of authority in the debased kingdom" and equates his power to that of the tsars. Goeth uses Chilowicz as a black market agent, but due to his extensive knowledge of Goeth's dealings, Goeth ultimately decides to eliminate him. The commandant lures Chilowicz and his family with the promise of escape from the camp, only to have him found with a gun and executed.

Rolf Czurda
Rolf Czurda, an Obersturnbannführer (lieutenant colonel), is the head of the Kraków branch of the SD security service. Schindler encounters him at various cocktail parties. After Schindler is arrested for kissing a Jewish girl at his factory, Czurda arranges his release but warns him that such behavior is no longer acceptable, stating, "That's not just old-fashioned Jew-hate talking. I assure you. It's policy." Czurda oversees Goeth's Plaszow camp, along with his superior, Julian Scherner.

Danka Dresner
Danka Dresner is the daughter of the Dresners and cousin to "Red Genia." During an Aktion in the ghetto, she is hidden in a wall by a frantic woman who insists there is no room for Mrs. Dresner as well.

Mrs. Dresner
Mrs. Dresner is the mother of Danka Dresner. Although she and her daughter are on the list to go to Schindler's Brinnlitz camp, they are instead sent to Auschwitz. Mrs. Dresner nearly dies but is nursed back to health by Emilie Schindler.

Genia
Known as "Red Genia," she is the young girl in red that Schindler spots from his horse during the chaotic liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943. Schindler has no idea who she is, but it is later revealed that she is staying with the Dresners after a Polish couple from the countryside found it too dangerous to continue caring for her. Her parents had been captured by the SS. The Dresner boys call her "Redcap," and she is a first cousin of Mrs. Dresner. Her Polish guardians teach her to pretend she is not Jewish but Polish. Schindler is puzzled as to why the SS soldiers do not kill her on the spot but instead direct her back into line when she tries to escape. He eventually understands that this indicates they recognize her as a witness to be executed later.

Commandant Amon Goeth
Commandant Goeth, an SS Untersturmführer (second lieutenant), is responsible for liquidating the Kraków ghetto and overseeing the forced labor camp at Plaszow. Nicknamed "Mad Amon," he epitomizes evil in the novel. He takes great pride in destroying the Jewish ghetto and rules the labor camp with brutal authority. Using his position, he engages in illegal activities to amass wealth. Goeth is referred to as Schindler's "dark brother" because of their similarities. Both were raised Catholic and studied subjects like engineering, physics, and math. They are practical men, not thinkers, who fancy themselves as philosophers. Both have a weakness for alcohol and possess large physiques. However, unlike Schindler, Goeth is ruthlessly cruel and physically abusive. The Plaszow camp is a place of horror because Goeth randomly shoots prisoners from the balcony of his villa overlooking the barracks. While Schindler mistakenly sees himself as a philosopher, Goeth deludes himself into believing he is a sensitive "man of letters." Despite his violent and barbaric nature, he is sentimental about his children from his second marriage, whom he has not seen in a long time. He beats his Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch, but when arrested, he writes to her hoping she will provide a favorable character reference. Goeth is a deeply disturbed man, suffering from insomnia. There are hints that he is like a deranged king or emperor whose power has driven him insane. Pfefferberg remarks, "When you saw Goeth, you saw death." In 1944, Goeth is arrested by the SS on charges of black-marketeering. After the war, he is handed over to the Polish government, sentenced, and hanged in 1946.

Marcel Goldberg
Goldberg serves as the personnel clerk at the Plaszow camp, known for taking bribes to add prisoners' names to the list of workers destined for Schindler's relocated Brinnlitz camp. He is characterized as "a man of prodigious and accidental power" who keeps the list's details secret.

Helen Hirsch
Helen, Goeth's Jewish maid whom he abusively calls "Lena," is severely mistreated by him. She confides in Schindler about Goeth's daily beatings when he approaches her in Goeth's villa. Helen entrusts Schindler with her savings of 4,000 zloty to buy back her sister, who works in the camp kitchens, if she is ever deported. Her sister's survival is Helen's "obsession." Schindler "wins" Hirsch from Goeth in a game of blackjack, allowing her to work at his relocated camp factory.

Albert Hujar
Oberscharführer Hujar is responsible for the shootings of Dr. Rosalia Blau in the ghetto and Diana Reiter after the barracks' foundations collapsed. He eventually falls in love with a Jewish prisoner.

Ingrid
Ingrid is Schindler's German girlfriend.

Victoria Klonowska
Schindler's stunning Polish secretary works in his front office. Klonowska appears to be "one of those lighthearted girls to whom the inconveniences of history are a temporary intrusion into the real business of life," yet she is also pragmatic, efficient, and adept. When Schindler is arrested, Klonowska negotiates with German officials for his release from SS prison.

