Schindler’s List (1993)
Schindler’s List (1993) directed by Steven Spielberg; starring Liam Nesson as Oskar Schindler. (Rated R for language, violence, and some sexuality.)
Even if you have seen the film before, I want you to watch it again in its entirety in one sitting. Watch it with people you feel close to. In my experience, students feel better watching the film in small groups of friends or by themselves. You need to allow yourself to have a genuine emotional reaction and not be concerned with what others think or feel. The power of this film is not to be underestimated.
The film brings to the screen the horror of the Holocaust by focusing on one man’s story. Oskar Schindler was an unlikely hero—a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, driven by greed to use Jewish workers-- who did something heroic, while in the face of the Holocaust others were paralyzed. He was a businessman, a member of the Nazi party, who saw a way to make money off the war effort and pursued his scheme. Gradually, his view of the Nazis changes; he comes to empathize and to support the Jewish inmates. At the end of the film, he connives with Nazi officials to “buy” inmates. By so doing, he saves the lives of 1,200 people.
The early part of the film shows the process through with Jews were “handled” by the Third Reich (as seen, too, in the documentary “Genocide” from The World At War series, which we will watch in class); Identification, relocation, segregation, separation, removal, and then extermination. Jewish people are rounded up from all over a region, forced to live in the ghetto, then separated again for work, then sent to death camps to be exterminated.
Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a Jewish accountant, runs Schindler’s factory for him. Later, after the Jews have been segregated in the labor camp, Stern continues his efforts on behalf of the inmates. He sends inmates to work in Schindler’s factory, which is outside the confines of the labor camp. Only after workers are worn out and no longer able to work are they sent to Auschwitz. (At one point in the film, a “selection” has to be made because new prisoners are arriving from Hungary. These prisoners would have been Elie Wiesel’s countrymen.)
Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) is the SS commander who liquidates the ghetto and then becomes the commandant of the Plaszow labor camp. He accepts bribes from Schindler to allow Schindler’s factory to remain outside the camp itself.
At the end of the film the descendants of the actual people who were saved by Schindler are seen. They now number over 6,000 people.