Third-party accident insurance – Oskar Schindler Company – signed by Righteous Among the Nations Oskar Schindler

Third-party accident insurance – Oskar Schindler Company – signed by Righteous Among the Nations Oskar Schindler

Liability (third-party) and accident insurance for a vehicle owner, submitted by Oskar Schindler in 1929 – signed by Schindler – an early and rare handwritten signature of Schindler at the age of 21! Insurer: Magdeburger Lebens-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft – Magdeburg Life Insurance Company. Plauen, Vogtland region – Saxony. Germany, 4 September 1929.

The insurance certificate includes the details of the insured vehicle, a Chrysler, license plate number: B 2698, as well as the policy details. At the bottom, Schindler's handwritten signature appears, as the “insurance applicant.” In section 7 it is stated that the insurance covers a sum of “Begrenzt auf RM 100,000” (limited to 100,000 Reichsmarks); this coverage amount of 100,000 RM for bodily injury was an astronomical sum at the time (equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars in today’s purchasing power). The certificate itself includes a printed recommendation by the insurance company indicating that the standard coverage amount for this section is only 25,000 RM. Schindler appears in the document under the name Fa. Oskar Schindler, Möbelgeschäft – “Oskar Schindler Company, Furniture Business.” and the business address of Schindler: Hammerstr. 4 (Hammerstrasse 4), in the city of Plauen. As is known, Schindler tried his luck with countless business ventures in the 1920s and 1930s (including, later, a poultry farm, and he was actively involved in his father’s many businesses). 

In 1929, Oskar Schindler was a young man of just 21 years old (born in April 1908), living in the town of Zwittau (Svitavy) in the Sudetenland, then part of Czechoslovakia, with deep cultural and business ties to Germany. He took out the insurance in the city of Plauen, Saxony, Germany – an industrial city located very close to the Czech border, which at the time was an important industrial hub. During those years, Schindler’s hobby was motorcycle racing (he rode a red Moto Guzzi), and the private Chrysler he owned at the time offers fascinating testimony to his early passion for luxury cars. A year earlier, in 1928, he married Emilie Pelzl. Emilie came from a wealthy farming family, and Oskar, in his somewhat manipulative way, used much of her dowry to purchase his luxury cars and finance his lavish lifestyle – a source of great tension with his father. The date, September 1929, marked the height of the “Weimar Republic” period, just before its collapse. Less than a month after this form was signed, the Great Depression would begin (October 1929), devastating the German economy and ultimately paving the way for the Nazi rise to power in 1933. 

In the 1930s, Oskar Schindler (1908–1974) owned several German companies, frequently changing his source of livelihood. As a result of the Great Depression, he eventually went bankrupt. At the outbreak of World War II and the German occupation of Poland in September 1939, Schindler moved to Kraków in search of business opportunities. In October, he took over an enamelware factory in Zablocie, near Kraków, where during the war years he employed approximately 1,200 Jewish workers whom he saved from death. Another rescue act carried out by Schindler and his wife involved taking in over 100 Jews who had been deported by freight train from the Golleschau camp, near Auschwitz. The Jews arrived in January 1945 in sealed train cars, after a journey of several weeks, at the Zwittau train station. Due to their severely weakened physical condition, other factories refused to accept them. In order to take them into his factory, Schindler bribed the train station manager. He accepted them for work even though they were starving and lacked the strength to function as laborers. Through this act, Schindler saved them from certain death. Oskar Schindler is the best-known and most recognized Righteous Among the Nations associated with the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, with countless books written about him and film productions chronicling his story of saving Jews during the war. In 1962, during his visit to Israel, Yitzhak Stern said of him:

"My brother, in the Hebrew language there are three expressions, three levels: Adam, Ish, Enosh. I think a new level is needed: ‘Schindler.’”

[1] A leaf written on both sides. Filing holes. Very good condition.