Rabbi Menasha Levartov
Rabbi Menasha Levartov, a young and scholarly city rabbi, disguises himself as a metalworker in Plaszow and is brought to work at the Emalia camp by Stern. Stern informs Schindler that Goeth is likely to kill Menasha, as Goeth is drawn to "people of presence." One day, Goeth attempts to shoot Menasha for not making hinges quickly enough in the metalworks, but his gun fails to fire. A second revolver also misfires. At Schindler's factory, Schindler encourages Menasha to leave work to observe Shabbat, and the rabbi recites Kiddush over a cup of wine behind the barracks.

Edith Liebgold
Edith, a Jewish worker in Schindler's factory, finds herself believing in Schindler's "godlike promise" when he assures her and other Jewish women upon their arrival at the factory, "You'll be safe working here. If you work here, then you'll live through the war." Schindler instills a sense of certainty in her.

Josef Liepold
Liepold is the SS commanding officer at Schindler's Brinnlitz factory camp.

Julius Madritsch
Julius Madritsch owns a uniform factory located within the Plaszow camp. Originally from Vienna, he left the police force to become a Treuhänder (supervisor) of a military uniform manufacturing plant. He later established his own factory in Podgórze and, following Goeth's orders, relocated the camp to Plaszow. Described as "enterprising but humane," Madritsch secretly provides food and protection to the four thousand workers in his camp.

Majola
Majola, Goeth's girlfriend, works as a secretary at a factory. Known for her "sensitive manners," it is rumored that she threatened to withhold intimacy from Goeth if he continued his arbitrary executions in the labor camp.

Mietek Pemper
Mietek Pemper is a diligent young prisoner who serves as Goeth's typist. Blessed with a photographic memory, Pemper plays a crucial role in Goeth's downfall by testifying against him and recalling critical details about his illegal activities at Plaszow.

Regina Perlman
Regina Perlman is a Jewish woman living in Kraków under forged South American documents. She approaches Schindler, requesting him to bring her parents to his camp. Initially, Schindler does not respond to her plea, suspecting she might be a spy. However, within a month, her parents are transferred from Plaszow to his enamelware factory camp.

Leopold Pfefferberg
Leopold Pfefferberg is a colorful character—Polish war commander, teacher, black market dealer, and organizer. He is the person who first shared Schindler's story with author Keneally. Before the war, Pfefferberg, young, confident, and "built like a wedge," was a high school teacher. He served as a company commander in the Polish army and was captured by the Germans, only to escape by using his wits and an official-looking document. Throughout the novel, Pfefferberg narrowly avoids death and imprisonment through quick thinking. His Aryan appearance allows him to move freely through the ghetto, running illegal goods for Schindler and others. He briefly works with the OD (Jewish Police) but leaves as it becomes an SS tool. During the Aktion, Pfefferberg encounters Goeth, who is likely to kill him. He convinces the commandant that he is under orders to move bundles to one side of the road, thus saving his life. Eventually, he and his wife, Mila, secure a spot to work at Schindler's Brinnlitz camp.

Mila Pfefferberg
Mila, the wife of Leopold Pfefferberg, is a petite, anxious woman in her twenties. Originally from Lodz, she married Leopold in the initial days of the ghetto. Coming from a lineage of doctors, she enjoyed a pleasant childhood and began her medical studies in Vienna just before the war. Mila is the sole surviving member of her family. She is quiet, intelligent, and perceptive, with a knack for irony, contrasting sharply with her extroverted husband. Mila declines to escape the ghetto by navigating the sewers with Leopold.

Poldek Pfefferberg
See Leopold Pfefferberg

Philip
Philip is the Waffen SS Standartenführer (colonel) whom Schindler encounters in prison. He was detained for being absent without leave after he and his Polish girlfriend "lose themselves in each other."

Diana Reiter
Diana Reiter is an architectural engineer and prisoner assigned to the construction of the barracks at Plaszow. She is sentenced to execution by Goeth after disputing with an officer, Albert Hujar, about the barracks' construction. Before her death, Goeth notices a "knowingness" in her eyes that seems to say, "It will take more than that."

Richard
Richard is a young German chef/manager who befriends Henry Rosner and helps conceal Rosner's son, Olek, during an Aktion.

Artur Rosenzweig
As the chairman of the Judenrat (Jewish council) and president of the OD (Jewish police), Rosenzweig worked to safeguard Jewish interests. "Decent" Rosenzweig is eventually replaced by David Gutter, who follows the orders of the SS.

Henry Rosner
Henry Rosner is a violinist and prisoner at Plaszow. He and his family relocated from Warsaw to the village of Tyniec before the Warsaw ghetto was sealed. In Tyniec, and later in Kraków and the Plaszow camp, Henry and his brother Leopold, an accordionist, perform for Goeth and the SS. During a dinner party at Goeth's villa, Henry "fiddles up the death" of an SS officer. Goeth does not send Henry to Schindler's camp as he values his music too much. Later, Henry and his son Olek are transported to Auschwitz, but both survive.

Olek Rosner
Olek is the son of Henry and Manci Rosenberg. He is hidden by friends in Kraków, then secretly brought to Plaszow and ultimately sent to Auschwitz with his father.

