Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson)’s Timeline and Summary
- Schindler arrives in Krakow with the intention of shmoozing the Nazis, setting up a factory and making a ton of money.
- He parties with with the local commandants and soon has the town in the palm of his hand.
- He speaks to Itzhak Stern about getting Jewish investors to fund his factory. They can't own businesses anymore, so he sees it as win-win. Of course, he doesn't actually have to pay the Jewish workers, so they're not in a position to argue.
- Through Stern—and the local black market—he gets the money to set up a factory. He also grudgingly tolerates Stern's habit of hiring "non-essential" workers in order to keep them out of the concentration camps.
- When one such worker—a one-armed machinist—is murdered by the Nazis, he protests the act and complains to the local commandant.
- The factory enjoys success until SS Hauptsturmführer Amon Goeth arrives with orders to liquidate the Krakow ghetto and set up a prison work camp.
- Schindler witnesses the liquidation of the ghetto—focusing on a single little girl in a red coat—and is horrified.
- His friendship with Goeth—coupled with the magic of bribery—allows Schindler to keep his factory open and maintain some level of safety for his workers.
- When Goeth receives orders to liquidate the camp and move everybody to Auschwitz, Schindler convinces him to help keep his workers safe. Again with the heavy bribing, to the point where Schindler loses most of the huge fortune he'd made.
- He and Stern compose a list of more than 1,100 names: Jews to be kept out of the camp.
- The women and children on his list accidentally get routed to Auschwitz.
- Schindler arrives before they're put to death and bribes the Auschwitz's commandant, Rudolf Hoss, with diamonds to to send them back.
- He sets up a munitions shop in a new factory in his home town in Czechoslovakia.
- His factory is supposed to produce shells, but he quietly ensures that none of the shells are capable of being fired.
- He allows the Jews to restore some of their traditions, most notably the Sabbath. He treats them like human beings.
- When the war ends, he frees his workers, then flees before the Russians come to arrest him.
- The movie ends with the real-life workers that he saved visiting his grave in Israel. (He died in 1974.)