Poland during the Second World War: German businessman Oskar Schindler seizes the opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company producing cookware and utensils. Using flattery and bribes to win military contracts he brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who have been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. However, in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth, an ruthless alcoholic who takes pleasure from occasionally shooting prisoners from his balcony overlooking the camp. Schindler arranges to continue using Polish Jews in his plant, but, as he witnesses how the Jews are treated, he begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory (now refitted to manufacture ammunition) is the only thing preventing his staff from being deported to the death camps. Soon Schindler demands more workers, using a list of names compiled by Stern and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep more Jews as his employees and out of the camps. By the time Germany falls to the allies he has lost his entire fortune — and saved 1,100 people from likely death.