In 2017, the 25th anniversary re-release of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List reignited both criticism and praise for the Oscar-winning film.
A story in the Forward titled “What’s Wrong with ‘Schindler’s List?’ Kind of a Lot” revived the main complaint of the movie’s detractors. It quotes Liel Leibovits, who wrote in Tablet that “the movie, really, is about a Christ-like gentile who saves a horde of hapless Jews who have no agency or resolve of their own.”
Speaking at a 1994 Village Voice symposium, Art Spiegelman, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his graphic Holocaust memoir Maus, blasted Spielberg for depicting the Jewish characters as “bit players.”
As illuminating as such arguments about artistic characterization might be, they reveal little about historical truth.
For the record, the real Oskar Schindler was no saint, and the 1,200 Jews he saved were not sheep. In fact, in a reversal of roles, during the final days of the war, a group of Schindlerjuden [“Schindler Jews,” as they called themselves] took direct action to save Schindler’s life.
I learned of this episode from Chana Keller Kotlitzky during a 1995 gathering of women [my mother among them] in the Czech Republic town of Volary. We were there to observe the 50th anniversary of their having survived a harrowing five-month Nazi death march.
As Kotlitzy tells it, one day she was approached by a group of liberated Polish Jews, who implored her to help them rescue a German who had shielded them in his nearby factory. If Oskar Schindler were to fall into Soviet hands, they warned, he would most certainly be shot. Kotlitzy brought the matter to the attention of the American soldiers posted in Volary, and she accompanied them by jeep to Schindler’s hiding place. After hearing his story, the GIs brought him under U.S. protection, saving his life.
We probably would never have heard of Oskar Schindler had it not been for the persistence of Paul Page [formerly Leopold Pfefferberg], who told me in a 1993 interview that he was “possessed” by the man who had saved his life in Nazi-occupied Krakow, Poland.
Before leaving Germany in 1947, Page visited his rescuer, the former industrialist who was by then “a pauper.” He and other former Schindlerjuden asked the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee [JDC] to honor its promise to compensate Schindler for having taken on a risky mission to Hungary to provide them with intelligence about the plight of Jews in Nazi occupied Poland. Schindler received $15,000.
Faced with death threats from right-wing extremists for having betrayed the Nazi cause, Schindler sought to emigrate from Germany, but was unable to obtain a U.S. visa because of his wartime membership in the Nazi Party. Only Argentina agreed to accept him, so in 1950, Oskar and his wife Emilie along with several Schindlerjuden moved there. Schindler paid for all of them from the JDC money. Schindler’s subsequent ventures failed and he was, in Page’s words, “unable to construct a new life.” Curiously, people who are capable of extraordinary feats during times of upheaval, are prone to fail in normal times.
For the next 30 years, Page informed anyone who would listen about the Schindler saga. One day in October 1980, Thomas Keneally walked into Page’s Beverly Hills leather goods shop to purchase a briefcase. When Page learned that he had an Australian author within his grasp, he pitched the story of his rescuer as “a Catholic [who] was no saint, a gambler… war profiteer and womanizer who liked to drink.”
Keneally listened intently, asked if Page could substantiate the story and agreed it was an extraordinary story with great potential. The Australian author nevertheless declined the offer on the grounds that he was not knowledgeable about Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.
“As an Irish Catholic and notable author,” Page insisted, “you will have more credibility, not less, in writing about the Holocaust. You say you don’t know about Jewish suffering. I am very surprised. Irish people have suffered for 400 years, just as we have suffered for 2,000 years. But human suffering is the same whether Jewish or Irish.”
Keneally replied earnestly, “You just commissioned me to write a book for you.”
The British edition, Schindler’s Ark, was published as an historical novel in 1982. It became an international bestseller after winning the Booker Prize, followed by a contract from Universal Studios for a film to be directed by Steven Spielberg.
Oskar Schindler died on October 9, 1974 at the age of 66 in Hildesheim, Germany, Schindlerjuden had his remains transported to Jerusalem for burial in the Catholic cemetery. Inscribed on his gravestone are the words: “The unforgettable rescuer of 1,200 persecuted Jews.”
Schindler’s List premiered in 1993, the same year Yad Vashem honored Oskar and Emilie Schindler as Righteous Among the Nations.
Aron Hirt-Manheimer is the Union for Reform Judaism’s editor-at-large. He is former editor of Reform Judaism magazine [1976-2014] and founding editor of Davka magazine [1970-1976], a West Coast Jewish quarterly. He holds an M.A. and honorary doctorate in Jewish education from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. His books include Jagendorf’s Foundry: A Memoir of the Romanian Holocaust [HarperCollins, 1991] and Jews: The Essence and Character of a People [HarperCollins, 1998] with Arthur Hertzberg.
