The economic puzzle of Oskar Schindler: amenity potential and rational choice

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The,  Jan, 1998  by Ray Jones

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2. As Keneally states in the preface, "This account of Oskar Schindler's astonishing history is based in the first place on interviews with fifty Schindler survivors from seventeen nations (1993: 9)," and was also constructed from Schindler's personal papers and letters, documentary information from wartime associates of Schindler, interviews with his postwar friends, and the testimony of the workers he saved. While Keneally used "the texture and devices of a novel to tell a true story," he "attempted to avoid all fiction (10)." Most of the conversations, and all of the events described in the book, were based on Keneally's research. The only fictional parts of the book are Keneally's reconstructions of conversations of which Oskar and others left only the briefest record.

3. Sudeten Germans were the German minority in Czechoslovakia, one of the new nations created after World War I. Several million Sudeten Germans lived in Moravia, which had been detached from Austria after World War I and annexed into Czechoslovakia. There was a great deal of resentment toward the new Czech state among this minority, and as a result, many Sudeten Germans became ardent supporters of the Nazis (Robinson, 1995: 6).

4. For Schindler, like many other Nazi party members, party membership presented possibilities for their personal material gain. As Keneally wrote, "When you went in to see a German company manager wearing the (Nazi) badge, you got the order (1993: 38)." Even the Nazi party members who joined before the watershed year of 1933, when all competing political parties were abolished with Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany, were motivated to join chiefly by a belief that party membership would promote their material interests (Brustein, 1996: xii).

5. In 1938, Schindler joined the Abwehr, the German military intelligence, and traveled extensively to Poland to obtain information about Poland's military preparedness (Robinson, 1995: 7).

6. The Generalgouvernement consisted of Warsaw, Krakow, Lublin, Radom and Lvov, and was inhabited by approximately 2,284,000 Jews (Gross, 1979).

7. Laws were passed to require Jews to wear a yellow Star of David in public and that prohibited them from being in most public places, such as restaurants, parks, swimming pools, theaters and public transportation (Tec, 1986: 17-18).

8. Jewish owners of businesses, property and valuables were forced to turn over their holdings to government agencies, banks, civilian firms and private individuals - for little or no compensation (Tec, 1986: 17-18). Businesses throughout Nazi Germany were given opportunities to acquire, distribute and sell the confiscated holdings and goods of the Jewish people. For more information on Aryanization, see Hilberg (1985); Hayes (1995); and Miller (1995).

9. Each year, Schindler obtained additional Jewish workers, from 40 in 1939-1940, to 190 in 1941, 550 in 1942, 900 in 1943, and 1,000 in 1944 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1995: 2).

10. The SS, the acronym for Schutzstaffel, were the elite force of the Nazi party. They were ideologically indoctrinated to view Jews as subhumans that were worthy of extermination, and conducted most of the anti-Jewish actions in the Third Reich. For additional information on the SS, see Hilberg (1985).