initially, his motivation was purely economic. He acquired this factory with the help of Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant from a colleague of Schindler from the intelligence service. and who Stern had left in trust his old business. This was what Jews mostly did when the war came: leave in trust, leave their businesses to the Germans to work them and give them "some" part of the profits. With the backing of several Jewish investors, Schindler signed an informal lease contract on November 13, 1939. He formalized the agreement in January 1940, and thus the factory was renamed the German Enameling Factory. But very soon that factory would come to be known by the name Emalia. Schindler's contacts helped him secure contracts to manufacture pots and utensils for the German armies and these contacts of Schindler would later help him protect all his Jewish employees from death in the concentration and extermination camps. Initially, Schindler was more interested in the profitability of his businesses and hired all those Jews because they were cheaper than non-Jewish workers, since their salaries had been set by the Nazi occupiers. Now we are inside the factory. These are the gates through which the more than 1,200 Jews passed that Schindler worked or did not have in this place. We are going to be touring the inside of the factory then to learn a bit more about the history it has to tell and that you can learn a bit more about this story. This is a bit of the complexes that are in the back all that is the interior of the factory. Look how large and extensive it is. Here we can see all the photographs of the different Jews who made up the list and here we have the man responsible for saving them, Oskar Schindler, April 28, 1908, his death was October 9, 1974. This photo was taken in the year 2007 on Mount Zion, where Oskar Schindler is buried, the only member of a Nazi party buried in that place in Israel. Everything you are seeing at this moment, are original rooms of the factory. We can still see how everything there was distributed and there in that window what we have is a representation of the streets of Krakow in the times of World War II. Original objects of German origin. I don't know if these stairs will look familiar to you, I think they will... Schindler in the movie, was standing right up here, waiting for one of the people who was applying for a job, because he knew that here they treated the Jews very well. I don't know if you remember that the girl was right there, at the reception of the factory, and Schindler peeked out here, saw her, and as he didn't find her very beautiful at that first moment, he didn't pay attention to her and the girl turned back around and then they went to the office. On August 1, 1941, the governor of Krakow issued a decree for all Jews to leave the city within the following two weeks. Only those who had a job related to the German war effort could stay. Of the 60,000 Jews living in the Polish city, only 15,000 remained Here we can see a representation of what the wall of the Krakow ghetto looked like, very different from what we saw of the Warsaw ghetto, if you haven't seen that video yet, you have to go watch it, where we were talking about the history of the Warsaw ghetto. Here we can see a testimony from a boy of just 5 years old, notice, written in his own handwriting, and this testimony is saying that the ghetto was obviously divided by a wall, and there were some very large gates through which the tram passed. I don't know if you can see here the tram lines. Once it happened that the tram did enter the ghetto but never stopped, it passed through the ghetto but never stopped, it was totally forbidden. Once the train passed, this boy tells that a boy who was inside the tram itself threw some pieces of bread, some crumbs of bread at his feet, and it's brutal, it's brutal because the people who were inside the ghetto were in very poor conditions, and well, that boy realized and had that gesture. This is another testimony from a 14-year-old girl who wrote this letter. She says that once she was passing in front of a construction where some Poles were working. The girl is Jewish and was inside the ghetto. And she passed by those people who were doing construction work and, just for being Jewish, they threw lime at her. They filled her hair, her whole hair; they bathed her whole body with lime, which caused her burns. That's what she was saying there. The testimony begins by saying that, in the morning, she still felt some trust towards the Poles, but after this, obviously, not so much. The last part of her testimony says that it's very bad to be Jewish in these times. Here we can see another of the rooms of the factory, like the original floor, in wood, part of the furniture that was there at the time. Monument in representation of the 1,200 Jews belonging to Schindler's list who were saved from the Nazi Holocaust. Here are carved the names of each of them. These are some photographs of the interior of the factory, notice that there you can see some of the pots they made... Here we can also see some pots with the enamel, it was an enameling factory... Here we have Oskar also in the center of the image with all his workers around, of which he saved all of them. The cabinets were the hiding places they used to store weapons. The remaining Jews were forced to leave their traditional neighborhood of Kazimierz and were relocated to the Krakow ghetto. Notice that here we can see where the ghetto was located and where they were mobilized from Kazimierz. This was their traditional neighborhood, this was the ghetto, and this was the Podgórze area. To give you an idea of where it was located, the concentration camp in relation to the ghetto, notice that the ghetto