A museum was inaugurated on May 10, 2025 in the old Brněnec factory, classified as a historic monument, about 160 km from Prague in the Czech Republic. It was in this factory that the German industrialist Oskar Schindler (1908-1974) saved nearly 1,200 Jews during the Second World War.
The opening of the museum coincided with the 80ᵉ anniversary of the end of the conflict. The year 1945 also marks the day Oskar Schindler received a gold ring offered by grateful Jews – a story made famous by Steven Spielberg in his film “La List de Schindler”, released in 1993.
Oskar and Emilie Schindler (1946).
© Schindler Memorial
The museum was created on the initiative of Daniel Löw-Beer, descendant of the historic family owner of the factory, which fled in 1938. After having founded the Arks foundation in 2019, it bought the factory, abandoned since 2011, and launched the first restoration works.
The regional government has provided financial support, and a subsidy from the European Union has enabled children from five European countries to go to Brněnec to reflect on the development of the museum.
The museum includes an exhibition space, rooms for conferences and film screenings, concert spaces, as well as a coffee. It is installed in a part of the renovated spinning. The story of Oskar Schindler, his wife Emilie (1907-2001) and the Löw-Beer family is traced there.
In the museum, a glass wall separates the restored part of the spaces still in ruins, awaiting rehabilitation. The latter include the Schindler office, where the municipality plans to set up an information center, and the SS troop barracks, intended to accommodate new exhibition spaces. The museum is not open every day and concentrates its activities on educational projects.
It is the second museum dedicated to Oskar Schindler. The first, inaugurated in 2010 in Krakow, in Poland, occupied the first factory where he saved Jews before the situation became critical in 1944 and that he allowed his 1,200 Jewish workers to join the Brněnec factory to subtract them from the camps.
