Schindler Opportunist or Hero Introduction Oskar Schindler was born to a middle-class catholic family that belonged to the German speaking community in the Sudetenland in April 1908. He attended to a German grammar school to study engineering in order to follow the foot steps of his father to run the family farm-machinery plant. Most of his childhood and school friends were Jews, but he never developed a lasting relationship with each of them. Just as most of the Sudetenland youth he joined the German party that which supported the Nazi Germany that strove to for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and their union to Germany.