17 Facts About Emilie Schindler

Emilie Schindler was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem in 1994.

Emilie Schindler was born in the village of Maletin in Czechoslovakia, to Sudeten German farmers Josef and Marie Pelzl.

Emilie Schindler had an older brother, Franz, with whom she was very close.

Emilie Schindler was interested in the Romani who would camp near the village for a few days at a time; their nomadic lifestyle, their music, and their stories fascinated her.

Emilie Schindler was affable, kind, extremely generous and charitable, but at the same time, not mature at all.

In 1938, the unemployed Oskar Emilie Schindler joined the Nazi Party and moved to Krakow, leaving his wife in Svitavy.

Emilie Schindler looked after sick workers in a secret sanatorium in the camp in Brnenec, Czech Protectorate, with medical equipment purchased on the black market.

Emilie Schindler got a whole truck of bread from somewhere on the black market.

Emilie Schindler was talking to the SS and because of the way she turned around and talked, I could slip a loaf under my shirt.

In 1957, a bankrupt Oskar Emilie Schindler abandoned his wife and returned to Germany, where he died in 1974.

Emilie Schindler received a small pension from Israel and Germany.

In July 2001, during a visit to Berlin, Emilie Schindler told reporters that it was her "greatest and last wish" to spend her final years in Germany, adding that she had become increasingly homesick.

Emilie Schindler is buried at the cemetery in Waldkraiburg, Germany, about an hour away from Munich.

Emilie Schindler was honored by several Jewish organizations for her efforts during World War II.

Emilie Schindler's life inspired Erika Rosenberg's book Where Light and Shadow Meet, first published in Spanish in 1992 and later made available in English and German translations.

Emilie Schindler appears in the Thomas Keneally novel Schindler's Ark.

Emilie Schindler is the subject of the opera Frau Schindler by composer Thomas Morse, which premiered in 2017 at the Gartnerplatz Theater in Munich.