was here and the concentration camp was just here at this distance from each other. Precisely the ghetto was placed in this area because it was close to many industries, many factories. Notice that Schindler's factory was located very close to the ghetto and they walked every day from here to there. It was the only way out of the ghetto, so I imagine that this represented in some way or another some relief to see the outside of the city. Schindler wanted the best comfort for his workers and inside the factory he built a dining hall, a kitchen, and a medical clinic. In the fall of 1941, the Nazis began removing Jews from the ghetto, most of whom were sent to the Belzec extermination camp to be killed. On March 13, 1943, the ghetto was liquidated. All occupants who were still in working condition ended up in the new Plaszów concentration camp We have here a representation of this camp with real images of the place. Notice how we have here a representation and here we have a photograph of what the concentration camp looked like. Here we have a representation of the different jobs that were done inside the camp. They transported stones that were later used in works for Nazi Germany. Notice these large wagons, so to speak, that were transported by these rails were transported by up to 7 people because this was filled with stones. Imagine working for 12 hours or more with very little food because we are talking about them being given a daily diet of about a kilo and a half of food per week. Well, and having toured the inside of the factory and having learned a bit more about that history, we are now going to move on to the Jewish ghetto of Krakow to learn where these Jews who worked in that factory came from and to learn a bit more about what life was like for these Jews and what this factory represented for them. Well friends, at this moment we are in what is the Jewish quarter, where the Jews lived before the war, before they created the Jewish ghetto and that is because they had their own space for many years back. We are talking about more than 500 years ago, after a lot of history. But well, this was the place where they lived and from here, from this Jewish quarter, it was from here that they were forced to withdraw and go to the ghetto to be enclosed within walls. Many will recognize the entrance to this synagogue and that is because they could have seen it exactly in Steven Spielberg's movie, Schindler's List. What we see in the background is the oldest synagogue of the 20 that were here in Krakow. Something you should understand and so as not to confuse you for people who saw the movie, is that this neighborhood was the setting of the movie, but it was not in this neighborhood where the Jews were during the war because remember that they were taken from here they were thrown from here and placed in the Jewish ghetto. Only that this neighborhood was more suitable for filming the movie and it was this place that was chosen by Steven Spielberg. But where everything happened is where we are going to go next, which was where the Jewish ghetto was located, where was the wall that divided the Jewish population from the rest of the population here in Krakow. One of the reasons for choosing this place for the filming of the movie, is that Steven Spielberg did not want to make a tourist site, a place that caused so much pain for the Jewish community and then, instead, he chose this place also that helped the community a lot, because by the way, this place here was terrible, I mean, no one wanted to come to this place after the end of World War II and in the 90s, after the end of communism here in Poland, this place was left for very problematic people, for drug addicts, for these kinds of people and no one wanted to come to this neighborhood. After the movie premiered in the 90s, this neighborhood began to gain much more prominence due to the number of tourists who came and little by little it was reformed. Well, and right here in the square we have a memorial that honors the victims, the more than 60,000 Jews who ultimately lost their lives in this city. Well, I brought you to this place that indeed belongs to the Jewish quarter, also belongs to an iconic scene from the movie Schindler's List and I don't know if you remember this image exactly, when the boy comes walking through here and he meets his friend's mother and tells her to hide, to hide from the soldiers coming this way and the boy arrives and stands there and tells them no, that he already checked the building and that no one else is left, in this way that person is saved in the movie. And this is it, which is a typical Jewish residence, not very tall, where the Jews lived up there, they had a central courtyard, here, as what we were also seeing in Warsaw and they did a lot of social life. The ghetto that was located on the other side of the river. This bridge connects it to the city. We are now approaching the ghetto area because precisely this building that we have on the left is the first building from where the neighborhood that started the ghetto was built. It used to function as a hospital and work office, today it is a music school and the building we have right next to it was only a hospital, now it is a building of social aid and the interesting thing here to note is that right there the wall that divided the city passed, the old city where the Jews lived, in Kazimierz, to the Jewish ghetto installed by Hans Frank. Now I have brought you to what is currently a memorial, but at the time, when the Jewish ghetto of Krakow was in operation, it was the meeting place, where they brought the Jews who lived inside the ghetto to be selected. This square currently functions as a representation of the wait that the Jews had to endure to know whether they would