A Cinematic Example

Schindler's List

Steven Spielberg, 1993 By Ori Hernandez

This film is based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, published in 1982. To write it, Keneally interviewed everyone alive who had known and dealt with Schindler, so it serves as a good approximation of the historical facts. Spielberg, for his part, focuses on a specific stage in the protagonist's life: the German occupation of Poland and the final stretch of World War II. Shot entirely in black and white, the film stars Liam Neeson in the role of Schindler, along with Ben Kingsley as the Jew Itzhak Stern, who, with his extraordinary sobriety, offers a perfect counterpoint to the character’s overwhelming and disproportionate personality.

Character

Born in Zwittau on April 28, 1908, Oskar Schindler was a German businessman and member of the Nazi party who saved the lives of approximately twelve hundred Jews during the Holocaust by employing them as workers in his kitchenware and ammunition factories, located in what are now Poland and the Czech Republic. Both the novel and the film present him as an opportunist who, initially, only sought to make a profit, but who eventually became the person who saved the lives of his employees.

The end of his life was marked by economic difficulties, in which he was helped by the Jews he had saved from the Holocaust. Oskar Schindler died in Hildesheim on October 9, 1974, and was buried on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

The Movie

The first images give us the context: the German occupation of Poland, the start of World War II, and the recent order that all Jews must move to the big cities to be registered and controlled by the Waffen SS. We see whole families parading, arriving in Krakow, with their houses on their backs, their hearts heavy, disoriented, and fearful.

These images contrast with the appearance of a tall, blond, and very handsome German. He is choosing a suit, tie, cufflinks, and a gold pin with the Nazi insignia, collecting all the money he has stashed around his house. He arrives impeccably dressed at a restaurant frequented by the senior staff of the German army. By bribing the waiter, he gets a discreet but privileged table. With an air of carefree mystery and seduction, he serves and awaits his opportunity with the patience and finesse of a feline. His moment arrives with the entrance of a high-ranking SS officer, accompanied by a lady and another officer. He shows a ticket to the waiter while asking him to bring a bottle to the newly occupied table.

— Yes, sir. What do you want me to say? — Tell them that it’s an invitation.

He was completely unknown, but in a couple of hours, he managed to end up at the center of the party with all eyes on him. He ends up inviting all the army commanders to a sumptuous dinner, washed down with the best wines from the cellar. He ends the night embracing the most important characters, who, moreover, strive to appear at his side. The result of this investment is his photo with the Nazi high command displayed in the main offices of Krakow. First objective accomplished: the appropriate contacts have been made.

Scenes of the humiliation, ridicule, and submission of the Jews pass before our eyes again. An endless line forms outside an office building to sign up for job lists. Misinformation, contempt, and harassment are everywhere. Once again, we see Oskar Schindler, who seems to take better advantage of the situation the worse things get. He walks tall, elegant, and oblivious, alongside the queues of devastated and suffering people. Nobody looks at him. With a determined step, he advances until he finds Itzhak Stern inside one of the buildings. Stern was an accountant for an old Jewish factory that is now bankrupt. He asks about it and they discuss their plans.

“Sir, I am required by law to inform you that I am Jewish," is Stern’s first curious response when Schindler addresses him.

“Well, and I am German. Matters settled,” concludes the businessman, who wears the swastika on the lapel of his silk jacket.

Our character has no principles or criteria other than his own self-interest. He is not on one side or the other, but simply on his own side. He wears the swastika because this gesture opens doors for him and provides him with interested relationships, without further ado. For him, it is not a problem to mingle with Jews if he needs them, nor does he mind whether they live or die. He proposes to Stern that he be the director of his pot and pan factory to supply the German army.

— When the war is over, we'll see. But meanwhile, you can earn a fortune.

The plan is perfect, but he doesn’t have enough money to buy the factory. He needs investors: Jews with money they can no longer spend. He offers them a part of the production so they can exchange it on the black market. Stern, who looks at him dumbfounded, wants to know what Schindler will do:

— Let’s see if I understand it. They will put in the money; I will do all the work. Excuse the question, but what will you do? — I will take care of publicizing the company, making it stylish. I’m good at that, not the work. The presentation! — I don’t think I know anyone who would be interested in that. — You should be interested, Stern. It should interest you.

