“Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he had saved the whole world” (Rodkinson)
These words, as spelled out in the Babylonian Talmud, signify a people’s tradition; a people with a history of persecution. Undeniably, the persecution experienced by the Jewish people has helped to shape the perception of humanity and the approach to racism, bigotry, and intolerance.
Movies about the Holocaust can teach us about intolerance and the psychology of man which both fueled the atrocities that occurred during World War II. What was the force of such carnage? How and why were the chosen categorized? And how did these people survive? One such movie is Schindler’s List, which tells the story of a man who went into the war a womanizer, boozer, and war profiteer, but came out a humble man overflowing with humility.
This paper will view Schindler’s List not as a movie about the Holocaust, but about a man, who at the end of World War II, had bestowed life upon not only the estimated 1,200 Jewish individuals who would have been macerated and slaughtered like more than six-million others, but also the generations that came after by giving them hope and identity.
Schindler’s List was the beginning of an archival process which began to authenticate the tragedies of the persecuted; refuting Holocaust deniers. Most knew of the atrocities that occurred during this dark period of history but chose to stand by, doing nothing. A few reached out to help; Oskar Schindler was one of those people. Schindler’s List is a screen adaptation of his story.
Schindler’s List is, in this author’s opinion, the creative genius of its creator, director Steven Spielberg. Approximately 184 minutes, Schindler’s List represents a journey of the main characters; Oska...
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...pirit is against, it will triumph; the difference between patience and tolerance, and most importantly that there is a difference between right and wrong.
In Schindler’s List, the viewer also witnesses a crucial element to when Schindler transforms from profiteer to messiah of the Jewish people as he places their welfare before his own. During a time when lives are managed as commodities, Schindler begins bartering for their lives, and as a result losses what he treasures most; financial wealth.
Works Cited
Rodkinson, Michael , ed. "Tractate Sanhedrin." The Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 08 Apr 2014. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Talmud/sanhedrin4.html.
YouTube. Monika Hertwig talks about her father Amon Leopold Göth. 2010. Photograph. YoutubeWeb. 10 Apr 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQrq4ljb48g.
Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief (2005), and Steven Spielberg, director of Schindler’s List (1993), both use their works to portray the theme of racism in Nazi-era Germany. Racism today affects millions of people daily, with 4.6 million people being racial discrimination in Australia alone. However, in Nazi-era Germany, Jewish people were discrimination because they weren’t part of the ‘master race’, causing millions to suffer and be killed. To explore this theme, the setting, characters, conflicts and symbols in both The Book Thief and Schindler’s List will be analysed and compared.
Schindler’s List exposes the true meaning and the reality of this form of the identification. When a Jewish woman asked during the required registration, “What if I just took [the armband] off? What are [the Nazis] going to do?” the answer she received was “They will just shoot you.”
Creative works are of use to historians to a large extent. However there is a fraction that is not completely historically accurate but simply made for the enjoyment of the audience. Schindler’s List is a film based on Oskar Schindler’s fight to save Jews during the Holocaust. Whether the film is historically accurate is determined by background information that can confirm how precise this film is. The main factors of this film were the protagonist Oskar Schindler and his transformation from a pro-Nazi to a Jewish sympathiser, Amon Goeth who is a Nazi officer in charge of the camp at Płaszów and his psychopathic routines and attitudes towards the Jews and the horrific mistreatment of the Jewish people and how they were portrayed. These aspects of the film show just how useful creative works can be for historians.
Elizer’s personal account of the holocaust does not merely highlight the facts of the holocaust: millions suffered and the event was politically and religiously motivated, but provides an in depth investigation to what a person endured mentally, physically, and emotionally. Beginning as a teenager, Elizer thought highly of God and of his own beliefs, however, that quickly diminished when he was put into a system of sorting and killing people. During the holocaust, Elizer was not the only person to change; almost everyone suffered and changed differently. The stressful and harsh times affected Elizer just as they affected the person working next to him in the factory. Elizer quickly began to question everything “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?” (Wiesel 32). Although Elizer forms this mentality, he also finds the will to survive, to protect his father, and to not turn into the people that were aro...
By 1945 over 6 million Jews were killed as a result of the genocide launched by Nazi Germany. The Holocaust has been documented and depicted by various visual images revealing the atrocities of this tragic period. The film posters of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful produced in 1997 and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List produced in 1993 utilize various rhetorical appeals to present starkly different visual arguments about the Holocaust. For the purpose of this rhetorical analysis, viewing these images from the standpoint of a viewer who is exposed to these posters for the first time, with the acute knowledge that these posters are related to the holocaust is necessary. From this standpoint, it is clear to see how images that depict that
Stephen Speilberg's Academy Award winning film 'Schindler's List' raised many questions about the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. The film's focus centered on one specific Jewish community, and the impact one man, Oskar Schindler, had upon it. Schindler's involvement with the Jews started with the birth of a business venture. An enterprising Nazi, Schindler saw an opportunity. In exchange for money to start his business, (a ceramics factory), he could offer capable Jews an escape from the deathly work camps. Throughout the course of the war however, Schindler's motives and motivation both change; once a greedy, adulterous, socialite Nazi, Schindler transforms into a kind, caring, monogamous humanitarian.
