Who Is Oskar Schindler?

Schindler’s List

Schindler's List is a 1993 American historical period drama film, directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg and scripted by Steven Zaillian. It is based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Australian author, Thomas Keneally. The film is based on the life of Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. Businessman Oskar Schindler, Liam Neeson, arrives in Krakow in 1939, ready to make his fortune from World War II, which had just started. After joining the Nazi party for political reasons, he staffs his factory with Jewish workers for similarly reasons. When the SS begins killing Jews in the Krakow ghetto, Schindler arranges to have his workers protected to keep his factory, but soon realizes that in so doing, he is also saving innocent lives. If it would not have been for the little girl in the red coat, Oskar Schindler would not have saved hundreds of Jews.

He watches with intensity as a little girl wearing a red jacket runs throughout the streets, alone. She stood out within the mass chaos, and in the black and white film, her coat appeared red. This scene of the film is known as the “moment” Schindler’s perspective and motive changes from profit-seeker to savior. It is important to recognize how the girl’s red coat color is the only thing besides the candles at the beginning that are in the colorless film. The little Jewish girl, sporting a bright red jacket, walks untouched through a mob of Nazis slaughtering their counterparts. She is portrayed to stand out, but remains undetected by others as if she were