Businessman, World War II Figure. During World War II (WWII), he helped to save 1,200 Jews from the Nazi death camps. His story was dramatized in the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie, "Schindler's List", which received 7 Academy Awards, and by a book of the same name, by Thomas Keneally. An ethnic German, he was born in Zwittau, Austria-Hungary, which is now a part of the Czech Republic. On March 6, 1928, he married Emilie Pelzl, who then accompanied him for the majority of his life, and later aided him in caring for the Jews. In 1930, the family manufacturing business went bankrupt as the Great Depression hit Germany. Finding himself jobless, he sought work as a machinery salesman in Poland, Germany, and Austria. In the mid-1930s, he joined the Nazi Party, as party membership helped him to obtain business contracts. For a short time, he worked for German Naval Intelligence, which gave him invaluable contacts in later business dealings. In December of 1939, Schindler moved to Krakow, in occupied Poland, to start a business. Hard-drinking, womanizing and friendly with the occupation Nazi authorities, he dreamed big and played hard, receiving contracts from his connections high-up in the occupation government. He established a factory in Krakow to make enamel pots and pans for the German Army, and used Jews as his labor force. When he discovered the Jews were to be exterminated, he established his factory as a sub-camp of the Plazow Labor Camp, and kept the Jews safe from brutality. By then, Emilie had joined him in Krakow, and aided him in caring for his "Schindlerjuden." In October of 1944, as the Russian Army approached Krakow, he moved his workforce to Brunnlitz, Austria, where he established a factory to make tank shells. By bribing the authorities, his factory made no shells at all, and he spent his entire fortune buying medicine and food to keep his workforce alive. By the end of the war, an estimated 1,200 Jews were saved from extermination. At the end of the war, he found himself a target of Nazi extremists and his German citizenship was revoked. He and Emilie eventually moved to Argentina, where he ran a farm. In 1957, he abandoned Emilie in Argentina, never to see her again, to return to Germany to start a cement factory. In 1962, he was invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem, which brought his story to the German press, and as a result, he was harassed in the streets by Nazi sympathizers, who considered him a traitor. Eventually, his business failed, and he died in poverty in 1974, in Hildesheim, West Germany, of liver problems. Today, however, due to the Hollywood film, he is rightfully recognized for his humane acts during the War.