Rena Finder was born in February 1929 in Krakow, Poland, and considered her family rich because she always had new clothes for Passover. Finder's father was a pharmaceutical salesman and traveled most of every week. Her young life with her caring family was "wonderful." She knew little about anti-Semitism, because her parents spoke Yiddish when they discussed anything serious. However, when she was in first grade she was "stunned" when another little girl threw a stone at her and shouted, "You dirty Jew!" Finder was in a public school, and there were not many Jewish children attending. Her mother tried to explain, and even attempted to find a book in the school's library about Jesus Christ, but stressed that while not everyone was going to like each other, everyone should be nice. She thought things were very good the first ten years of her life, but it all ended overnight when Germany invaded Poland.

In 1939, members of Rena Finder's extended family immigrated to Cracow when they were sent away from Berlin. It was the first indication of what was to come, and although Finder was only a little girl, she was considered an enemy of the state. She found it remarkable that neither Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] nor his generals were good examples of the Arian race he thought should rule the world. Finder's father believed it would soon be over because he thought the world would not tolerate what the Germans were doing. But when the Germans marched into Poland, Finder realized that although they looked like ordinary human beings, the hate they demonstrated was unspeakable. Jewish businesses and bank accounts were confiscated; Jews were subject to curfews and could not do business with Gentiles. There were ration cards for food, and the black market was more active than ever. Jewish children were not allowed to go to school. Jews were not allowed to use public transportation, and Finder said she had to step off the sidewalk when a German soldier was passing. Radios, group gatherings, and the wearing of jewelry were forbidden to Jews. In March 1941, Finder's family was evicted from their apartment, relegated to the ghetto, and allowed to take only a mattress and some kitchen utensils. Finder was sad to leave her doll and books behind, and when she walked to the ghetto, people were throwing mud and stones at the miserable procession of Jews. When she eventually left for the United States, she vowed to never speak German again. She does speak, in English, to American students about her experiences, hoping they will understand that the future belongs to them.

The Cracow ghetto was part of the old city, and Rena Finder said the Germans put a wall around the area where the Jews would be contained. Her first impression was of the many Jewish families pushing their carts into the overpopulated environs. Polish police enforced the laws the Germans imposed on its inhabitants. Finder's father was lucky. He had a work permit and could go and come from the city to their room in a very old building. Finder and her mother worked in a printing shop without pay. Her father persisted in his belief that the Jews would be saved, but individuals began to disappear, and in the sporadic mail deliveries, their families would received the ashes of their missing relatives along with notification that they got sick and died of natural causes. Finder said that in the beginning that seemed plausible, but as conditions worsened and German soldiers were shooting people in Cracow Square, and sending others to Belzec concentration camp to be exterminated, the incredible became a certainty. Their only crime was that they were Jewish. Illness began to spread, and anyone sick enough to be put in the hospital were shot, but rumors about the murders were mostly ignored. Finder said the worst of the perpetrators were the Ukrainians, who were "shooting with such pleasure that it's beyond imagination." It took a while before anyone knew about Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: the Auschwitz concentration camp]. When her father lost his work permit and was confined to the ghetto, he took a job as a Jewish policeman, and was able to do some good for his people. Finder maintains that the Polish Gentiles knew what was happening and, except for a few "righteous" individuals, cooperated with the Germans. According to Finder, "people lost their humanity, they lost their souls." Finder said she was really too young to understand what was going on, and her biggest regret is that she never again discussed this period with her mother. She lives with many unanswered questions.

Rena Finder said it was a time when neighbor would turn on neighbor, and regrettably she sees the face of hate showing up on people today. Her family was in the ghetto from 1941 until 1943, and her life was pretty good for a while when her father was there. For a time she went to an underground school conducted by the out-of-work Jewish teachers. When word started going around about the horrible things that were going on at Auschwitz, it still seemed impossible to imagine. The bells were ringing at midnight on New Year's Eve 1942 when her father was arrested and taken away. He told his family not to worry; he would be back home soon. He was kept in a jail surrounded by his Jewish friends for a few days, and Finder was able to visit him. One day her mother told her to go and say goodbye because he was going away. He told her "everything's going to be okay." Finder could not imagine anything bad happening to her father, because he was smart and everybody loved him, and she was sure that. Of everyone she knew, he would be the one who would survive. She waited for him for years.

