Movie Review # 3605 - Schlinder's List
Schindler's List is a 1993 historical movie. The film follows Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish Jew refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II. It stars.
I give this movie 5 out of 5 stars.
This is a very intense movie that shows what went down when the German's began exterminating Jews and how one person stood by their convictions and risked their life to do what little they could do to save as many as they could. Showing how one person who stands true to their convictions can make a difference. A true story this movie is hard to watch in spots but is definitely one that should be mandatory viewing.
Schindler's List premiered on November 30, 1993, in Washington D.C., and is often listed among the greatest films ever made. The Library of Congress has it on the list of culturally significant films.
In German-occupied Krakow during World War II, the Nazis force local Polish Jews into the overcrowded Krakow Gheto. Oskar Schlinder, a German Nazi Party member, arrives in the city, hoping to make his fortune. He bribes the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) and SS officials, acquiring a actory to produce enamelware. Schindler hires a Jewish official with contacts among black marketeers and the Jewish business community; he handles administration and helps Schindler arrange financing. Stern ensures that as many Jewish workers as possible were deemed essential to the German war effort to prevent them from being taken by the SS to concentration camps or killed. Meanwhile, Schindler maintains friendly relations with the Nazis and enjoys his new wealth and status as an industrialist.
SS officer Amon Goth arrives in Kraków to oversee construction of the concentration camp. When the camp is ready, he orders the ghetto liquidated: two thousand Jews are transported to Płaszów, and two thousand others are killed in the streets by the SS. Schindler witnesses the massacre and is profoundly affected. He particularly notices a young girl in a red coat who hides from the Nazis and later sees her body on a wagonload of corpses. Schindler is careful to maintain his friendship with Göth and continues to enjoy SS support, mostly through bribery. Göth brutalizes his Jewish maid Helen Hirsch and randomly shoots people from the balcony of his villa; the prisoners are in constant fear for their lives. As time passes, Schindler's focus shifts from making money to trying to save as many lives as possible. To better protect his workers, Schindler bribes Göth into allowing him to build a sub-camp at his factory.
As the Germans begin losing the war, Göth is ordered to ship the remaining Jews at Płaszów to Auschwitz concentration camp. Schindler asks Göth for permission to move his workers to a munitions factory he plans to build near his hometown. Göth reluctantly agrees but charges a huge bribe. Schindler and Stern prepare a list of people to be transferred to Brünnlitz instead of Auschwitz. The list eventually includes 1,100 names.
As the Jewish workers are transported by train to Brünnlitz, the women and girls are mistakenly redirected to Auschwitz-Birkenau; Schindler bribes Rudolf Hess, the commandant of Auschwitz, for their release. At the new factory, Schindler forbids the SS guards from entering the production area without permission and encourages the Jews to observe the Sabbath. Over the next seven months, he spends his fortune bribing Nazi officials and buying shell casings from other companies. Due to Schindler's machinations, the factory produces no usable armaments. He runs out of money in 1945, just as Germany surrenders.
As a Nazi Party member and war profiteer, Schindler must flee the advancing Red Army to avoid capture. The SS guards at the factory have been ordered to kill the Jewish workforce, but Schindler persuades them not to do so. Bidding farewell to his workers, he prepares to head west, hoping to surrender to the Americans. The workers give him a signed statement attesting to his role in saving Jewish lives and present him with a ring engraved with a Talmudie quotation: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire". Schindler breaks down in tears, feeling he should have done more, and is comforted by the workers before he and his wife leave in their car. When they awaken the next morning, a mounted Soviet officer announces that they have been liberated but warns them not to go east because "they hate you there". The Jews then walk into the countryside.
An epilogue reveals that Göth was convicted of crimes against humanity and executed while Schindler's marriage and businesses failed following the war. In the present, many of the surviving Schindlerjuden and the actors portraying them visit Schindler's grave and place stones on its marker.