Schindler knows very well that the Jews are not in a position to choose, and he is going to get a cut. A final scene in this opening of contrasts illustrates his skills as an opportunist and profiteer. All Jewish families in and around Krakow are forced to move to the ghetto. They must leave their homes. The sad images of people collecting photographs, cutlery, clothes, and paintings collide with the following scene in which Oskar Schindler arrives at a recently expropriated luxurious and stately flat in the center and lies in bed exclaiming:

— It couldn’t be better!

Meanwhile, the legitimate owners settle in a crowded, dilapidated shack with other families, consoling each other:

— It could be worse!

Finally, he gets his factory and sets off to use his contacts in the military to gain loyal and constant customers for the duration of the war. He also hires Jews from the ghetto as workers in his factory, saving more on labor. His advertising campaign is accompanied by lavish gifts obtained on the black market for his powerful German clients. Of course, his strategy works perfectly, and he starts making money hand over fist.

He only seems to care about his success. He lives in continuous and disproportionate ostentation. He is shown as a restless, hedonistic, refined, heavy-drinking, heavy-smoking womanizer. In a way, he is dreamy, selfish, ambitious, but also generous, because he likes to make those around him participate in his excesses, like a good narcissist. He doesn’t look around except for his business.

This is well exemplified by the scene where Stern is mistakenly detained and put on a train to Auschwitz. They warn Oskar, who manages to get him out in the nick of time. A terrified Stern apologizes for forgetting his blue essential worker card.

— I tried to explain to them that it was a mistake! I am sorry! I've been stupid! laments Itzhak. — What if he was five minutes late? What would have become of me? Schindler answers, very angry.

Stern had just escaped by a hundredth of a second from being taken to the concentration camp and almost certainly to his death, but Oskar didn’t even notice. He can’t see it. His extraordinary egocentricity prevents him from doing so. By focusing on his own needs, he betrays the devastation surrounding him. For the rest, he continues to live in constant extravagance: women, drink, food... Nothing is enough. He always pursues something else and is never truly satisfied. He appears to be a calm, affable, and confident man, but in reality, he never rests, not even while swimming in all the worldly pleasures within his reach. He exhibits an insatiable gluttony.

In these moments of success and opulence, he receives an unexpected visit from Emily, his wife, while he is in bed with one of his mistresses. It doesn’t change him in the slightest. He comments to his wife, while the other hurriedly dresses:

— Look at her: Poor thing, she’s nervous. Do you know something? Would you like it?

It seems that the problem does not concern him.

Later, he goes out to dinner with his wife, and they spend the night together. It is surprising to see that they really know and love each other. Oskar talks to her about his business with enthusiasm and sincerity. He is happy because he has far surpassed his father in the number of employees at his factory. He puts a lot of interest in his need for recognition. He is also interested in what they say about him in his hometown, indulging in his dreams and delusions of grandeur... He seems fulfilled and enthusiastic like a child.

Finally, he declares to Emily:

— One thing was always missing. In every business I started, it wasn’t me who failed. Something was always missing. Even if I had known what it was, I wouldn’t have been able

to do anything about it, because it’s something that can’t be tamed and that makes the difference between failure and success. — Luck! his wife points out, attentive. — The war! answers Oskar.

After their pleasant evening and night together, Emily asks Oskar if he wants her to stay. He suggests that she decide. Emily replies that she will stay if he promises that no doorman or maitre d will ever doubt that she is Mrs. Schindler (she is obviously asking him to be faithful and respectful in order to stay with him). The next scene is at the train station. Oskar, standing on the platform with his imperturbable smile, and Emily at the window, sad and desolate, back in Czechoslovakia. He seems unable to commit, to surrender to giving and receiving love, or to give up his continual carousel of erotic experiences, to his deceitful freedom.