Soon after her father was taken away, Rena Finder and her mother were told they had to go to the Plaszow concentration camp that had been built on the leveled ground of two former Cracow Jewish cemeteries. She notes that the Polish people stole the headstones from the cemeteries to build driveways and sidewalks, and broke them up to build roads. The Germans left anyone younger than six or older than 55 years of age behind in the ghetto, and although Finder tried to smuggle her five-year-old cousin out with her, the child was discovered and brought to the orphans' home. Finder said some of the refugees concealed their small children in their backpacks and handed them off to their "righteous" Gentile friends who cared for them at the risk of their own lives. Finder was living in barracks with her mother, and still working at the paper and printing factory, manufacturing office equipment and supplies. Life in Plaszow was horrible; its sadistic SS director [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer Amon Leopold Göth] would stand on the veranda of his villa in the mornings and shoot people as they came and went from work. About that time, Finder said, she started to hear about Oskar Schindler. Although he was a friend of the camp's SS director, word had it that Schindler fed his factory workers, and didn't allow beatings. Finder and her mother applied for work in Schindler's munitions facility, and went to live in a small camp next to the factory where there were bathrooms and a small health clinic. She said the workers worshiped Oskar Schindler. Meanwhile, the women who had stayed behind at Plaszow were being sent to Auschwitz and other death camps. When the tides of war turned against the Germans and the concentration camps were being emptied, Schindler proposed moving his factory to his home country of Czechoslovakia and taking his employees there. The Germans agreed with his plan.

In late October [Annotator's Note: October 1944], Rena Finder prepared to move with Schindler's [Annotator's Note: German businessman Oskar Schindler] factory workers to Czechoslovakia, and she remembers when she was on the train platform to leave, things didn't seem right. The workers were loaded onto boxcars, and when the train stopped at midnight spotlights were directed on the doors as they opened. Finder saw barbed wire, armed guards, watchdogs and an "Auschwitz-Birkenau" sign. She stepped out to stench-filled chaos, and what she thought was falling snow turned out to be ashes from the crematorium. The crowds were being culled with some going right and some going left. She had to face the reality of the murderous activities she had so long denied. The elderly and infirm who went to the left were doomed. Finder and her mother straightened up and pinched their cheeks and were sent to the barracks on their right. She had to strip naked in front of male prisoners and guards, and lost a picture of her father that she had hidden under her tongue when she was searched to see if she had gold teeth. Her head was shaved, and she was shaking from the cold. She was moved to a dark room, and only when the lights came on and the shower spouted cold water did she know that she was not being gassed. The wet prisoners were shoved into another room and beaten by vicious female guards as she was issued shoes and an ill-fitting chiffon dress, then pulled out into the night. Finder paraphrased Elie Wiesel, saying there are no words in any language to describe Auschwitz.

It was November [Annotator's Note: November 1944] and everything at Auschwitz was gray, the weather was terrible, and Rena Finder had little food. In the crowded barracks some slept on the cold floor, and she lived under the watchful eyes of hateful Hungarian guards. Finder stood every morning and evening to be counted, and one day she had a frightening experience when she was taken away and had blood drawn for medical experimentation. After three and a half weeks, Oskar Schindler convinced Rudolf Hess [Annotator's Note: SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss] to let his trained employees leave Auschwitz. They traveled by train to his factory in Brněnec, in the Czech Republic, where they were greeted by Schindler himself. Finder remembers him in a Tyrolean hat with a feather, a long coat, shiny boots, and smoking a cigarette. He reassured them that their men were safe, and told them hot soup was waiting. When the liberating Russians troops approached, Schindler had to flee for his safety, but his wife stayed at the facility, caring for the sick and protecting the employees. A few days later one Russian came to tell the prisoners they were free, and Finder said no one knew what to do next.