One of the high-water marks of 1990s cinema was director Steven Spielberg's 1993 magnum opus, "Schindler's List." The film, which garnered Spielberg his first-ever Academy Award for best picture, according to History, is based on a book of the same name, which is itself based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German factory owner who saved hundreds of Jewish lives during World War II. The film takes place within the context of documented, recorded history, and as such is based on a true story — to a point. Indeed, the film, and the book on which it's based, retain the general outline of the true story. Oskar Schindler was a real man who really did own a factory, and he actually did help hundreds of Jews escape death during the Holocaust. Further, the unfettered brutality of the Nazi regime, and the horrors of the event, are on full display in the film.
However, as is almost always the case with "based-on-a-true-story" films, the movie, and the book on which it's based [per Time], are works of historical fiction and take multiple liberties with the actual events from history.
As depicted in the film, the origin of the list of Jewish names saved by Oskar Schindler is rooted in when Nazis began forcing the Jews of Krakow, Poland, into ghettos. Schindler sees a way to make some money, effectively by buying a factory and using Jews as slave labor, and begins bribing his way into business. That their employment effectively spared them the gas chamber was something of an afterthought, according to Time.
As it turns out, the idea to use Jews in Schindler's factory wasn't Schindler's at all, but that of Abraham Bankier, a Polish Jew who, like Schindler, owned a factory. In fact, according to History Collection, Bankier was essential to Schindler's scheme, maintaining contacts with black marketers who could supply the businessman with materials that he could use to bribe officials, as well as with products he needed for his business. Bankier is completely left out of the film.
In the film, "Schindler's List" refers to an actual list of names [pictured above]. And while that list was a real document on which names were printed, in a broader sense the list serves as a metaphor for all of the Jews saved by Schindler, whether they appeared on the list or not.
As it turns out, there wasn't just one list: There were several. In the film, as History Collection notes, the list came about in 1944 as the Allies were closing in, and the Nazis moved their concentration camps and factories, to the west. Schindler's factory was moved towards Brunnlitz, and a list of names — the names of Jews who worked for Schindler and would continue to be allowed to work for him in Brunnlitz, rather than sent to the concentration camps — was produced. However, Schindler had little to do with the production of that list. Further, there wasn't just one list, but several, possibly as many as nine. The industrialist would later tell his workers that they shouldn't thank him, but Itzhak Stern, his accountant, and Mietek Pemper, another Jew Schindler helped save.
Schindler’s List, a true story about the Holocaust and one specific Nazi who protected his Jewish workers, represents life in Europe from 1939 to 1946 from a German point of view. Beginning with hiring Jews merely because it was cheaper, Oskar Schindler ended with hiring them in order to protect them from the concentration camps where the vast majority would find death. Over time, he realized that what was occurring was terribly evil and had experienced a change of heart. Now known as “righteous among the nations,” Oskar Schindler is accredited with saving as many as 1,100 Jews, allowing the 6,000 descendants the opportunity to live that they otherwise would not have had. Oskar Schindler, born on April 28, 1908 in Moravia, joined the …show more content…
These inaccuracies, though, were typically exaggerations, which were not enough to destroy the film’s historical significance. One inaccuracy was when the film depicted Schindler’s turning point to be on the hill when he spotted the little girl in the red coat. Schindler did not necessarily have a sudden change; rather he changed over time as he witnessed horrors continually grow, but this slow change is harder to portray in a film. Another inaccuracy occurred when the women were thrown into the showers, thinking they were gas chambers. It would have been unknown to the women that the Nazi officers sometimes did trick Jews with gas chambers as …show more content…
There may have actually been multiple lists, some written even while he was in prison. Although he might not have written the entire list himself, the fact that there was a list is undeniably because of Schindler, and the extremes to which Schindler went to save the Jews on this list is accurately displayed in Schindler’s List.
The horrors that the majority of Jews experienced were sometimes much crueler than what the film portrayed, yet, because Schindler’s List was about those Jews specifically on the list, this also does not ruin any historical significance of the film. Some critics claim that the ending was too blissful, as over six million Jews died in the Holocaust, but, once again, the film is based off those on Schindler’s list, those who did survive; therefore, overall, Schindler’s List accurately portrays life for those on the list during the Holocaust.
In conclusion, Oskar Schindler deserves the title “righteous among the nations” due to his perseverance in saving and protecting as many Jews as he did. Throughout the film, Schindler was shown risking his own life for the lives of others. From saving 1,100 Jews, he allowed 6,000 more to be alive today. His flaws make what he did even greater, for there is no perfect person. Oskar Schindler showed that ordinary, flawed people could accomplish extraordinary