Success in business continues. Actually, the factory is run by Stern. Schindler is not interested in the accounts, the bills, or the details. The detailed reports from his accountant give him a headache. He is only there to sell his product and collect profits. Stern is also in charge of recruiting the workers from his ghetto peers. He doesn't hire them for their professional skills but to give them the opportunity to obtain the status of essential workers—a condition that prevents them from being detained, deported, or killed. Oskar looks at this with indifference and condescension at the same time. If it doesn't detract from his profits, he doesn't care what his CEO does either. Once again, we see his permissiveness and indulgence, his lax and ambiguous morality. Nothing concerns him enough to complicate things. Just his benefit.

However, there is one scene that seems to disturb him somewhat. While he's enjoying a hearty meal, as usual, Stern asks him to give the mechanic a minute, as he wants to thank him for giving him a job, which has saved his life. Without too much enthusiasm, Oskar agrees. A skinny, worn-out man, somewhat older and one-armed, enters. He is full of praise, bows, and thanks Oskar, who is visibly uncomfortable. He becomes even more uncomfortable when, at the end, the mechanic repeatedly exclaims:

"You are a good man, God bless you!"

When the worker leaves, Oskar’s face has changed, and his appetite is gone. Later, he berates Stern for putting him in that situation. When the worker tells him that he is good and thanks him, something seems to disturb him inside. He doesn't feel good. Moreover, a real fraud is known—he is taking advantage of everything and everyone. How can anyone consider him a good person? Despite his apparent self-indulgence, internally, he does not feel worthy of praise. He strongly rejects it, and yet something about this episode has touched his heart.

External events are rushing. The situation is worsening for the Jews. They build a concentration camp nearby and take all the Jews from the ghetto in a long night of massacre. In charge of the camp is Commander Amon Göth, an SS captain, a ruthless, whimsical lunatic who does target practice from his balcony with the camp's inhabitants before breakfast.

The brutal massacre in the ghetto, in which Oskar stands paralyzed on his horse from the hill, brings about a change in him. Until now, he seemed not to see what was happening around him. Now, he no longer looks the other way. He begins to show an awareness, though he still hides it. It seems that the pain and suffering of others are starting to penetrate him.

Oskar begins to use his tricks and bribes to ally himself with Göth and get his factory workers to leave the camp every day to work for him. He develops an obsession to protect his own. He organizes parties for the commander, full of food, drink, and women. He gets drunk with him, jokes, and appears as his accomplice. Finally, he keeps his workers by telling them that they are specialized workers and that he would lose too much money training others. The only one he can't get out is Itzhak Stern, who is forced to work as an accountant and secretary for Amon Göth. He communicates this with visible sadness and excitement:

"I couldn’t get him out of here. I’ll come every week, on Wednesdays. I'll be able to know how it goes."

As he leaves, he gives Stern some food. He is genuinely worried about him—not just about losing his accountant, as in the train scene. Perhaps, to his own chagrin, he has formed a bond.

In this way, he becomes incriminated and more involved with concrete people. There are numerous signs of this progressive transformation. A Jewish girl visits him at the factory to beg him to save her parents from the camp, as they are elderly, and Göth is getting rid of the old.

"They say no one dies here, that your factory is a refuge. They say you are good," she says. Oskar snaps.

"Who says?" he demands.

"Everyone!"

He gets very angry and, faced with the girl's pain, yells at her:

"Cry, and I’ll have you arrested, I swear to God!"

He has her in front of him, and he cannot bear her pain. Once again, he can't look the other way.

Later, he talks to Stern about this situation:

"People die. It's a fact of life! He wants to kill everyone, and what should I do? Bring them all here? It's dangerous—dangerous for me!"

At this point, he tries to justify Göth. It's not that he has a good relationship with him, but he softens his cruelty by being, in a certain way, indulgent. Although internally he despises him, Oskar tries to excuse him to Stern. Deep down, he cannot understand or accept that Göth enjoys killing and causing so much suffering. He is just a hedonist who has lived thinking that he did no harm by taking advantage of the opportunities that were presented to him. The world belongs to the smart ones, he seems to say. By excusing the captain's atrocities, he is also somehow exculpating himself. It is one more example of his self-indulgence and permissiveness. However, Stern tells him how, a few days ago, Göth randomly killed twenty-five Jews in a barracks. This puts the harsh reality in front of him. In this conversation with his accountant—and now friend—he can’t help but acknowledge, with horror, Amon's insatiable cruelty.

