The Factory That Became a Fortress

In 1939, Oskar Schindler arrived in Kraków, Poland, as a card-carrying Nazi Party member looking to get rich off the war. He acquired an enamelware factory — Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik — and staffed it with Jewish laborers because they were the cheapest workforce available. He was, by every measure, a war profiteer.

But something shifted in Schindler as he witnessed the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943, watched SS officers gun down men and women in the streets. The man who had come to exploit began to protect. By 1944, as the SS moved to send his workers to Auschwitz, Schindler compiled a list of approximately 1,200 names — men, women, and children he declared essential to his manufacturing operation. He relocated his entire factory to Brünnlitz, Czechoslovakia, bribing Nazi officials at every turn. He spent his entire personal fortune, every reichsmark, to keep those names alive. By war's end in May 1945, he was penniless. His workers were breathing.

James 2:17 tells us plainly: "Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." Schindler's transformation was not complete when compassion first stirred in his heart. It was complete when compassion cost him everything he had. The Almighty does not measure our convictions by what we feel but by what we do — especially when doing demands sacrifice. Living faith always moves from the heart to the hands.