Schindler [Annotator's Note: German businessman Oskar Schindler] gave each prisoner a small supply of goods they could sell, and Rena Finder returned to Cracow with Schindler's advice of "don't take revenge" ringing in her ears. She feels the Jews settled some scores by talking about what they saw and what they went through. In their own home town, however, she and her mother found themselves alone and unwanted. Their liberation did not feel like a victory, because they had lost too much. Her mother went to work in a shirt factory, and Finder cleaned windows at a school. After about two months, a family friend came for them and brought them to Linz, Austria, where some of their surviving friends were staying in displaced persons camps. Finder noted that Oskar Schindler had a hard life after the war, because the Germans considered him a traitor. He immigrated to Argentina, where a Jewish organization bought him a mink farm, but he didn't stay, and spent the rest of his life wandering the world visiting people he called "his children." As one of his employees, Finder operated a machine that made bullets, which she did very efficiently, and remembers that they always had ample food that Schindler bought off the black market, and that she often slept on the floor of his office when she was supposed to be working the night shift. Only two people died in Schindler's factory in Brněnec, both of natural causes, and he gave them a decent burial. When Schindler died, he was buried in Israel. After Harry Truman became president, immigration rules changed, and Finder immigrated to America.

Rena Finder considers herself extremely lucky to have survived alongside her mother as a Schindler Jew. She is extremely happy to have contributed to the telling of Schindler's [Annotator's Note: German businessman Oskar Schindler] story. When she learned of the book "Schindler's Ark," she went to Boston to hear its author speak. She is delighted that Steven Spielberg's movie introduced him to the rest of the world. Finder said "Schindler's List" made people realize that the Schindlerjuden, those who survived because of Schindler, had something special to say. Finder lived in the United States for ten years before anybody asked her about her Holocaust experience. Her first job in America, in 1948 or 1949, was making television bulbs, with other Polish immigrants. She was disappointed to find those workers anti-Semitic, and left the job. She found the sentiment prevalent in other places as well. She was reluctant to admit to being Jewish for a long time, until, in fact, Steven Spielberg's movie made it more comfortable to talk about it.

Speaking before the United Nations along with Steven Spielberg, Rena Finder told the movie director that the Schindlerjuden considered him their grandson. Finder feels Spielberg helped the truth to come out. Though she doesn't feel she deserves to do it, she is representing those who are no longer with us. She speaks to high school audiences, sometimes hundreds of students at a time, about what they can accomplish, emphasizing that Schindler [Annotator's Note: German businessman Oskar Schindler] didn't save the world, but he saved as many as he could. In saving one thousand people, he saved all the generations that came after them. Spielberg, in Finder's mind, gave Schindler immortality. Her first viewing of the movie transcended her back to her life in Poland. When the movie ended, she was still "mesmerized," and had to be roused. After her husband died, Finder began bringing her memories to audiences all over the United States, trying to keep awareness alive. When she talks, she focuses on a message of universal diversity and equality.

Rena Finder eventually returned to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: the Auschwitz concentration camp], and found it very different from what she remembered. She visited in a different season, and many of the barracks had gone to ruin. She prayed in front of the memorial, and was surprised to see a group of Thai monks praying for the souls of the murdered. It lifted her spirits to know there were others who still cared. She also went to Cracow to visit the Schindler [Annotator's Note: German businessman Oskar Schindler] factory, and found that different, too. The living quarters she had occupied was gone, and the factory had been made into a museum. It exhibited testimonies of its former workers, hers included. Finder married a Mauthausen concentration camp survivor in 1946, and in their conversations, they found their individual experiences of the Holocaust very different. But other conversations with her family members and Polish survivors bring her memories further into focus, and she has contributed to several accounts of the Holocaust that are or will be memorialized in print and film.