Schindler Factory to become Museum

A Czech factory once used by Oskar Schindler to house 1,200 Jews is to be turned into a Holocaust museum.

The old textile factory in the central village of Brnenec is currently dilapidated after shutting down 12 years ago. In 1944 Schindler moved his Jewish workers to the factory after learning that his Deutsche Emaillewarenfabrik factory in German-occupied Poland was to be closed down.

Now, after years of negotiation, the factory belongs to the Endowment Fund for the Memorial of the Shoah and Oskar Schindler, a Czech organisation dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust.

“Our main goal is to get the building, actually the whole area, back to its original appearance,” Jaroslav Novak, from the fund, told Novinky, a Czech news website. “That includes watchtowers, the hospital and the concentration camp.”

He added that with the factory now in the organisation’s hands, fund-raising for the museum project could start in earnest, and that he was confident the needed money could be raised quickly given the fame of Oskar Schindler.