Private Papers of R O'Neil

Collection

Scope and content:: Ts draft of his unpublished biography 'The Man From Svitavy: The Enigma of Oskar Schindler' (471pp, with illustrations, 1992), based on interviews with survivors and various written sources, documenting Schindler's family background and youth in the Sudetenland, early contact with Konrad Henlein's Sudeten-German Party and the NSDAP in the 1930s, his recruitment into the 'Abwehr' (German military counter-intelligence), his gradual disillusionment with Nazism following the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, setting up in business in Cracow under the German occupation and the beginnings of his efforts to protect his Jewish workforce there, the creation of the Cracow Ghetto in March 1941, Schindler's dealings with the Commandant of the Plaszow labour/concentration camp, Amon Goeth, and other SS functionaries, survivor testimony of the reign of terror at Plaszow, the liquidation of the Cracow Ghetto in 1943 and the transports from Plaszow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Schindler's plan to set up a new factory at Brunnlitz (Moravia) and his successful attempt to rescue a group of his workers who were sent to Auschwitz instead of Brunnlitz, the 'Golleschau transport' of January 1945 and the last days of the war at Brunnlitz, concluding with the stories of some of the survivors and the unhappy postwar life of Schindler himself; appended to the typescript is a nominal roll of the Brunnlitz workers ('Schindler's list').

Subject terms:: Historical research; Holocaust; Holocaust--Rescue and resistance

Access, restrictions:: Visit IWM website for Research Room access provisions see https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/research-facilities

Finding aids:: Online catalogue see: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030012617

Scope and content:: Ts draft of his unpublished biography 'The Man From Svitavy: The Enigma of Oskar Schindler' (471pp, with illustrations, 1992), based on interviews with survivors and various written sources, documenting Schindler's family background and youth in the Sudetenland, early contact with Konrad Henlein's Sudeten-German Party and the NSDAP in the 1930s, his recruitment into the 'Abwehr' (German military counter-intelligence), his gradual disillusionment with Nazism following the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, setting up in business in Cracow under the German occupation and the beginnings of his efforts to protect his Jewish workforce there, the creation of the Cracow Ghetto in March 1941, Schindler's dealings with the Commandant of the Plaszow labour/concentration camp, Amon Goeth, and other SS functionaries, survivor testimony of the reign of terror at Plaszow, the liquidation of the Cracow Ghetto in 1943 and the transports from Plaszow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Schindler's plan to set up a new factory at Brunnlitz (Moravia) and his successful attempt to rescue a group of his workers who were sent to Auschwitz instead of Brunnlitz, the 'Golleschau transport' of January 1945 and the last days of the war at Brunnlitz, concluding with the stories of some of the survivors and the unhappy postwar life of Schindler himself; appended to the typescript is a nominal roll of the Brunnlitz workers ('Schindler's list').

Subject terms:: Historical research; Holocaust; Holocaust--Rescue and resistance

Access, restrictions:: Visit IWM website for Research Room access provisions see https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/research-facilities

Finding aids:: Online catalogue see: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030012617