Where did Oskar Schindler grow up and live?

📍Schindler Factory, Lipowa 4, Kraków, Poland

1939 – 1945

“I was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party who came to Kraków in 1939 to make his fortune from the war, and who left it in 1945 having spent that fortune saving the lives of approximately 1,200 Jewish workers. The factory on Lipowa Street — Emalia, Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik — was my world for those years. I bribed, charmed and outmaneuvered the SS to keep my workers alive, declaring them essential war workers, expanding my workforce to include people with no industrial skills whatsoever, building a sub-camp adjacent to the factory so my workers would not have to return to Płaszów at night. I was not a good man who became a hero — I was a complicated man who, when confronted with what was happening, found that he could not participate in it. The factory was where that decision was made and remade every day.”

👍 LovedThe ability to act — the discovery that money and connections and a certain recklessness could be turned to saving lives rather than simply enriching myself. The relationships with my Jewish workers, particularly Itzhak Stern, who showed me what was possible.

👎 DislikedThe daily moral compromise of operating within a system I was coming to despise. The constant danger of discovery. The knowledge that for every person I saved there were thousands I could not reach.

Map showing where Oskar Schindler lived — Schindler Factory, Lipowa 4, Kraków, Poland

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Oskar Schindler's home at Schindler Factory, Lipowa 4, Kraków, Poland

📍 Street view today

Sources: Keneally, T. Schindler's Ark (1982), Hodder & Stoughton; Crowe, D. Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities and the True Story Behind the List (2004), Westview Press