Schindler's widow dies in misery

Emilie Schindler (94), widow of Oskar Schindler, the protagonist of Steven Spielberg's famous film "Schindler's List", dies in poverty and loneliness. Placed in a Bavarian hospital, having only recently returned to Germany from Argentina, where she had resided since 1949, Emilie Schindler is unable to pay the hospital expenses, but the Bavarian authorities will do it for her. It seems incredible that someone bearing this famous surname would become a social case, but apparently life was not generous to this woman.

She married Oskar Schindler at a very young age, and this act certainly marked her destiny in life. Life with this peculiar man was no doubt exciting and special, but not too happy. She understood his "weaknesses": his penchant for the easy life, women and everything that goes with it. She helped him compile the famous "list" of 1200 names of Jews who, instead of going to the death camp, worked in his factory as forced laborers and survived the Holocaust.

PRODUCT YOURS TIME: In post-war Germany, Oskar Schindler did not manage. Almost completely unrecognized and ignored in his homeland, he tried, with Jewish help, to find happiness in Argentina. But he didn't stay there for long either. He returned to Frankfurt alone, where he lived until his death. Although he constantly started various business activities, he did not succeed in any of them and mostly lived off the help of the people he saved. He often traveled to Israel and seems to have felt better among the Jews than among his countrymen.

But who was Oskar Schindler? According to Spielberg's story, it is about a man who was a true product of the times in which he lived. As a sympathizer of the National Socialist Party, he took advantage of all the benefits available to him. He led a carefree life in every way. Businesses went full steam ahead, thanks to the free labor of members of undesirable races.

But, parallel to Schindler's world, there was another world that did not concern him at first, he simply did not see it. It was a world of enormous human misery dominated by diabolical evil. But as time passed, Schindler collided more and more with this evil and could no longer ignore it. In the end, he acted almost "unreasonably" and stood up to him. Last year, Schindler's coffin was found in which, among the few personal belongings, there was also an original list with 1200 names of Jews whom he had saved from certain death. The event attracted a lot of media attention, and even had a judicial epilogue. Namely, Emilie Schindler sued a Stuttgart newspaper for unauthorized use of Schindler's legacy and received compensation of only 25.000 marks.

The question arises why in post-war Germany the role of Oskar Schindler, that "good German", remained in the shadows? The real answer to this question is very difficult to give. Schindler himself said that for many Germans he represents an "inconvenient" witness, that he arouses remorse among those who - like him - could have helped and saved many lives. Without a doubt, Schindler was right when he claimed that Nazi Germany would have looked different if there had been more Schindlers! However, the question of civil courage in times of evil is not so simple, as it can be done from a greater distance in time. Fortunately for many people in need, there have always been and will always be brave individuals who are ready to stand up to evil, no matter how dangerous it may be for them.

It is known that Germany came out of the war morally and materially completely devastated. People wanted to forget as soon as possible the evil in which they lived for more than a decade. From the moment in 1933, when Hitler abolished all civil liberties and introduced a regime of bloody terror and concentration camps, and turned Germany into a totalitarian police state, the country began to slide towards total collapse. Two years later, racial laws were introduced in Germany. Mass deportations of Jews and other "inferior" races to death camps began. First from Germany, and later from the whole of occupied Europe, trains full of unfortunates moved according to precise timetables towards their destinations of no return. Even to this day, no one from this huge apparatus has spoken, has not taken part of the blame for the suffering of millions of people. German railway workers certainly knew who the people were in these overcrowded formations and where they were going.

COURAGE I TEMPTATION: The case of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger is very illustrative in this sense. Although his enthusiasm for Nazism quickly waned, he did not have the courage to openly oppose it. He did it in lectures at the university, in his closed circle, but never openly and loudly. "Heidegger was not a man with a lion's heart," said his student Hans Georg Gadamer (now in old age) recently in an interview dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the death of this controversial great of XNUMXth century philosophical thought.

But let's also mention an episode from Hitler's closest circle. Henrietta von Schirach was close to Hitler even as a girl. Her father, Heinrich Hoffmann, was Hitler's photographer, and her husband, Baldur von Schirach, was one of Hitler's close associates. Hitler entrusted him with a very sensitive "department" - the youth. However, apart from dealing with the young generation, Von Schirach distinguished himself in the deportation of around 185.000 Austrian Jews. Thanks to, as he called it, his "active contribution to European culture", in 1942 the Viennese Jewish community drastically decreased to around 7000 Jews. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

So, in 1943, Henrietta von Schirach witnessed the shocking event of the deportation of a Jewish family. On that occasion, she saw how the Jews were treated harshly, and when she met Hitler, she told him what she had seen. According to one version, Hitler got angry and yelled at her terribly. Henrietta was never invited to Hitler's mountain castle again. According to another version, Hitler complained to Henrietta that she was too sentimental and everything remained as before. The Von Schirach couple continued to attend Hitler's receptions.

SOBER: A huge number of books have been written about Nazism and the main protagonists of this great evil. This historical period continues to attract the attention of authors around the world. Viennese writer and Hitler's biographer Brigit Hamann says that a new generation of readers has appeared in Germany. It is about a "sober" generation that learns about National Socialism as about the Middle Ages. He wants to know everything about this period, especially the oddities, such as the private life of the protagonists, who their wives were and the like. Half a century after the end of the war, this generation no longer raises the question of guilt and responsibility, as it did in 1968, but, without emotion, wants to know everything. Of course, this new curiosity did not remain unsatisfied. Thus, two biographies of the controversial figure and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (98) were published this year, and the filming of a film starring American actress Judy Foster will reportedly begin soon. Bavarian television recorded an extensive documentary in two parts on the topic of "Hitler's Wives" and "Women and Hitler."