Schindler's List

My heart hurt's watching this movie. The whole movie is sad. The part where the female's we're standing there naked not knowing if they're getting ready to be gassed or water will come out and then the light's go off. There's no word's that I can use to describe how every last one of them felt. Every word I think I would use is an understatement of the cruel and awful thing's they we're put through. The death of the Nazi leader's isn't enough justice. I still don't know the reason why Hitler tortured the Jewish people. I've read several reason's why. He was just a very horrible person. I have to wonder if any of his family is living. There needs to be more people like Schindler in the future. I can't believe that someone could go to the extreme like he did. Even with children. The poor children being tortured and scared like that. All the guards he had that were laughing and getting a joke from someone going through all that they did scares me that there's people like that out there. SMH

All these descriptions fit Oskar Schindler, who saved 1100 Polish Jews from the Auschwitz ovens during the second World War.Before we get into a critique of the 20th Anniversary DVD of the 1993 movie, let's deal a bit in fact and fiction.Fiction: In his overly-sentimental, romantic way, director Steven Spielberg fudges some facts of the way the list developed and deals in some fantasies about the man Schindler himself.Fact: If you want a realistic account of the man Oskar Schindler and his wife Emile Schindler (whose role in all of this got short shrift from Spielberg in the movie) you should read the book: "Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account....................." by David Crowe. Crowe deals with the real Schindler and the real source of the list, plus Mrs. Schindler's outstanding role in affairs, both during and after the war.And now to a critique of the 20th Anniversary DVD movie.In the movie, Spielberg creates a legend of the saviour, Oskar Schindler, because he deserves it. (Schindler is portrayed by Liam Neeson.) The movie is shot in black and white without the brilliance of colour so that our sense of the stark, heart-rending facts are not diverted by our sense of colour. Only one scene shows any colour whatsoever, at the time the Krakow ghetto was being violently cleared out. A beautiful little girl is trotting along the side of the people being cruelly evacuated. Her coat is coloured red. This is a symbol of the blood shed on all of the innocents. The girl herself, although appearing as an innocent child just trotting along unknowingly, proves not to be that unknowing. She goes into a vacated apartment building, ascending to the top apartment, and hides under a bed. The innocence of the girl, then the knowledge of her destination, makes this a chilling scene.Oskar Schindler was born in Brinnlitz,, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) just south of the Polish border. When the war broke out (September 1, 1939) and the Germans overran Poland, he made his way to Krakow, Poland, and opened a business which produced pots and pans and cutlery, his market being the German forces. In order to achieve his market,he goes through a lot of bribery with black market goods for the German higher-ups, a lot of procurement of willing women for them, a lot of orgies, a lot of bottles of excellent wines, and the procurement of other rare goods only available through the black market.After the Germans send residents of the Krakow ghetto to be gassed systematically in the death camp, Auschwitz, those still fit to work are sent to a concentration camp set up at Plawitz. The overseer is the sadistic Armon Goeth, who has a villa built on a hill above the camp and just for fun, sits up there on his balcony, randomly shooting unsuspecting Jewish interns walking around the camp. Following the war, Goeth was hung for war crimes. But while he was commandant, his greatest enjoyment - other than attending Oskar's orgiastic drunken parties - was random shooting of Jew, and/or beating up his Jewish maid.When the Germans were losing, with the Russians advancing from the East and the Allies advancing from the West, the concentration camp was closed down and all workers sent to Auschwitz. These were meant to include the Schindler Jews, who lived in the camp and worked at the Schindler factory during the day.Schindler and his erstwhile Jewish accountant, Isaac Stern, make up a list of all the workers in his factory, and include Goeth's maid. With a lot of bribing, Schindler gets his Jewish work force sent to him. However, through a cruel twist of fate, the women, in a separate train from the men, are sent to Auschwitz. Just as the Marines save the community at the last moment, Schindler, through more bribing (this time with diamonds) gets the women out of there and sent back to his factory. But because of the retreat of the Germans, Schindler's business is to be liquidated.So he returns to his home town of Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia, and opens a plant there, producing munitions for the Germans. He is aware that the war is nearly over and tells Isaac Stern that if the plant ever produces ammunition, he will be sadly disappointed. At this point, Mrs. Schindler reappears in his life (she had left because he wouldn't give up his womanizing), a clinic is opened for the ill, and she does outstanding work in it (which is only alluded to in the movie).You'll want to see what happens to Schindler and the workers once the war ends and the Jews reward him in their everlasting gratitude.Oskar Schindler is saviour and hero to the 1100 survivors and, in 1993, their 6,000 descendants. This DVD includes interviews with some of those survivors, which is a feature which should not be missed.The very end of the movie switches to full colour. Scene: Israel; Oskar Schindler's grave; a parade to put a stone on his grave (an honour) by some of the 1100 whose lives were alluded to in the movie. Emile Schindler is there. The widow of Isaac Stern is there, accompanied by Ben Kingsley, who brilliantly portrays Isaac Stern in the movie. At the end of this scene, a tall, bearded shadow of a man places two roses on Schindler's grave. It is Steven Spielberg.If this scene does not bring tears to your eyes nothing ever will.I gave this movie five stars since the movie in itself is brilliant, one of the greats of all time. Through the story of the Krakow ghetto and the Schindler Jews (as they called themselves) Steven Spielberg presents a brilliant microcosm of the macrocosm of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Germans during the second World War. The elimination of six million Jews was the result of technology gone stark raving mad, the evil vision of one madmen which infected a whole nation.And Schindler, a deeply flawed human being, was still and always will be, a saviour.

Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg is an amazing film and may be one of my favorite movies of all time centered around this time period. The way in which the movie portrays the Jewish people and the rampant antisemetic behavior that had engulfed much of Europe was done in a very mature and respectful way and made sure that everything in the film was accurate to a certain degree. Schindler’s List was clearly made with the sole purpose to draw more attention to the Holocaust and capture the very real experiences that many of the Jewish people had during that event. Schindler’s List center’s around a single man, Oskar Schindler, who is an up and coming entrepreneur who believes at first that he will be successful if he manufactures and sells tangible items such as pots and pans to be circulated in the Jewish ghettos. He hires an accountant by the name of Izhak Stern who is Jewish to, in a sense, run the company for Schindler. While managing this company, Stern hires only Jews to work at the manufacturing company and in doing so, avoids their deaths in concentration camps under the assumption that all of the Jewish people hired are, “essential workers.” Eventually, the Jewish people are moved out of the ghettos and into labor camps where they are forced to work without pay for the Nazis lest they will be killed. On top of this, the living conditions of the Jewish people in the labor camps is absolutely inhumane with the people not being given adequate food and water as well as being forced to work for many hours straight without being given a break. Oskar Schindler sees the atrocities that are occurring within these labor camps and hears of what goes on in Auschwitz and he decides that the best thing that he should do is to hire as many of the Jewish people as he can and put them on his list so that they will not be killed in Auschwitz including Izhak Stern who helps him put his plan into fruition. Schindler bribed a multitude of Nazi elites whom he had already a good relationship with to maximize the amount of Jewish people he could prevent from dying. In the end, Schindler saved around 1100 Jews, most of which have living descendants today.The practice of Judaism as a religion only occurs a handful of times around the film: the beginning where a group of Jewish people say a prayer around candles, a few Jewish items such as a menorah are seen in the background of the homes of Jews before they are thrown out, a man practicing Tefillin, some Jewish people that work for Schindler observing Shabbat, and a reciting of Mourner’s Kaddish towards the end. While it may seem like a lot listed out, given the length of the film, these moments are few and far between. What the audience does get a good understanding of when it comes to Judaism, is the sense of community and oneness between the Jewish people. That bit I feel is really important, that even under persecution, the Jewish people are still very concerned with helping each other out because that’s who they are. This film does an amazing job with showing that even though they aren’t related by blood, Jewish people will still look out for each other and care for one another as though they are family, because in a sense, they are.

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This is true story about the death camps. It is frightening sad and horrifying. I have seen it several times and it should be seen so we never forget what was done to the Jews during WW2

Very intense and sad movie, but super high quality. Difficult topic to watch but it was done with class and empathy. A must see for anyone interested in the terrible things that have been done to people.

Incredible movie and story line esp if you are a war movie buff. Amazing active by LN and Ralph Fiennes.

Great movie

Met expectations

Una película maravillosa, de las mejores que existen. Es un honor para el séptimo arte y uno de los mejores trabajos tanto de Spielberg como de Liam Neeson. El DVD tiene buena edición, y añade contenidos extra.

Ein Film über Deutschland während des 2. Weltkrieges. Besser geht's nicht.

Super Film, den man gesehen haben muss