This list was his way of saving the lives of those affected by the Nazi organization. Although, even though their freedom was still taken away from them, those harbored under the care of Schindler, were well fed and clean. Schindler often referred to them as his "Schindlerjuden" (Schindler Jews). As the crisis grew and more Jews were prosecuted, Schindler began to create more positions within his factory, these positions were fake, so he took a great leap of faith by daring to lie to those within the Nazi party. These fake positions consisted of: typist, toolmaker, and dentist. Things that a factory may have an exact need for without the fear of the Nazi questioning his need. Although despite his best efforts to cover his tracks, the SS began to question Schindler 's motive and began to grow weary of his tales, of the huge need for more workers. He also started to come under much scrutiny by those in the non-Jewish communities, because his views were very much different in comparison to his peers. Schindler had went from a man of greed, to a man of compassion. It began to raise questions but nobody dared to speak out, on their thoughts. The end result of his selfless act being, he saved the lives of over 1,200
Schindler's List is a fictionalized account of a man named Oskar Schindler who lived in German occupied Poland and saved the lives of thousands of Jews. However most people that have read the book agree that the main character doesn’t start out being quite the hero that he ends up as. The simplistic view of his evolution is that he begins his journey as a stereotypical businessman, someone who cares only for himself and about making money, but then when he sees the horrible murders of Jews in the ghetto he instantly decides to do all he can to save them. However, there were plenty of other times prior to that event where the SS did nasty things, like when the police kicked the Nussbaum family out of their home in order to give Schindler a nice apartment, so why did this specific event prompt Oskar to change his mind? A deeper reading of the book suggests a more interesting and subtle change in Schindler’s character, starting with the passage in Chapter 3 where Oskar compensates the Nussbaum’s for getting kicked out of their home. From that moment, his personality begins to gradually evolve between scenes, until in Chapter 15, he sees a little girl watching the cruel murder of a mother and her son. This moment signifies a turning point after which Schindler is fully resolved to help the Jews and defeat the Nazis in any way that he can. There were bound to be many other people, even other businessmen, who knew the terrible things Nazis were doing, so why was Oskar the only one who decided to help the Jews, and why did it take him so long to act?
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
The movie starts out in a Jewish home, where a Jewish family is celebrating the Sabbath. Candles are lit while songs are sung, and when the Jews leave the house, the candles slowly burn out. The German forces have just defeated the Polish, and now the Jews are being forced out of their homes. They are reporting to the train station where they register their names, and then are shipped off to Krakow. In Krakow the Jews are gathered together in the ghetto where they are forced to live in overcrowded conditions. The Judenrat, a Jewish council, organizes the Jews into working groups according to their abilities. Oskar Schindler, a German business man, visits the ghetto to talk to Itzhak Stern, a Jew who owns a pot-making factory. Oskar and Itzhak make a deal in which Schindler will take over the factory but Stern will be the plant manager. The Jews are once again sorted according to their education and working ability, those who cannot work are sent to extermination camps while some of those who are able to, reported to Schindler’s factory. The Nazi’s decide that all of the Jews should be confined in forced labor camps. Schindler, who is now starting to feel some empathy and responsibility towards his workers, volunteers to confine his workers in his factory.
Schindler, in the beginning, viewed the Jews as just another human to be told what to do and where to go, a slave essentially. This can be seen when Schindler is trying to hire Jews in his factory, not to save them but because they are cheaper than the Polish workers. In the middle of the movie, Schindler starts to feel bad for the Jews and see that what is happening is wrong. He was watching the liquidation of the ghettos when he saw the little girl in the red coat running around trying to escape the Nazis. This girl changed his perspectives and made him realize how horrifying and unjust it is. At the end, he completely changes for the better and transitioned to a man who gave up his fortune that he worked so hard to achieve, just so he could
Schindler’s List had a great effect on me personally. I thought that Thomas Keneally did an excellent job in making the reader feel the events of the time. Perhaps what I found to be most interesting in Schindler’s List is a question of morality. I began asking myself the question, would I be as heroic as Oskar Schindler if I were in his shoes? I think that this is exactly what Keneally wanted us to do; he wanted us to look at ourselves and analyze what’s inside. Historically, I find Schindler’s List to be very important not only because it is tells of a shameful time in western civilization, but also because the events that took place in the novel occurred only yesterday. After all fifty years is almost nothing in historical terms. Perhaps the novel’s greatest strength is this feeling that the events that transpired in Schindler’s List are in fact modern history.
From the first moment of Schindler's List to the very last, you will be amazed by the strength and resilience of the Jewish people during this horrendous time in their history. You will witness and feel their pain and horror in this very graphic, yet painfully true story. Steven Speilberg deserves all of the awards this film had brought him. It is a time in history we should never forget and pray that we will never witness again.
Primarily, The movie is centered on Oskar Schindler, who came to Germany to take advantage of the cheap labor force of Jews. Since he doesn’t know how to properly run a company, Schindler enlists Itzhak Stern to deal with the administration of the company. Meanwhile, Amon Goth initiated construction of the labor camp Paszow. Soon after, the SS transport and massacre everyone at the Krakow ghetto. Seeing this, Schindler is moved and not only convinces Goth to let him build a sub-ghetto for his workers, but actively starts to save jews from certain death. This, in turn, spawned the document containing names of Jewish employees at his Polish factory who were designated as "essential workers" and thus spared from the concentration camps. From this point on Schindler spends almost all of this fortune trying to save as many Jews as he possibly can. When the war ends, he tells his workers they are free, but he is now deemed a war criminal and must flee at midnight. As he and his wife are leaving, the workers give him a letter explaining he is not a criminal to them,and a ring engraved with...
A film bursting with visual and emotional stimuli, the in-depth character transformation of Oscar Schindler in Schindler’s List is a beautiful focal point of the film. Riddled with internal conflict and ethical despair, Schindler challenges his Nazi Party laws when he is faced with continuing his ambitious business ideas or throwing it all away for the lives of those he once saw as solely cheap labor. Confronted with leading a double life and hiding his motivations from those allegiant to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, Schindler undergoes numerous ethical dilemmas that ultimately shape his identity and challenge his humanity. As a descendent of a Jewish-American, Yiddish speaking World War II soldier who helped liberate concentration camps in Poland, this film allowed for an enhanced personal