Schindler plaque unveiled in Poland

Associated Press

Posted on Tuesday, 26 October 2003

WARSAW, Poland - Members of the Krakow Jewish community and U.S. college students unveiled a plaque Monday honoring German industrialist Oscar Schindler, whose campaign to save 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust was chronicled by the 1993 movie "Schindler's List."

The black metal plaque, placed on Schindler's former "Emalia" factory in the southern city of Krakow, bears the Talmud quotation "He who saves one life, saves the whole world," in Polish, English and Hebrew, said Pawel Zielinski of the KCI S.A. company, who attended the ceremony.

Schindler's World War II bravery in Nazi-occupied Poland was told in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning movie, which starred Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes.

"When I think that I lived to this moment, it seems to me I'm dreaming," said Eugenia Manor, 77, who was saved by Schindler with her parents and brother.

"He saved not only us, but also the future generations, our children and grandchildren," said Manor, who met her future husband at the factory, and now lives in Beer Sheva, Israel.

The plaque was funded by the Jewish community of Krakow and students from Albion College in Michigan.

Schindler used influential friends and bribes to convince the SS commander of the death camp in Plaszow, near Krakow, about 180 miles south of Warsaw, that he needed the inmates to work in his factory.

He also managed to turn back a train transport headed from the camp to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Schindler emigrated to Argentina with his wife, Emilie, after World War II, but returned to Germany in 1958, where he died in 1974. He was buried in Jerusalem, at his own request.