Spoiler Alert: The List Saves Lives

Movie: Schindler's List

Rank: 8

Year: 1993 Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes

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I have always known that Schindler’s List was considered an essential film. I have always known it was about a man saving the lives of many Holocaust victims. I’ve always known it was in black and white. However, what I saw when I entered the 25th anniversary rerelease in theaters last year was not anything I could have anticipated.

A rather last minute decision, I sat reclined in a theater one row behind the only other viewer.

Anyone who has seen emotional movies with me knows I am not one to cry. Yet, as each scene faded into another more tragic, violent and traumatic one I was unable to gain control of my tear ducts.

Most other interpretations of the Holocaust I have watched skirted around the more intense moments of life in a concentration camp. This one held no punches. Each incremental step which led to mass genocide was shown in vivid detail: Having to register and wear badges of their religion. Packing up their homes to move into the ghetto. Hiding their children, running into sewers and being herded together during the liquidation. Being killed over nothing. Being packed onto trains bound for concentration camps. Having their heads shaved. Being stripped naked and forced to run in circles to assess their physical fitness. Watching their children be carted off while they were being tortured. Being randomly shot by a deranged Nazi. Entering a gas chamber. Bodies being burned. The ashes of victims drifting through the air. The mania in a Nazi's eyes. Every intense moment was caught on film.

Fast forward to this past weekend when my sister, the already identified Mandy, was in town to see the Jonas Brothers. I told her to pick a movie off the list to watch. She decided on Schindler’s List, and thus, I was reintroduced to Oskar Schindler.

"This list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf."

- Itzhak Stern, Schindler's List

Schindler is not a particularly great man by most accounts. When we meet him, he is a registered Nazi and the life of the party. He is an expert at sweet talking. He mismanages money. We soon find out he regularly has affairs and doesn’t take much care in hiding them from his wife. He acts as if every kind gesture or hire of a likely to be killed Jewish person is a great inconvenience to him and his business. Then, he says yes, makes a call and puts the money down when needed. A rather brave choice by Steven Spielberg, I would say, to have the protagonist who did an extraordinary thing in a truly heinous time portrayed as a full human rather than being martyrized.

When he acquires a factory to make cookware, he turns to the Jewish Official, Itzhak Stern. Ben Kingsley described Stern as the “witness” and “conscience” of the film. While Schindler hires Jewish workers for their low cost, Stern hires Jewish workers to ensure they can avoid death or camps.

However, these efforts cannot hold the Nazis at bay for long. At one point, Stern without the proper paperwork on hand, is himself ushered onto one of these trains only to be pulled off at the last minute by an insistent Schindler.

Soon we meet Amon Goeth, the Nazi guard in charge of the concentration camp. While he would seem an over-the-top character full of an unending capacity for violence and hatred, he in truth was a man of history whose crimes are not that of fiction but chronicled in textbooks. At one point, parallelism is used to show Goeth and Schindler getting ready in a similar fashion. Even the most vial can be just one of us. He arrives to build out the camps and order the liquidation of the Kraków Ghetto.

Liquidation seems like such an innocent term for what took place. Jewish occupants shoved jewels in bread to swallow family heirlooms. Residents hid in walls, strapped under mattresses, crammed into pianos and drawers and even took to the sewer. Once it seemed as though the collection of people had ended and the violence had subsided, they emerged to only be killed by a second wave of Nazis patrolling the streets and buildings.

"Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I'll be very unhappy."

- Oskar Schindler, Schindler's List

From the top of a hill, Schindler and his fling of the week watch on as the liquidation happened and a little girl in a red coat catches his eye.

As a film studies minor in college, I took many classes that mentioned this scene.

Spielberg said no one wanted him to film this movie in black and white for fear it wouldn’t sell when it went to VHS. However, he insisted. For him, the way he saw the Holocaust was in the black and white documentaries he watched. That was his visual language and the great equalizer to set the scene for viewers. As you watch, it is also impossible to not notice the impactful way light and shadow can be used in such a film.

Yet, among this hard-fought black and white movie is a colorful jacket. While brutality overtakes the streets around her, this little girl shines as a beacon and warning of her eventual death. Spielberg said this little girl Schindler really saw served as the turning point. No longer a passive aid to his Jewish employees, but a purposeful actor against the crimes of the Holocaust. This little girl’s red jacket will serve as a cruel reminder of reality when her arm slips out from under the cover hiding dead bodies.

Schindler continues to stay close to Goeth, bribing him to save more, hire more and keep more from death. Goeth in turn continues to shoot indiscriminately at workers and abuse his Jewish maid.

Soon Schindler’s hand starts to show. When train cars sit in the heat while crammed with people, he uses the hoses to provide them with water. Goeth notes its not worth giving them hope. Schindler even lands himself in jail for kissing a Jewish girl.

When time comes to transfer the remaining members of the concentration camp to Auschwitz, Schindler and Stern embark on creating a list. In exchange for a bribe, each person on that list will work for Schindler at his new factory to create shells. Shells which are constantly made improperly, eventually resulting in the purchase of other shells to pass off as their own. While the men arrived without issue, the women were misdirected. As they were led to the showers, the audience and women experienced the horror in real time as it seemed they would die in a gas chamber.

Eventually reunited, the soldiers are kept outside. The religious ceremonies take place. And life for “Schindler’s Jews” continue.

"Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."

- Itzhak Stern, Schindler's List

As the war ends, Schindler flees to avoid arrest since he is technically a Nazi. As he departs, he is given a ring and a letter explaining his impact signed by all the workers. This causes a breakdown. Could he have saved more? By selling his pin or his car? Could he have afforded more lives? In that moment, he certainly thought so. As he drives off, the faces of those he could save reflect over his in the window. His face now a mirror image for lives not lost to the horrors of what Spielberg called “the great murder.”

In the morning, a soldier “frees” the Jewish factory workers, only to tell them there is no direction where they will be met with good will. But, hey, what a hero. Their real hero eventually is declared a righteous person. Their all-too-real villain, Goeth, is hung. The credits roll over a road paved with gravestones.

As I watched this film, I was struck by how shocking hatred can be. I cannot imagine hating one person enough to kill them, let alone a whole population. While the film is in black and white, the emotions are so vivid. It serves as a reminder that othering people can quickly move from prejudice to genocide. History proves that.

The impact of this movie went beyond its 3 hr 15 min running time. Upon meeting the survivors, Spielberg realized the necessity of telling individual stories of survivors of genocide before they are lost. In turn, he launched the USC Shoah Foundation which captured a catalog of testimonies told by the survivors.

I’ll leave you with the statistics presented at the end of the film: “There are fewer than 4,000 Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than 6,000 descendants of the Schindler Jews.”