stay in the Krakow ghetto or were transferred to the concentration and extermination camps. The only thing the Jews wanted was to have the stamp put on them to stay in the ghetto This ghetto was made for 3,000 inhabitants and at some point there were more than 24,000 people. There, friends, was the place where the Jews entered who remained there for at least six, eight, or ten hours in this square, waiting in line, waiting to hand in their papers and to know what decision the Nazi soldier would make, whether he would give them the stamp or not. The decision to sign the paper was totally arbitrary. There are stories of Jews who stood in line for 6 hours or more and were not given the signature. They then went back to line up and the same agent who had said no, this second time did sign it for them. There were several large deportations, but two marked history, one in 1941 and the other in 1943. The chairs have different positions; some are facing that way because just in that direction is the concentration camp, and it was the fate of many of the Jews who remained here waiting for their stamp or not. Other chairs are facing that way, symbolizing all those people who in some way helped the Jews. The selection was so arbitrary: which Jew was going to the camp, which Jew was going to remain in the ghetto or which Jew was going to be killed right in this place. This chair is representing that because it is facing this alley here. That alley was used for Nazi officers, to kill left and right anyone they considered should die that day; they took them there and without any kind of excuse they killed them. Right in this place, we also have the location of a pharmacy that played an important role in the life of the Jews within the ghetto. There was a person who was not Jewish, who remained inside the ghetto through bribes and so on, because he was a person who liked to help people and knew from the first moment that what was coming to the Jewish community who was going to live inside the ghetto was not going to be easy. He served as a bridge to bring any number of contraband items and served to make a meeting point within his pharmacy so that Jews could talk freely because obviously, in this place you could not speak freely. Also, since he was not Jewish, he could enter and leave the ghetto and that allowed him to bring in contraband. That is the Eagle's Pharmacy. Now we are going to a place very close to here where you can still see what the original wall was like because it is still there intact. That's next. Well, and we have arrived at the place where I wanted to show you this iconic but tragic place because it represents the enclosure of a group of people simply because of their religion. The one that represents on this side where I am freedom, liberation because on that side is the Jewish ghetto of Krakow. On that side were the Jews enclosed without being able to leave, doing forced slavery work and just waiting for the day they were told they had to die or simply waiting for death. It is the original wall and I don't know if you can notice the shape it has; notice that it is like with crescents at the top. That is not by chance, it is not decoration, it is not to look nice at all. The wall has that appearance, has those shapes like that because they represent what a traditional Jewish tomb looks like. Notice the impact that this can have for Jewish people that the wall that separates them from freedom has that appearance and what psychological burden it can represent to see this every day while you in addition to being hungry, in addition to working, in addition to going through as many bad circumstances as you can imagine separated from their families, having lost a family member and having to see this every day. Another thing I must mention is that the wall of the Krakow ghetto is not really that high, you wouldn't need a very big effort to climb it. Really, what they were looking for with this wall was more of a psychological burden because in addition to representing traditional Jewish tombs it also made the Jews think daily that at any moment they could jump it, only the necessary conditions had to be met because something you should keep in mind is that in addition to having this wall on this other side that is no longer part of the Jewish ghetto, this whole area was militarized, this whole area had Nazi officers and it is said that historically the city of Krakow was where there were more Nazi soldiers per square meter. I mean, it was not easy to go unnoticed you being a Jew trying to climb this wall because you could run into a Nazi soldier on this other side here at any moment. But this did not stop representing hope for the Jews that the wall was not high enough to rule out that possibility, no on the contrary, they kept it very much in mind every day and that perhaps psychologically played in favor of the Nazis that the Jews did not despair because they had the hope that at any moment they could jump it. Now, obviously this was not possible, this did not happen but what did happen is that these dates arrived, that I was talking about a moment ago, where the great deportations of Jews were made and where the Jews who did not remain within these walls were sent to the concentration and extermination camps. and one of those camps to which they were sent is the Plasów concentration camp which we are going to be visiting at this moment. Entrance to the Plaszów concentration camp Notice that at the entrance of the concentration camp is merely residential. Notice that we have residential buildings here, this before was a Jewish cemetery and just in that place originally they held the prayers for the deceased that were buried here. In the movie, it was used as the residence of the host but this was not true. This