Chapters 1-5 Summary

We meet Oskar Schindler in his hometown of Zwittau, a small industrial city in the Moravian province in the mountains of Austria, in 1908 during the Austrian Empire of Franz Josef. He, like Amon Goeth (a Viennese), is born into a Catholic family. Louisa Schindler, his mother, is a religious woman, attending church weekly and disavowing her husband's debaucherous lifestyle. Herr Hans Schindler, his father, is a staunch Austrian and owns a machinery plant, setting the seeds for Oskar's future factory. Oskar has one sister, Elfriede. However, the author notes that little is known about Schindler's childhood, other than the fact that it is quite happy and normal, despite the war and changes in empire. Because of the German influence, Schindler attends a German-speaking grammar school, learning the language like a native. Schindler is known to have many middle-class Jewish friends in...