Post War
"The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war is over. Tomorrow you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases... you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern, and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment. I am a member of the Nazi Party. I'm a munitions manufacturer. I'm a profiteer of slave labor. I am... a criminal. At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted. I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight, after which time - and I hope you'll forgive me - I have to flee."
-Oskar Schindler, to his workers after Germany surrenders (Schindler's List)
After the war, Schindler met many failures. Much of his life after the war was dependent on the generosity of the Jews he had saved who continued to send him money and gifts. He and his wife Emilie fled to Buenos Aires where he became a farmer andwas generously provided financial support from some of the Jews he had saved . In 1957, he went bankrupt and traveled back alone to Germany. In 1962, he was honored as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem. for the great things he had done for the over 1,200 Jews during World War II
"Schindler died in Germany, penniless and almost unknown, in October 1974. Many of those whose survival he facilitate- and their descendants- lobbied for and financed the transfer of his body for burial in Israel. In 1993, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council posthumously presented the Museum's Medal of Remembrance to Schindler. Rarely presented, this medal honors deserving recipients for extraordinary deeds during the Holocaust and in the cause of Remembrance."
-United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.