is the original house of Amon Goth, the most brutal of the SS commanders in charge of this Plaszów camp. At the time of making the movie, this house was in very poor condition. The house was located within the confines of the camp. Well, this is precisely what Schindler wanted to save his workers from and that is that this part is like a pit that was located just in this part of the Plaszów camp. The prisoners were placed at the top there and were murdered and then their bodies thrown into this large cliff to accumulate the bodies and later burn them. Here we can see a current map of what the place looks like and they are marking here everything that was the concentration camp. All this was the concentration camp... This part here we start the tour at this point at number 5 where was the house that was also used in the movie but that was not really the house where Goth was. Well, something they are telling us is that this place is not known by everyone and that is that many people come here to Krakow to work from other parts of Poland and especially young people looking for new opportunities and people who live nearby because there are many residences nearby just our guide lives very close to here, his house is within the area where the concentration camp was and he tells us that many people come here because it really looks like a park and they don't know the history behind it, so they come to play, they come to have fun and it is really a bit disturbing that people can have fun in a place like this when such atrocious things happened... This monument honors all the people who were inside the camp. You see 5 people bearing a great weight in the form of a concrete block that represents slavery and their hearts are empty from all the suffering experienced. These are pits where they murdered and threw people. Something I must tell you and that you have to keep in mind is that the place chosen to build this concentration camp by the Nazis was the old Jewish cemetery, here was the Jewish cemetery very close to the Catholic cemetery that is why during the movie you can see part of the roads where people were transported were made of tombstones, that was the reason. Well, the more we keep walking through the concentration camp we can see some of the testimonies of the people who worked here and it is precisely on this sign we can see the testimony of an 11-year-old boy who worked in this part of the concentration camp that you are seeing behind me in those barracks there making brushes and they specifically put the children to make brushes because they had small hands it was easier for them to work and the testimony of what the boy says is that his dad sent him to work here because he told him that the only way to survive was working in that place. And that was the way they could survive the people who were sent to the concentration and extermination camps. The only way not to die was to be useful; to work. However, that did not guarantee staying alive, but it was a way to be able to prolong that death. The only way not to be killed was to comply with work shifts of 12 hours maintaining the same rhythm. The Germans made the Jews peel a kilo of potatoes and if they took more than 10 minutes to finish peeling the kilo of potatoes they were forced to maintain that pace of work for 12 hours. And if they didn't maintain it, which was most likely, they were killed. Schindler knew in advance about the intentions of the Nazis, that is why he had his workers sleep inside the factory during the evacuation of the ghetto. Since Schindler was marked by that reason, he decided in one way or another to help these Jews who worked for him and, since then, according to Sol Urbach, one of the Jews who worked at Emalia, he says that the entrepreneur completely changed his mind regarding the Jews and what the Nazis were doing against them. For that reason, he decided to save as many Jews as he could. Over time, he began to protect his Jews regardless of the large amount of money that would cost him. Whenever the Schindler Juden, or Schindler's Jews as they were known at that time, were threatened with deportation, he claimed some kind of section to avoid it. And in his factory, he employed even people with some type of disability, that in the eyes of any German, could not do any kind of work, but for him, anyone who was in his factory was essential. In one way or another, he sought a way to make it seem that what that person did, could not be done by anyone else. Over time, Schindler was forced to bribe Nazi officers with increasingly expensive gifts, obtained on the black market. Amon Göth, SS captain in charge of the concentration camp we were visiting, and of whom we saw photos during our visit to Schindler's factory, his main idea was that all the factories, including Schindler's, become part of the concentration camp. Move all his employees and all the machinery inside the camp, but obviously Schindler was not going to allow this, and he did everything in his power to try to convince Göth not to do such a thing, because really, it was not convenient for him. And he did this with a combination of flattery, gifts, diplomacy, and all this not only avoided the transfer of his workers to the concentration camp, but also made Göth build a subcamp next to the actual factory. In this way, he was able to house all his workers and an extra 450 Jews from nearby factories. In this way, they were safe from the arbitrary murders by Göth and his madness, in addition to having better food in this place, having medical service, and even being able to continue with their religious practices. However, Schindler went through several situations that endangered the lives of these people, because on several occasions he was arrested. One of them occurred