Germany captures Cracow and Schindler moves into the city, joining the Nazi Party and acquiring a business.

Schindler meets accountant Itzhak Stern and acquires the defunct Rekord enamel factory, renaming it Deutsche Emailwarenfabrik.

Stern cites a Talmudic verse about saving lives, persuading Schindler to employ and protect Jewish workers.

The SS pillages the Stara Boznica synagogue, confirming Schindler's earlier warning to Stern about a coming Aktion.

Jewish people are forced into the Podgórze ghetto and stripped of all wages under German occupation.

Schindler witnesses a violent Aktion from a hilltop overlooking the ghetto, watching Redcap being led away with others.

Schindler haggles and bribes SS officers at the train yard to free his workers loaded onto deportation cattle cars.

SS Commandant Amon Goeth arrives in Cracow to oversee construction of the Płaszów labor camp.

The Podgórze ghetto is liquidated in a final Aktion, sending residents to Płaszów to work or to Auschwitz to die.

Schindler builds a sub-camp within his DEF factory backyard, forbidding SS guards from entering the Jewish quarters.

The Director of Armaments orders DEF disbanded and returns all workers to the main Płaszów concentration camp.

With Stern's help, Schindler compiles a list of over 1,200 essential workers to extract from Płaszów.

Schindler moves his factory to Brinnlitz in Moravia and successfully transports the listed men out of Płaszów.

The Schindler women are diverted to Auschwitz-Birkenau; Schindler negotiates their release and Emilie nurses them back to health.

The war ends and Schindler flees Soviet capture; Israel later honors him as Righteous Among the Nations.

Oskar Schindler arrives in German-occupied Cracow as a war profiteer and Nazi Party member, where accountant Itzhak Stern introduces him to the plight of Jewish people and convinces him to employ them in his enamel factory. As Nazi persecution escalates from ghetto formation to violent Aktions, Schindler witnesses firsthand the brutality of the regime and begins using his factory as a shield for his workers. The arrival of SS Commandant Amon Goeth and the construction of Płaszów forces Schindler to spend his fortune on bribes to protect his people in a factory subcamp. When the Germans order DEF closed and return workers to Płaszów's lethal conditions, Schindler compiles a list of over 1,200 people and moves his factory to Brinnlitz to extract them. Despite the Schindler women being diverted to Auschwitz, Schindler negotiates their release, and together with his wife Emilie nurses them back to health. The war ends with Schindler fleeing Soviet forces, but his legacy is immortalized when Israel honors him as Righteous Among the Nations.

The central story of how Schindler saved over 1,200 lives.

Pfefferberg nearly shoots Schindler at their first meeting, believing him a Gestapo agent, then becomes his black-market contact.

Schindler gathers sympathetic SS contacts at a hidden jazz cellar to steadily build his network of co-conspirators.

Emilie Schindler briefly moves to Cracow, where Pfefferberg meets her and feels ashamed of Schindler's many affairs.

The SS arrests Schindler on suspicion of forging factory books; Klonowska's calls to his contacts secure his quick release.

Pfefferberg obtains the Blauschein essential-worker mark by lying to a bank manager about being a Schindler employee.

A man named Bacchner escapes a death camp and returns to the Cracow ghetto to warn people about the gas chambers.

Schindler travels to Budapest to personally testify about Nazi atrocities to Zionist rescue organizers Springmann and Kastner.

Goeth forces SS officer Hujar to execute architect Diana Reiter at the Płaszów construction site in front of her work crew.

Schindler learns the full extent of Goeth's daily brutality at Płaszów through firsthand accounts from his own workers.

Raimund Titsch plays long chess matches against Goeth and deliberately loses every time, keeping prisoners safe from Goeth's rage.

Płaszów is officially converted from a labor camp to a concentration camp, placing all executions under SS bureaucratic approval.

A camp-wide health action at Płaszów results in 10,000 prisoners being assessed and dispatched to Auschwitz for death.

Goeth fabricates an escape plot and executes the entire Chilowicz family to silence a potential witness to his crimes.

