Review of Schindler's List (1993) by Rhonda B — 07 Apr 2013

Schindler's List is an amazing film that follows the life of Oskar Schindler during World War II. The story begins in 1939 in Krakow, Poland. The movie shows how Jewish members of the community were living a great life prior to the war. Shortly after, these same Jews are forced into a ghetto. At the same time, Oskar Schindler moved to Krakow to attempt to make money off of the war by creating pots and pans for the military. He hired Jewish people from the ghetto as cheap labor to increase his profits. Because these Jews were employed by a member of the Nazi party, they were spared being sent to concentration camps elsewhere. An SS officer arrives on the scene to turn the ghetto into a concentration camp. After everything is set up, the officer begins the massacre of Jewish people within the ghetto. He begins by separating those who are sickly or old, and these are the first to die. Schindler happens to see this beginning and he is sickened. Schindler begins to work with the SS officer to make sure his employees are saved, keeping a list of everyone who should be kept out of the camps. Even when the SS officer receives orders to have everyone shipped to the infamous Auschwitz camp to be killed, Schindler pays massive amounts of money to have them kept there to work in his factory. The movie continues to follow Schindler and his Jewish workers, until the end of the war. Following the war, Schindler away with the blessing of all of the Jewish people he kept alive throughout the war.

Throughout the movie, many references are made about how Jewish people were considered scum. The SS officer over the camp in Krakow takes one of Jewish women to be his "slave". In one scene he refers talks about how she is not even human, implying that Jews do not even deserve to be classified as people. This was how many people viewed the Jewish community during this time, despite having lived and worked hand in hand in the times prior to the war. It was disturbing to watch how the holocaust actually probably played out during World War II. The aftermath of the Holocaust caused many people of the Jewish faith to question God. Living Religions quotes Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel as saying, "Why should I bless Him? In every fiber I rebelled. Because He had had thousands of children burned in His pits? Because He kept six crematoria working night and day, on Sundays and feast days? Because in His great might He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many factories of death? How could I say to Him: "Bless art Thou, Eternal, Master of the Universe, Who chose us from among the races to be tortured day and night, to see our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end in the crematory?" (Fisher, 268). To know that the events of the Holocaust occurred not so long ago is unbelievable. I would like to think that today's global society is much different, however, genocide is still a reality that many fear daily across the world.