Product Code Database
Emilie Schindler (; ; 22 October 1907 – 5 October 2001) was a Sudeten Germans-born woman who, with her husband Oskar Schindler, helped to save the lives of 1,200 Jews during World War II by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories, providing them immunity from the Nazis. She was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem in 1994.
Schindler's early life in Alt Moletein was idyllic, and she was quite fond of nature and animals. She was also interested in the Romani people who would camp near the village for a few days at a time; their nomadic lifestyle, their music, and their stories fascinated her.
One of the survivors, Maurice Markheim, later recalled:
The Schindlers saved more than 1,200 Jews from extermination camps. In May 1945, when the Soviets moved into Brünnlitz, the Schindlers left the Jews in the factory and went into hiding, in fear of being prosecuted because of Oskar's ties with the Nazi party.
In 1957, a bankrupt Oskar Schindler abandoned his wife and returned to Germany, where he died in 1974. Although they never divorced, they also never saw each other again. In 1993, during the production of the film Schindler's List, Emilie Schindler and a number of surviving Schindler Jews visited her husband's grave in Jerusalem; she was accompanied by Caroline Goodall, the actress who portrayed her in the film.
After the film's release, Emilie's close friend and biographer, Erika Rosenberg, quoted Emilie in her book as saying that the filmmakers had paid "not a penny" to Emilie for her contributions to the film. These claims were disputed by Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark, who claimed he had recently sent Emilie a cheque of his own, and that he had gotten into an argument with Rosenberg over this issue before Emilie angrily told Rosenberg to drop the subject. In his 2001 film In Praise of Love, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard accuses Steven Spielberg of neglecting Emilie while she was supposedly dying, impoverished, in Argentina. In response to Godard, film critic Roger Ebert mused, "Has Godard, having also used her, sent her any money?" and "Has Godard or any other director living or dead done more than Spielberg, with his Holocaust Project, to honor and preserve the memories of the survivors?"
Schindler lived with her pets for many years in her small house in San Vicente, 40 kilometres south-west of Buenos Aires. She received a small pension from Israel and Germany. Uniformed Argentinian police were posted 24 hours a day to protect her from anti-Semitic extremist groups. She formed friendships with many of the soldiers.
She appears in the Thomas Keneally novel Schindler's Ark.
She is the subject of the opera Frau Schindler by composer Thomas Morse, which premiered in 2017 at the Gärtnerplatz Theater in Munich. The following year a new production of the opera, directed by Vladimir Alenikov, was produced at the Stanislavsky Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre for their hundredth anniversary season.
|
|