"It can't be that he enjoys that," Oskar mutters, horrified.

And he gives Stern the names of the Jewish girl's parents, along with a gold lighter, to get them transferred to the factory. He also makes a gesture of kindness toward Göth’s servant, Helen, whom he sees emaciated and extremely depressed, as she is daily subjected to the capricious cruelty of her boss. He comforts her with hopeful words, advises her to get stronger, and gives her chocolate. At the end, he gives her a kiss; she flinches, frightened.

"It’s not that kind of kiss," he reassures her. It is a loving, compassionate kiss—a fatherly gesture. Helen thanks him, both surprised and touched. Perhaps now, he is exhibiting the patronizing and compassionate attitude that he would have liked to receive as a child.

That night, he stays with Amon, who is totally drunk. They drink together, but Schindler never loses his composure.

"I always watch him, and I never see him drunk. That is true control. Control is power!" Göth comments with a mixture of envy, admiration, and suspicion.

It is true that Schindler never relaxes. He is always alert and never loses control. He takes advantage of this conversation to convince the commander that true power is shown when we have the capacity to kill and don't. He compares him to the Roman emperors:

"Sparing the life of someone you think is going to die... That’s power, Amon, the Good!" he whispers.

The captain succumbs to this subtle dialectical manipulation, which is Schindler’s way of trying to mitigate Göth's enormous violence and thirst for power. It works for a few days—yes, only until Göth gets bored with this practice—but some lives are saved thanks to this ingenious trick.

Although he proceeds stealthily and with the utmost care, events begin to spiral, and Schindler becomes less attentive to his own protection. As he opens his heart and his gaze becomes more compassionate, the protective shell softens, thus exposing him more and more. The next scene shows a train loaded with Jews being moved like cattle. As they wait under the hot sun, Oskar proposes to Amon Göth that they be hosed down. Göth takes it as a joke, thinking it will be something cruel to entertain himself. Schindler laughs, playing along, but insists:

"Give me that treat—it'll be fun."

Finally, he manages to refresh all the passengers and has them cleaned in the filthy cars. He personally collaborates, rolling up his sleeves, to ensure that the water reaches everyone. The SS and the captain watch in astonishment and confusion. Göth smiles but doesn't know what to think. Fortunately, Schindler cannot conceive of doing this out of anything but compassion or simple kindness.

"Another wonderful day," Schindler exclaims, mockingly, in his particular way of ridiculing the system.

By the last year of the war, the order arrives to close the Plaszow camp and send all its prisoners to Auschwitz. This is one more step in barbarism—and also in Schindler's evolution. At first, he is saddened and seems to lower his arms before the unstoppable machinery of death of the Reich, as evidenced by a private conversation with Stern. It sounds like a farewell, almost an elegy, where they have a drink together, emotion rising to the surface.

It seemed like a final goodbye. However, Schindler is not resigned to watch impassively the death of his friend and all the rest of his workers. He is still rebellious and fanciful, so he conceives another plan. He proposes to Göth that he keep the people from the factory and build his own camp in Zwittau, his hometown. Of course, this is achieved with money again; he must pay the greedy captain the price he sets per person.

Once again, Amon cannot understand his motivation:

"Where’s the business?"

But it is so much money that he cannot refuse. From here, Schindler begins to draw up a list with Itzhak Stern while delivering suitcases of money to Göth. He is stretching the list to the limit of his solvency. As Stern types names, Oskar asks:

"How many?"

"Four hundred, five hundred, eight hundred..."

"More, more, more!" Schindler insists, feverish.

He seems to finally find meaning in his efforts, in his ambition, in his life, and in the act of saving as many lives as he can. There is in him an honest, compassionate impulse, but also an obsessive determination to save his own. He continues to believe that he has the power to safeguard his partial and completely unreal image of the world that he has built. In his personal fight against evil, he feels powerful. He thinks he’s winning the game. Visibly sorrowful, he hits the economic ceiling and realizes that he can no longer include anyone else.

“Finish the page and leave a gap at the end!” urges Stern.

Itzhak pulls out the last page of the list while saying with a moved gesture:

“Look, this list is the absolute good. This list is life. Beyond its margins, the abyss opens.”

Beyond ambition, selfishness, cruelty, unreason, and death, there is this simple and heroic gesture—this act of love—that makes him not only lose his enormous fortune but risk his own life to save others. It is the hope, the way out from the Nazis and the war, in general. In his new ammunition factory, they don’t build a single projectile that can be fired, because he has miscalibrated the machines on purpose. The Zwittau-Brinnlitz field, in the seven months it was at full capacity, was a model of lack of production.

The radios finally announce the unconditional surrender of Germany and, consequently, the cessation of hostilities. The war is over!

“The time has come for the guardians to enter the manufacture!” orders Schindler with determination.

Jews and Germans, meeting. In front of all of them, Oskar Schindler begins his speech by lamenting the losses of the Jewish people and thanking Stern for his courage and solidarity (now we understand that all the time, he was an example for him and a mirror in which to look at himself). Then follows an authentic denunciation of himself and his behavior:

“I’m a member of the Nazi party! I am an ammunition manufacturer! I have taken advantage of slavery! A criminal.”

The character appears in all his ambiguity. These statements are true and false at the same time. Prisoners and officers know this, but they can’t object to anything. He then exhorts the guards not to carry out orders to annihilate all the prisoners in the camps before midnight. He encourages them to return home, to their families, as men and not as murderers. They all leave, one by one, until the factory and the field are empty of guards and officers. His powers of persuasion are still intact, but now he serves more than his selfish interest. Finally, he observes three minutes of silence for the countless victims of war. He does not shy away in the least from feeling the pain of such suffering and, therefore, accompanying those who are suffering. He no longer feels the compulsive need to run away.

The story could end here, and it would already be a good story of a transformation process for a Self-Preservation 7, but we are missing the last scene in which our character appears: the limit, the farewell, the fall.

One of the workers miraculously preserved a gold tooth. They manage to extract it and melt it down to make a ring, which they give to Schindler. Already at the door of his car, Stern hands it to him. They are both moved. It has an inscription, a verse from the Talmud that says: “Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.”

The gratitude and recognition of all his workers, and perhaps, by extension, of the entire Jewish people, seems to offer Oskar Schindler the redemption he never thought he was entitled to. Deeply shaken, he breaks down for the first time, both physically and emotionally. He is embraced and supported by his faithful friend and companion, Itzhak Stern, and also by the women, who come closer. He cries like a disconsolate child in the arms of his parents. Meanwhile, he laments the continuous wastefulness in which he has lived, the lives he could have saved, and despises himself for all his previous life.

His pain is also that of the definitive fall from his false paradise. The world is as it is, and his power to transform it is limited. Reality hits him in the face and in the soul. He has saved a few Jews, but evil and death still exist; he cannot change that. It is overwhelming evidence, before which one must surrender. He becomes small, and that is when he falls. But he is loved and accompanied in his fall. He is not alone. This is a profoundly significant and restorative scene for a Self-Preservation 7, no doubt.

Finally, one of the women offers him a prisoner's shirt to go unnoticed during his escape. It is the uniform that the Jews had worn during six years of war and persecution. It is the suit of humiliation and degradation. It is to put yourself in the other's skin, to equalize and unite to the fullest in suffering.

For the first time, he ditches his luxurious silk suit. He leaves then as a naked person, stripped of the costly egoic wrapping in which his life had passed.

It is often said that healing lies in the wound. Oskar Schindler's story points out that by living with what he had been running away from all his life—pain—by looking at it fully, acknowledging his own too, surrendering, crying, letting himself fall, and leaning on others, he obtains a greater reward than all those achieved until then in his opulent, greedy, and superficial life. The help and love of his fellow men, belonging and recognition, support and protection: just what he always craved with ferocity, only he looked the wrong way.