A disused factory in the Czech Republic where German industrialist Oskar Schindler employed more than a thousand Jews to save them from the gas chambers is to host a Holocaust memorial, officials have said.



Parts of the complex in Brněnec (formerly Brünnlitz), close to Schindler’s birthplace in Svitavy (Zwittau), were given the status of cultural monument earlier this month, according to the Czech culture ministry.

Built in the 19th century, the laboratory, mill, chemical depot, front door and a square used for roll call “have close historical links... to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Brněnec,” the ministry’s spokeswoman, Simona Cigankova, said.

During the second world war, Schindler (1908-1974), saved the lives of 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories in Nazi-occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia.

His tale was enshrined in the bestselling 1982 Tom Keneally novel Schindler’s Ark and its 1993 Steven Spielberg film adaptation, Schindler’s List.

A Czech foundation plans to restore the dilapidated factory in Brněnec and create a Holocaust memorial and an exhibition depicting Schindler’s life there, with an opening scheduled for 2019.

“Our aim is to restore the building to its original condition, including the watchtower,” Jaroslav Novak, head of the Shoah and Oskar Schindler Foundation told journalists recently.