Julian Scherner
An SS Oberführer (rank above colonel) and the ultimate authority on Jewish matters in Kraków, Scherner is a middle-aged man with the appearance of an ordinary bureaucrat. He enjoys discussing business and investments and has interests in liquor, women, and confiscated goods. He wears the smirk of his unexpected power "like a childish jam stain in the corner of the mouth" and is "always convivial and dependably heartless."

Emilie Schindler
Emilie, Schindler's convent-educated and youthful wife, marries him at a tender age and endures his infidelities almost from the start. Aware that her husband is unfaithful and will remain so, she still does not wish to have evidence of his affairs "thrust under her nose." As a young girl, Emilie was close friends with a Jewish girl named Rita Reif, who was executed by local Nazi officials in 1942. This may explain her readiness to assist in caring for the sick Jewish workers at the Brinnlitz camp. Emilie revived several ailing women and attended to the needs of dying patients. Some believe that Emilie's acts of kindness may have been "absorbed" into the legend of Schindler "the way the deeds of minor heroes have been subsumed by the figure of Arthur or Robin Hood." After the war, Emilie fled Czechoslovakia with Schindler and eventually relocated with him to Argentina. Despite his continued affairs, she stayed with him until he left her to return to Germany in 1957.

Oskar Schindler
Oskar Schindler, the central figure of the novel, is an industrialist born in the Czech Republic who rescues over 1,100 Jewish factory workers from the death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. Schindler is a flamboyant man with "magnetic charm," adept at making connections and bribing SS officials to keep his workers safe. Though an unlikely hero, Schindler is a womanizer and spendthrift who initially comes to Kraków to amass wealth during the war by establishing an enamelware factory. Despite his vices, he performs a heroic act by saving hundreds of lives. Schindler has extramarital affairs with two mistresses, spends extravagantly on liquor, cigars, and cars, and aims to profit from the free labor of Jews. However, he ultimately risks his business and goes bankrupt to protect his workers by creating a nonproductive factory, shielding them from the death camps. The novel's author does not clearly explain Schindler's motivations, but indicates that witnessing the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto, where Jews were murdered in the streets, was a turning point for him. Schindler states, "Beyond this day, no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system." Schindler is portrayed as a complex character with unconventional virtue and ambiguity. It is unclear what exactly he saw during the ghetto liquidation that drove him to act. Though not a philosopher, Schindler is practical and action-oriented. His transformation into a life-risking savior remains a mystery. According to his wife Emilie, Schindler's life was unremarkable before and after the war, but between 1939 and 1945, he encountered people who "summoned forth his deeper talents." After the war, Schindler is honored by the Israeli government as a Righteous Person.

Dr. Sedlacek
Dr. Sedlacek is an Austrian dentist working for a Zionist rescue organization in Budapest. He enlists Schindler's assistance to gather crucial information.

Symche Spira
Symche Spira is a prominent figure in the OD (Jewish police) after it falls under SS control. Following orders from SS headquarters, he rules the ghetto with a misguided sense of authority. Spira extorts residents and compiles lists of unsatisfactory or rebellious ghetto inhabitants for the SS. Known as "high-booted" Spira, the "Napoleon" of the ghetto, he is eventually executed by the SS.

Itzhak Stern
Itzhak Stern serves as Schindler's accountant, confidant, and "confessor." Unlike Schindler, Stern is a slender, scholarly individual with the "manners of a Talmudic scholar and a European intellectual." Schindler first encounters him while seeking guidance on purchasing a factory. Stern initially views Schindler as dangerous and resents his attempts to treat him as an equal. The first thing Stern tells Schindler is that he is "a Jew," to which Schindler replies that he is a German. During their initial conversation, Schindler comments on the difficulty priests must have during these times in discussing the Bible verse about God caring for even a single sparrow. Stern counters with a Talmudic verse stating that saving one life is akin to saving the entire world—a verse later inscribed on the ring the prisoners give Schindler as a farewell gift. Stern is not only well-connected and practical but also highly learned. He assists Schindler by bringing Jews into the factory and managing its details. Ironically, he also comforts Schindler before upcoming Aktion operations and provides strength when Schindler is depressed. Even while working at the Plaszow camp, Stern remains invaluable to Schindler’s efforts and continues to be his confidant at Brinnlitz.

Rebecca Tannenbaum
Rebecca is the young woman who works as Goeth's manicurist. She is courted by and eventually marries Josef Bau in a traditional Jewish ceremony within the labor camp.

Raimund Tisch
Raimund Tisch is the Madritsch supervisor at Plaszow, known for smuggling truckloads of food to prisoners in the uniform factory. He is a quiet, clerical Austrian Catholic man who plays chess with Goeth (and deliberately loses) to improve the commandant's mood, thereby saving prisoners' lives by preventing random executions. Tisch is responsible for typing the list of prisoners who will be transferred to Schindler's camp. He is ultimately honored by the Israeli government.