No, no, you are right. Forget the article, Oskar Schindler was a great man, and took many risks for the Jews he employed. Several times he was at the brink of internment in a Concentration camp or worse, but continued to help.

I did not say he never took risks, on the contrary, and I bow to his memory and good deeds.

Also it is not true that Schindler did not take risks: he was arrested twice by the Gestapo and it was because he had built a network of influential friends and partners that he was released.

Apparently he died of strangulation, as there was not enough fall to break the neck.

I believe the following about Oskar Schindler:

1) Like many Germans or Volkdeutsche from Sudeten land, he was against the Czechoslovakian government, and resented their intrusion. He also wanted union with the Reich since he joined early the German Sudeten Party that advocated just that. He was even thrown in jail once by the Czechs for his activities. However, differently from infamous countryman Karl Hermann Frank of Lidice fame, also a Sudeten, Schindler did not hate the Czechs.
2) Schindler apparently was an opportunist, but with a good heart. He joined the Nazi party partly because was good for business, but in 1939 Germany Hitler was extremely popular, and many bad things were still to happen.
3) The extermination of the Jews opened his eyes and acted upon his noble nature, and he ended up helping, and saving, so many Jews. The fact that he befriended and saw the cruelty of one of the worst Nazis ever to exist, the Austrian depicted in the film “Schindler List”, Amon Goetz, in charge at the time of the Plasow Arbeit Lager, probably helped to open his eyes.

BTW: A while back I found in the Internet, a tremendous sequence of picture of the hanging of Amon Goetz by the Poles in 1947. Goetz was 6’4″ tall, and the rope broke twice in the process, it was only at the 3rd time that he “departed”, his last words were: Heil Hitler!

I wish I could have watched the Hallmark episode, but I did not know of it.

Thank You for your story of Irena Sendlerowa, because she sounds like an angel that lived here on earth.

Oskar Schindler, AFAIK, joined the Nazi party in 1939.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler

He was also active in the separatist Sudeten German Party before the war, and started working for the Nazi military intelligence, the Abwehr, headed by Admiral Canaris.

That he did much good and saved many Jews from certain death, is not under doubt.

About Schindler, you can honor Sendlerowa without throwing dirt on him. First of all, people who have seen the movie will remember the big swastika he wears at the beginning. That is _not_ the insignia of Party members. The swastika worn by Party members was very small. What Schindler wears is what you wore when you wanted to do business with Nazi officials.

Also according to his biography, he was a Suddeten Deutsch (ie born in Czechoslowakia) so perhaps this spared him the deleterous german political athmosphere. He was also a serial womanizer. He looks to have been one of those people who feel bad in presence of suffering and are prone to sudden and at times irrational impulses of generosity (several examples of this before the war). He hired Jewish employees as cheap labor but from the start he treated them far better as the minimum set by the authorities and it appears that he gradually became fond of them and specially of some of the women. When Nazi policy towards the Jews changed from mere discriminations to genocide he tried to keep “his” Jews safe. Now he could have given the SS what they wanted and ask them to provide replacements, there was no shortage of them. By the end of the war he was deliberately sabotaging production (he was no longer producing cooking pots but ammo) and hiring Jews he didn’t need so he was losing money. After the war he was forced to leave Germany due to the hostility of his compatriots. He was not a knight in shining armor. Money played a role, at least at the beginning and I am quite sure that his affairs with Jewish women played a role in mollifying his heart respective to the fate of Jews, but AFAIK, he was far better than what is depicted in the article. And he was not a member of the Party.