Twelve Bureau V investigators arrest and abuse Schindler; Emilie takes over running the Brinnlitz factory during his imprisonment.

Released from SS prison, Goeth visits Brinnlitz, where the former prisoners openly mock him without fear of retaliation.

This pool traces the network of individuals and secondary events that surrounded Schindler's mission, from his early alliance with black-market trader Pfefferberg to his clandestine meetings with sympathetic SS contacts. Repeated arrests and the introduction of the Blauschein system show the tightening grip of Nazi bureaucracy on daily life in Cracow, while Schindler's Budapest testimony reveals how far his defiance had spread. Diana Reiter's execution and Schindler's growing knowledge of Płaszów's brutality reveal the full horror of Goeth's rule, pushing Schindler toward increasingly costly resistance. The conversion of Płaszów to a concentration camp, a camp-wide health action, and Goeth's paranoid execution of the Chilowicz family show that no one in the camp is safe for long. Schindler's third arrest and Emilie's courage in running the factory during his absence reveal the fragility of everything he has built. The pool closes with Goeth's humiliating visit to Brinnlitz, where the former prisoners mock him freely, marking the symbolic defeat of the novel's chief embodiment of evil.

The supporting characters and events that shaped Schindler's mission.

Stern accidentally reveals he doesn't believe Hitler will win the war; Schindler's calm response earns his complete trust.

Schindler chance-encounters his estranged father in a Zwittau café and the two men reconcile over lunch.

Symche Spira rises through the ghetto police force and begins terrorizing fellow Jewish residents in exchange for personal protection.

Schindler is arrested after kissing a Jewish worker on his birthday and spends the night in the notorious Montelupich prison.

A Budapest Zionist group contacts Schindler through dentist Sedlacek and enlists him to secretly distribute illegal relief funds in Cracow.

The SS forces jeweler Wulkan to sort looted Jewish possessions, including gold teeth taken from the dead, breaking his spirit.

Pfefferberg witnesses piles of bodies during the ghetto liquidation and resolves to survive the war as a witness to Nazi atrocities.

Goeth's pistol misfires twice when he attempts to execute Rabbi Levartov; the rabbi is secretly transferred to the DEF subcamp.

Sedlacek and Babar secretly photograph Płaszów during a guided tour, exposing the camp as a corrupt sham enriching Goeth personally.

Josef Bau disguises himself to enter the women's barracks, where he and Rebecca Tannenbaum hold a secret Jewish wedding.

Cremations of Płaszów's mass graves fill the camp with human ash; Schindler vows to save every person he can.

Schindler brazenly bribes SS guards in front of Goeth to hose down sealed cattle cars full of prisoners baking in the heat.

Pemper intercepts an order to execute the Brinnlitz prisoners; Schindler engineers the fanatical Liepold's transfer to the war front.

Prisoner Licht crafts Schindler a gold ring from volunteered teeth, inscribed with the Talmudic verse about saving a single life.

Schindler dies of liver failure alone in Frankfurt and is buried in Jerusalem as the only Nazi Party member among the Righteous.

This pool follows the pivotal moments that transform Schindler from a war profiteer into a determined rescuer, beginning with the small signs of trust between him and Stern that set everything in motion. Personal encounters with Nazi evil — Wulkan's despair sorting the belongings of the dead, and Pfefferberg's vow to survive as a witness during the ghetto liquidation — show how ordinary people responded to the Holocaust's horrors. Moments of defiance and fragile hope emerge alongside the darkness, such as Goeth's guns misfiring on Rabbi Levartov and Bau and Tannenbaum's secret wedding in the barracks. As the war's end approaches, Schindler's covert resistance intensifies, from hosing down cattle cars in Goeth's presence to Pemper intercepting the order that would have killed every Brinnlitz prisoner. The pool closes with the Talmudic verse that first inspired Schindler inscribed on a ring made from a prisoner's gold tooth, and with Schindler's solitary death and burial in Jerusalem, completing the arc from profiteer to the only Nazi Party member buried among the Righteous.