An opportunist businessman with a taste for the finer things in life, Oskar Schindler seemed an unlikely candidate to become a wartime rescuer—and he was, indeed, a long way from perfect—but during World War II, he rescued more than 1,000 Jews from deportation to Auschwitz—Nazi Germany's largest camp complex.

In many ways, it is the imperfections in Oskar Schindler’s character and the nuances in the historical record that make his story even more remarkable.

Oskar Schindler was born on April 28, 1908, in Svitavy (or Zwittau), Moravia, at that time a province of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. An ethnic German and a Catholic, he remained in Svitavy during the interwar period and held Czech citizenship after Moravia was incorporated into the newly established Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.

Schindler grew up in Zwittau, Moravia, and worked in several trades.

His father was Johann "Hans" Schindler, the owner of a farm machinery business, and his mother was Franziska "Fanny" Schindler....