Schindler's List

PLOT

In Kraków during World War II, the Nazi Germans force local Polish Jews into the overcrowded Kraków Ghetto. Oskar Schindler, a German member of the Nazi Party from Czechoslovakia, arrives in the city, hoping to make his fortune. Schindler bribes Wehrmacht (German armed forces) and SS officials, acquiring a factory to produce enamelware. Schindler hires Itzhak Stern, a Jewish official with contacts among black marketeers and the Jewish business community; he handles administration and helps Schindler arrange financing. Stern ensures that as many Jewish workers as possible are deemed essential to the German war effort to prevent them from being taken by the SS to concentration camps or killed. Meanwhile, Schindler maintains friendly relations with the Nazis and enjoys wealth and status as "Herr Direktor".

SS-Untersturmführer (second lieutenant) Amon Göth arrives in Kraków to oversee construction of the Płaszów concentration camp. When the camp is ready, he orders the ghetto liquidated: two thousand Jews are transported to Płaszów, and two thousand others are killed in the streets by the SS. Schindler witnesses the massacre and is profoundly affected. He particularly notices a young girl in a red coat who hides from the Nazis and later sees her body on a wagonload of corpses. Schindler is careful to maintain his friendship with Göth and continues to enjoy SS support, mostly through bribery. Göth brutalizes his Jewish maid Helen Hirsch and randomly shoots people from the balcony of his villa; the prisoners are in constant fear for their lives. As time passes, Schindler's focus shifts from making money to trying to save as many lives as possible. To better protect his workers, Schindler bribes Göth into allowing him to build a sub-camp.

As the Germans begin losing the war, Göth is ordered to ship the remaining Jews at Płaszów to Auschwitz concentration camp. Schindler asks Göth for permission to move his workers to a munitions factory he plans to build in Brünnlitz near his home town of Zwittau. Göth reluctantly agrees, but charges a huge bribe. Schindler and Stern create "Schindler's List" – a list of 850 people to be transferred to Brünnlitz instead of Auschwitz.

As the Jewish workers are transported by train to Brünnlitz, the women and girls are mistakenly redirected to Auschwitz-Birkenau; Schindler bribes Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, for their release. At the new factory, Schindler forbids the SS guards from entering the factory floor without permission and encourages the Jews to observe the Jewish Sabbath. Over the next seven months, he spends his fortune bribing Nazi officials and buying shell casings from other companies. Due to Schindler's machinations, the factory does not produce any usable armaments. Schindler runs out of money in 1945, just as Germany surrenders.

As a Nazi Party member and war profiteer, Schindler must flee the advancing Red Army to avoid capture. The SS guards in Schindler's factory have been ordered to kill the Jewish workforce, but Schindler persuades them to "return to [their] families as men, instead of murderers". Bidding farewell to his workers, he prepares to head west, hoping to surrender to the Americans. The workers give him a signed statement attesting to his role in saving Jewish lives and present him with a ring engraved with a Talmudic quotation: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire". Schindler breaks down in tears, feeling he should have done more, and is comforted by the workers before he and his wife leave in their car. When the Schindlerjuden awaken the next morning, a Soviet soldier announces that they have been liberated. The Jews then walk to a nearby town.

An epilogue reveals that Göth was executed via hanging, and Schindler had failed in both business and marriage following the war. In the present, many of the surviving Schindlerjuden and the actors portraying them visit Schindler's grave and place stones on its marker (the traditional Jewish sign of respect on visiting a grave), with Liam Neeson laying two roses.

CAST

Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler

Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern

Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth

Caroline Goodall as Emilie Schindler

Jonathan Sagall as Poldek Pfefferberg

Embeth Davidtz as Helen Hirsch

Małgorzata Gebel as Wiktoria Klonowska

Mark Ivanir as Marcel Goldberg

Beatrice Macola as Ingrid

Andrzej Seweryn as Julian Scherner

Friedrich von Thun as Rolf Czurda

Jerzy Nowak as Investor

Norbert Weisser as Albert Hujar

Albert Misak as Mordecai Wulkan

Michael Gordon as Mr. Nussbaum

Aldona Grochal as Mrs. Nussbaum

Uri Avrahami as Chaim Nowak

Michael Schneider as Juda Dresner

Miri Fabian as Chaja Dresner

Anna Mucha as Danka Dresner

Adi Nitzan as Mila Pfefferberg

Jacek Wójcicki as Henry Rosner

Beata Paluch as Manci Rosner

Piotr Polk as Leo Rosner

Bettina Kupfer as Regina Perlman

Grzegorz Kwas as Mietek Pemper

Kamil Krawiec as Olek Rosner

Henryk Bista as Mr. Löwenstein

Ezra Dagan as Rabbi Menasha Levartov

Rami Heuberger as Joseph Bau

Elina Löwensohn as Diana Reiter

Krzysztof Luft as Herman Toffel

Harry Nehring as Leo John

Wojciech Klata as Lisiek

Paweł Deląg as Dolek Horowitz

Hans-Jörg Assmann as Julius Madritsch

August Schmölzer as Dieter Reeder

Hans-Michael Rehberg as Rudolf Höß

Daniel Del Ponte as Josef Mengele

Adam Siemion as Adam Levy

Jochen Nickel as Wilhelm Kunde

Ludger Pistor as Josef Leipold[a]

Oliwia Dąbrowska as the Girl in Red

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

based on the 1982 non-fiction novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally