Movie Drops # 006: The Truth Behind 'Schindler's List'

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The film "Schindler's List" was released in 1993 and depicts the life story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman and member of the Nazi Party who, during World War II, saved hundreds of Holocaust Jews on the pretext of hiring him. them to work in your industry.

One of the great highlights of the work was the fact that it was recorded in black and white, with the exception of the "girl in the red coat", a child who appears several times throughout the film.

What changed from reality to the movie?

Schindler actually saved some 1, 200 concentration camp Jews by attesting that they were employed in his factory; however, his biography, released by David M. Crowe, reveals that he was less "heroic" than was shown in the movie.

The first difference already comes in the name of the feature: the famous list did not exist. Throughout his tenure, there were around nine compilations, and most of the names were not included by Schindler, but by Jews working for him. Still, having allowed and taken the initiative to put them there meant many lives were saved. Apparently, the "legend" of the one list was spread by Schindler himself as a way of giving a more heroic effect to his deeds.

Initially, the idea of ​​the businessman would not have been to save the Jews, but to take advantage of the cheap labor they represented. The desire to help them, to the point of putting their fortunes at risk, would have arisen a little later when they saw their situation.

In order to stay connected with the war and, consequently, inside SS business and the list of influences, he shifted the focus of his factory: instead of enamelled pans, he started to manufacture ammunition. By employing employees to free them from concentration camps and not wanting to be responsible for more deaths with their ammunition, Schindler did not produce the ammunition his factory was supposed to produce, or else made them defective - which led to him losing a lot of money. .

An example that Schindler's altruism had its limits is the fact that after the war, when he was already bankrupt, he sought financial compensation from the Jews, claiming that it was his helping them that went bankrupt.

Although by the end of the war no one could prove that Schindler was helping Jews, he did not go through all the years of war without distrust. In fact, he was arrested three times for suspecting his actions.

Smoothing for screens

One of the criticisms the film received, especially from the historic Jewish community, was that Steven Spielberg did not so faithfully portray the horrors promoted by the SS officers and sadistic Amon Göeth against the Jews, who apparently seemed to be even more cruel than the film. which showed the interpretation of Ralph Fiennes.

This “minimization” of Holocaust horrors came about because more faithful retraction could be very aggressive in the public eye. If we take into consideration that the film is already quite strong, we can imagine what it would have been like if Spielberg had reported what happened in a crude way.

However, he could make this emotional connection with the audience through little things, like the girl in the red coat, mentioned earlier. The idea of ​​the director was to make the figure of the child stand out, to make it visible to the public eye. In addition, the character was created from the accounts of someone who survived the Holocaust and talked about a Jewish child who, with his red cardigan, eventually stood out in the crowd.

Post war

When the war was over, Schindler was in danger of being considered a war criminal for being a member of the Nazi Party; therefore, in the act of his escape, Schindlerjuden ( Schindler's Jews) wrote a statement defending Oskar and reporting his deeds, which should be handed over to the US Army if he were captured. Schindler also received from them the ring that appears in the film, with an inscription that, in literal translation, means "Who saves one life saves the whole world."

His actions during the Holocaust meant that in 1963 Schindler received the appointment of Righteous Among the Nations, a title granted by Israel to non-Jews who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust. In addition to the title, another honor was given to the businessman after his death in 1974; he was the only member of the Nazi Party to be buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

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