I was watching schindlers list the other day and wondered about his golden party badge and if it was numbered or ever turned up.
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Dear Peter,
I think the presence of a Golden Party Badge in the film, "Schildler's List," was written in for dramatic effect. This is established by info available on the internet, specifically "that Oskar Schindler joined the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1939. He applied for membership Feb. 10, 1939 and his membership was granted and he was member number 6,421,477." (Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_did_O...#ixzz1Me2T0hJG) Only NSDAP members with unbroken membership numbering among the first 100,000 Party Members were eligible for consideration for a GPB, and that meant that one would have had to have joined between February of 1925 and approx. November of 1928 when membership numbers exceeded 100,000 -- and Schindler joined more than ten years later than that. Could he have received the A.H. dated version of the GPB? As an Austrian citizen prior to the Anschluss, that would have been possible, but there is no evidence that Schindler had been involved with the Austrian Nazi Party prior to 1939 or that he would have been seen to be a likely candidate for that honorary badge. And a check of Klaus Patzwall's recent book on the recipients of the honorary GPB finds no 'Oskar Schindler' listed among them. As a dramatic device the addition of the GPB to the film's script was inspired, but I recall Schindler referring to his badge being made from solid gold in the film, and that, too, was not the case!
Br. James -
Good info Br. James, i had read that Schindler only joined the Party for economic reasons and that he did not recieve the GPB.Comment
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