21st Century: Query 170 (Oskar Schindler)
“If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn’t you help him?” ~ Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark and its 1993 film adaptation, Schindler’s List , which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit, who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication to save the lives of his Jewish employees. How does his rhetorical question reveal his negative attitudes toward the Jewish people, even as he helped them escape the concentration camps and out of Nazi Germany? Do these attitudes diminish his tremendous humanitarian work? Why or why not?