BY LEE ANN SANDWEISS
Director Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-winning film Schindler’s List tells the true story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to save 1,100 Jews from the Nazi death camps in World War II. Today, there are nearly 7,000 living descendants of Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews). Bloomington residents Arthur Fagen and his daughters, Gabriela Fagen and Rebecca Fagen Houghton, are among them. Arthur’s parents, Lewis and Rena Fagen, owe their lives to Schindler. Protected by him in his factories, they survived the war and its aftermath, came to America, raised a family, and are still alive today.
Arthur, 62, is a professor of orchestral conducting at the IU Jacobs School of Music. He and his wife, Paulette, 60, and two of their three daughters have lived in Bloomington since 2008. In his career as a conductor, Arthur worked for many years in Germany, and also in Krakow, Poland, the city where his mother and father were first persecuted by the Nazis.
