Every baby born into this world is a living question mark. Our lives are shaped by the way we see ourselves. The all-important attitudes by which we perceive and evaluate ourselves and others, tells us who we are and describes our behavior in life. We live and die open for all to see. Here is one life story to ponder especially for today’s world.

Oskar Schindler, a well-known World War II German businessman, was such a person. He used his God given talents not to harm and hurt his Jewish brothers and sisters, but to devise a plan to help Jews escape the cruel hands of the Nazis with little thought of the consequences to himself.

Schindler was an ethnic German living in the Czech Republic. He joined the Nazi party in 1939. Oskar became an unlikely hero. As we now know, Schindler did this by populating his many factories with captured Jewish workers. With this simple arrangement, he saved over 1,000 Jews while at the same time putting himself in danger with the Gestapo.

Oskar Schindler's actions to protect Jews during the Holocaust earned him a special place among honored Jewish rescuers. Schindler managed to save countless Jews, while putting his own life under continuous risk. He did this until the war ended without counting the cost to his own personal safety or his family.

After the war’s end, the state of Israel honored Oskar Schindler as a Righteous Gentile. Schindler’s valor and leadership skills assisted a frightened segment of humanity from meeting certain punishment and death. And he carried this plan out absent of any fanfare.

Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, refers to servants like Oskar Schindler as those who take on “the smell of the sheep and the sheep are willing to hear his voice. …they embrace human life touching the afflicted flesh of Christ in others.” (24)

Pope Francis captures concisely Jesus’ ideas on ministry as described in Isaiah’s suffering servant and practiced in Schindler’s plan. Jesus’ idea of service includes even dying for creation’s sins. Schindler's service took hold of the painful cup passed on to him and he drank it wholeheartedly.

Of course, Jesus, the eternal High Priest, remains the perfect model for every believer willing to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Like Jesus, Oskar Schindler choose a service to those less fortunate without thinking: “What’s in it for me, or how does this benefit me?”

He assisted his Jewish brothers and sisters not caving under the stress brought on by the omnipresent Germans. Schindler modeled valor and courage. In every age of followers, Jesus is looking for “good shepherds” who do not count the cost and instead leaves the 99 sheep and “cares, protects, hides, and feeds his lost sheep.” During War World II, this was seen in Oscar Schindler and people like him.

As Saint Pope John Paul II says:

“The ultimate test of greatness is the way we treat every human being.”

Photo: Oscar Schindler’s Grave in Jerusalem.