Frankfurt - Frankfurt's Jewish Museum opened an exhibition Wednesday to mark the centennial of the birth of Oskar Schindler, the true-life hero whose story was told in the movie Schindler's list. The German, born April 28, 1908 in the Sudetenland region, died in Frankfurt an alcoholic in 1974, supported to the last by Jews who had survived the Holocaust thanks to the tricks he played on the Nazis.
His story only became world famous through the Steven Spielberg film of 1993.
He is credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Nazi death camps by employing them in his factory. Risking his life, he persuaded the Nazis that relocating the business out of Poland with its greatly inflated payroll was vital to their war effort.
The exhibition concentrates on his Frankfurt years, after he left his wife in Argentina in 1957 and returned to Germany, and examines why he remained an obscure person up until his death in a shabby apartment near the city railway station.