during the celebration of his birthday inside the factory, where some SS officers were present, and during the celebration he kissed a Jewish girl. This was punishable by law and he was arrested. He spent several days until, thanks to his friends who knew him within the Nazis, within the organization, they were able to help him and in this way he was released. And you may wonder, at what height does the famous list of the 1,200 Jews from Schindler's factory take relevance. With the advance of the Red Army in July 1944, forced the SS to close the different concentration camps and send all those who were there, to extermination camps like Auschwitz. Göth's personal secretary warned Schindler of this, so he suggested changing his production from passing pots and that type of utensils to more important things like grenades, to have an excuse to continue manufacturing and continue with his workers. And this change in the type of product they were going to manufacture was simply made to save the lives of his Jews. Schindler convinced Göth to move his factory and his employees to Brulin, which prevented his employees from ending up in the gas chambers. With names obtained by Marcel Goldberg, officer of the Jewish ghetto police, he compiled and typewritten 1,200 names of Jews, 1,000 from his factory and 200 from the textile factory of Julius. However, despite all that Schindler did, his Jews were still not completely saved and that is after all he did to be able to move his factory, and that his Jews did not end up in the gas chambers, there was a mistake that sent one of Schindler's Jews trains, specifically 300 women, to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In it, they spent more than a week, a week of anguish thinking that they could die at any moment. Imagine yourselves being inside that train knowing that your destiny was totally another, believing that you were going to be saved and ending up in Auschwitz. Well, Schindler had to do everything that was in his hands to avoid the death of those 300 women in Auschwitz. He sent his secretary with baskets full of products obtained on the black market to bribe the SS officers in charge of the Auschwitz extermination camp so that his women, Schindler's Jews, were transferred to the factory, to the place where they should be in Brulins. And you may wonder, what kind of products could make these Nazis change their minds? Well, among the many products that Schindler had to send were included diamonds, but everything was successful and despite spending several weeks in Auschwitz, they managed to get them out of there, all 300 women were saved, each one of them. Once Schindler had already moved his factory and all his employees were there, very few bullet projectiles, very few grenades, very few anti-tank mines came out of there and when the Nazis began to question the production that it was not quite right, well, Schindler what he did was buy ammunition from other factories, passing them off as his own and handing them over to the Germans. In this way, he collaborated in not providing more weapons, because he said that the fewer weapons he manufactured, the fewer weapons there were for destruction, for war. Finally, on May 7, 1945, he and his workers gathered in the factory to listen on the radio to the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, give the speech where he announced the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Obviously, this was good news for the 1,200 Jews who made up Schindler's list, but not so much for him, because as a member of the Nazi party he was exposed to being arrested for war crimes. So Schindler's own Jews decided to help him in some way, they signed a declaration attesting to his efforts for the salvation of Jewish lives. In addition to this and with the help of one of his workers, who still had a set of false gold teeth, he took them out, they melted them and made Schindler a ring and on the ring they wrote a Talmudic phrase that says so "whoever saves a life, saves the entire world". Unfortunately, he lost the ring in the car, where he fled and which the Red Army later confiscated. By the end of the war, Schindler had spent all his fortune on bribes and aids for his workers he was completely bankrupt. He had to survive thanks to the aids and organizations of the Jews. Schindler estimated that he spent a fortune of more than a million dollars and when he claimed to the distribution set of the American Jewish committee to have his expenses returned during the war, he only received $15,000. He declared bankruptcy in 1963, a year later he had a heart attack. He maintained contact with several of the Jews he met during the war. After declaring bankruptcy, he survived thanks to the donations that came to him from all over the world from the Jews he saved. Finally, Oskar Schindler died on October 9, 1974. He is buried in the Catholic cemetery of Mount Zion in Jerusalem and an interesting fact to know is that he is the only person who belonged to the Nazi party buried there. Friends and we have reached the end of this story. I hope you liked it and I would like to know in the comments if you knew about the story of Oskar Schindler. Also, before I leave, I would like to invite you to watch the previous videos from the series we have been recording here in Poland about all that meant the destruction of this country and the arrival of Nazism. Friends, I'm not going without first inviting you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Subscribe to the notification bell so you always know when I upload a new video. I also invite you to follow me on my Instagram account which is @gabrielherrera_ Friends, from here, from the Jewish quarter of Krakow, I say goodbye. See you in a next video. Bye bye! Love to all!
