Memorial Day Remembrance: Oskar Schindler

Most of you know the story.  A German industrialist saves 1,100 Jewish lives during WWII.  Since it is Memorial Day and since I watched "Schindler's List" last night, it only seems fitting that I throw Oskar Schindler's "hat" in the ring on a day of remembrance.

Oskar Schindler used his power to save lives, Jewish lives, at a time when his countrymen, his homeland, were united to kill and destroy and dehumanize the Jewish people.  What makes this act even more notable is to embrace how much Oskar Schindler sacrificed in order to perform this heroic and compassionate act. 

Schindler had become extremely wealthy during the war.  He had achieved total financial security for himself and his wife.  He was in the coveted inner circle of the Nazi party.  No one knows at what point Oskar Schindler decided to put his welfare and the welfare of his family at risk in order to save the lives of the people his country was trying to kill.  No one will ever know the moment when Schindler committed his entire fortune to saving those lives. 

Schindler was on top of the German world...he was at his richest, his most politically powerful, he had wine, he had women, and song, yet he walked away from it all.  He turned his back on his "own people" so that he could save the most despised members of his society,....and, he became penniless.  What do we call a person like that?...his life during those years had such amazing clarity.  He carried this mission completely on his own shoulders; no others in his class were cheering him on.  He risked certain death if anyone were to know of his true motives.  The inner strength and conviction required to make these decisions must have been blinding.  Schindler bore the full use of his powers, financial, persuasive, societal, to bear towards one glorious goal.  It left him financially broken.  Who does this?

Oskar Schindler failed at every other enterprise he started after the war ended.  He tried many things and eventually moved to Argentina to start a farm...nothing worked.  What do you do as an encore when your last job was about saving lives..and hearts?  He died in 1974, financially broken.

Schindler closely followed the lives of those he liberated well after the war was over.  He knew the names on his "list".  He was obsessed with them, their families, their children and grandchildren.  He even traveled to Los Angeles to visit Leon Leyson, one of the young Jewish boys depicted in the film, "Schindler's List".  He saved Leon and his family from certain death. 

In the end, Oskar Schindler mourned that he could have done more, he didn't do enough.

The war produced countless terrible atrocities, but it also produced some moments of the sublime, of brilliance and beauty.  On this Memorial Day I will choose to remember the those.

Who have you put on your "list"?