way possible, and he was also known for his heavy drinking. (Bulow “Why...”). After the war broke ou8t in September of 1939, Schindler, who was thirty-one at the time, showed up in occupied Krakow. Krakow was an ancient city, and home to some 60,000 Jews, and was also the seat of the German occupation administration, which was called the Generalgouvernement. In October of 1939, he took over a rundown enamelware factory that had previously belonged to a Jew. (“German Rescuers...”) (Bulow “Oscar...”).By the end of 1942, Schindler’s enamelware factory had become a mammoth enamel and ammunitions production plant. His plant occupied about 45, 000 square meters, and employed almost 800 men and women. Of the workers, 370 were Jews from the ghetto in Krakow, which the Germans had established after they occupied the city. Schindler never developed any ideologically motivated resistance to the Nazis (“German Rescuers...”), which made his future actions all the more noble.At one point, Schindler was recruited by the German Intelligence Agency to collect information about Poles. He was highly esteemed for his help, a fact that helped him greatly later when he needed to call on his contacts. (Bulow “Why...”). Schindler also gained a very effective tool that allowed him to get away with a lot of what he did; his plant was declared a “business essential to the war effort”. This allowed him to obtain extremely good military contracts, and o get Jewish workers who were under jurisdiction of the SS. (“German Rescuers”).In 1943, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee invited Schindler to go on a very risky trip to Budapest, where he met with two representatives of Hungarian Jewry. He reported to them about the plight of the Jews who were in Poland, and he discussed with them possible ways to help relieve them. (“German Rescuers...”).A...
