Schindler's List - Spielberg's Fantasy

Copyright Rabbi Eli Hecht
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One of my congregants, a young Israeli mother of four children, was sitting in a Carson theater watching the movie, Schindler's List. During a scene where a Nazi was shooting Jews, people sitting next to her were laughing hysterically. She was so disturbed that she called me complaining of insensitivity. I tried to explain that this may be a rare incident. However, I was wrong. Students from Oakland's Castlemount High School too were laughing during this movie. As Nazis beat Jews. Allen Michaan, owner of Oakland's Grand Lake Theater, said, "I've never seen such furious, hurt customers. Some were Holocaust survivors and one woman was sobbing." The film had to be stopped and 69 students were asked to leave.

The students, taken on an outing, said that they didn't understand why they were asked to leave. They wondered why they were celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day watching Schindler's List.

Mr. Spielberg presents Schindler's List as the greatest movie he ever made. "I can say that Schindler's List is my proudest moment as a film maker." He received Golden Globe nominations, for being Best Director and for Best Drama. I have a question to ask. 

Does this film really portray what happened? 

After the war when Schindler was asked by Moshe Bejski, a former prisoner, why he saved the Jews he answered, "If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn't you help him?" That doesn't sound complimentary to Jews.

John Henry Weidner, a Danish savior of Jews, never has any bad words about the Jewish people. When asked why he repeatedly risked his life to save so many Jews, he answered, "They were G-D's children. They were human beings." 

Schindler's accountant, Isaac Stern, has a nephew, Menachem Stern, who wrote that Schindler really wasn't the hero. It was his Uncle Stern! "If not for Stern, the good Schindler might have remained just another Nazi profiteer."

The portrayal of  Schindler losing all his money in saving Jews is simply not true. When one reads the book Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally, you will find that Schindler's get-away car was stashed full of diamonds in the seats. Towards the end of the movie, Schindler gives a speech on the factory floor saying farewell to the guards and inmates. Alarmingly, Thomas Keneally stated "that factory-floor speech bidding the guards and inmates farewell didn't make the workers misty. It made the hair stand up on the back of their heads."

We mustn't forget that Oskar Schindler was not everyone's hero even for those who were in the Schindler camp. In a recent article printed by Samuel Hellman, a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center in Queens College of CUNY, his parents were on Schindler's list, we are told the following, "Schindler's motives were far from pure. He lived for risk and calculated gambles; he saw the Jews as his insurance policy against future losses by the Germans. He offered them life, but in return he had lived off them for the rest of his life. As my mother saw it, most of all Schindler wanted to be their hero; it became his lifelong vocation. He expected them to hang his photo in a place of honor; he assumed they would cherish it forever, as they cherished their lives.

            "But Oskar Schindler was not my mother's hero, nor did she choose to see him as her savior. For while there were 1,100 on his list whom he and his Jewish assistants saved, there were also those who, although set apart in his factory in Plaszow where he first established his operation, were among those who had been taken off the list."

Granted, he saved their lives, but Schindler is definitely not everyone's hero. In fact, I, too, believe he used his victims to perpetuate his own ego and  jeopardized their lives many times over. His list caused hatred between those who could afford to be on the list and those who couldn't.

There were those who spoke out against the glorification.  Among them Dr. Danka Dresner Shindel stated, "We owe our lives to him. But, I wouldn't glorify a German because of what he did to us. There is no proportion." If Spielberg  wanted to sensitize our society to the cruelty of Germany and the destruction of the Jewish people, he should have never shot a film where Nazi gas chambers put out water, making people think that perhaps there were times when there were showers for the inmates.

Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who vote for Oscars should review the authenticity of this movie. 

I don't believe the film enhances the importance of life by showing the senseless mass murdering of Jewish people over and over. Nor do I believe there are skinheads and Neo-Nazis who will pay $7 to see Schindler's List without reveling in the butchery that is portrayed. Yes, 69 students were evicted from the theater because some of them laughed and ridiculed the movie. They couldn't relate to the Holocaust. Fifty percent or more of American high school students don't know about the Holocaust.

Knowing about the Holocaust doesn't make people more sensitive. Germans know more about the Holocaust than anyone else, yet  skinheads and Nazi activities flourish in Germany. For the rest of Europe, where people know about the Holocaust and its impact, there is a reversal. Instead of sympathy, there is more anti-semitism than ever. Since we've incorporated more Holocaust studies for our schools we may be opening up a Pandora's box that has been closed for the past 50 years. I know it's important to teach the Holocaust to our citizens, but let's not get obsessed.

It's been reported that Spielberg will be speaking at Oakland's Castlemount High School. His spokesman said, "He feels that there's been so much desensitization to violence that these kids can't be blamed for what happened." A few days before, Spielberg said, "Many of them are living their own Holocaust." I wish I knew what he was talking about. Education about the Holocaust will do nothing for them. Spielberg's intentions may be good, but he is drowning in naiveté.

After all, the Nazis were the most educated and scientific people around. Yet, with all their education, they followed Hitler's plans for war and the murder of 6 million Jews. 

It's ironic that the presenter of the movie's Golden Globe Awards was none other than Charlton "Moses" Heston. Just as his movie gave a great misunderstanding of the true story of the Jewish Exodus,  Spielberg's portrayal of Shindler is misguided.

Maybe the award is for a "make believe story," Hollywood is famous for that. Sometimes "truth is stranger then fiction," and that doesn't win a prize.