"Schindler's List" as a Realistic Depiction of the Holocaust

Schindler's List is a 1993 film that is valuable as a secondary historical source in its depiction of the Holocaust. For the sake of artistic expression, however, the film does also possess limitations where certain facts and accuracies have been disregarded thus inhibiting its ability to fully express the persecution of Jews during the times. The film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg is adapted from the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally and based on the real story of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler who managed to save the lives of over 1,100 Jews by employing them in his factories. In the film, human capacity has been explored for both monumental evil as well as extraordinary courage, care and compassion and because of so, the film, to a large extent, gave an accurate representation of the Holocaust to the mass audience.

The purpose of the film was to raise awareness of the occurrence of the Holocaust. According to the director Steven Spielberg, ‘The Holocaust had been treated as just a footnote in so many textbooks or not mentioned at all. Millions knew little if anything about it. Other tried to deny it happened at all.’ The film was therefore created to encourage a revelation of such an atrocity in human history by revealing details of civilization’s fragility.

The plotline itself is based on a true story and credible to a large degree. A Polish Jew Leopold “Poldek” Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor encouraged Thomas Keneally to write about the story and provided him photocopies of documents related to Oskar Schindler which included speeches, firsthand accounts, testimonies and the actual list of names of people he saved. Texts were typed up throughout the film making references to historical facts, events and accentuate the reliability of the story that the film is basing on. The film spectacularly reconstructed historical events including the rounding up of Polish Jews by conquering the Nazi forces in 1939, the establishment of Podgorze Ghetto in March 1941, the construction of Plaszow Forced Labour Camp in the following year, the destruction of Ghetto in 1943 and many more. The film was able to accurately portray the dehumanisation of the Jews who were terrorised by SS guards and the extent of antisemitism highlighted upon Oskar Schindler’s arrival to Auschwitz.

The film contained scenes that demonstrate extraordinary effort in illustrating meticulous features reflecting the imagery of the Holocaust between 1943 – 1945. According to many victim testimonies and interviews, it was stated that ‘the way the camps were portrayed in the movie was very accurate.’ The treatment of Jews in Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp was presented truthfully, especially the scene presenting the die Gesundheitaktion, meaning health action, which historically happened 7th May 1944 as the film outlines, where all men and women went through a medical examination to separate the ill from healthy in order to make way for 10,000 Hungarian Jews settling into the camp. The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team describes this inhumane selection process whereby “Certain children, the urchins of the camp, had their hiding places already prepared; even so, when they dived for cover they would find that their hiding place had been taken by someone else, and they ran in frantic search of another sanctuary.” This was presented in the film where a young boy tries to find a hiding place and ended up in the sewer where other children already hiding said: “get out! this is our place!” This scene depicts the atrocity of the war and generates sympathy which gives the audience a deeper insight into the suffering of Jewish children on an emotional level. Therefore, contributes to displaying an integral experience of the Holocaust and adds more value to the source.

One limitation of the film is its inability to demonstrate the part that civilians play in the Holocaust due to its excessive emphasis on the contrasting theme of good and evil. Certain scenes attempted to present to the audience the role of ordinary people in the leading up of antisemitism. For example, the scene where Polish bystanders’ yell “Goodbye Jews” as the thousands of Jews parade through the streets of Kraków, Poland which emphasised on the antisemitic social environment and atmosphere on the streets on a day to day basis. However, the film's dichotomy through the characterisation of Oskar Schindler and Amon Göth depicts the absolute good versus absolute evil disregarding the role of ordinary people and their contribution to the occurrence of the Holocaust. The film has also been criticised for giving a distorted representation of the Holocaust as it misplaced its focus on the survivors of the Holocaust, leading its readers away from obtaining the moral lesson of humanity that this period teaches its audiences, but rather giving a false representation of the Holocaust. Author Jason Epstein commented that the film gives its audience the impression that ‘if people were smart enough or lucky enough, they could survive the Holocaust;’. This depiction is inaccurate and trivialises the Nazi’s indiscriminating mass murder during the times. The United States Holocaust Museum has stated that ‘The Germans and their collaborators were relentless in hunting down and killing Jews in the areas of Europe that they controlled.’ The film, however, over focuses on Oskar Schindler and its survivors and disregards the fact that they were merely exotic exceptions to the inhumane actions of Nazis. Another example seen in the film is when Rabbi Lewartow was lucky enough to escape execution simply because Amon Goeth’s gun wasn't working. This highlights the fact that the film has marginalised Hitler’s multitudinous victims and his other innumerous accomplices, not just Amon Goeth. The film shines its spotlight on the experience of a particular group of Jews, and they clearly could not represent the experience of the murdered six million. This film was also criticised by famous filmmaker and lecturer Claude Lanzmann who called the film a ‘kitschy melodrama and a deformation of historical truth.’ as the film presents the Holocaust through the eyes of a German which could potentially involve forms of bias in its perceptions.

The reactions from the Jewish community has reflected flaws in the film’s depiction of the Holocaust. A Holocaust survivor who is now a Hungarian-Jewish author, Imre Kertész, has found the last scene of the film at Oskar Schindler’s graveyard diminishing the suffering and after-effects of the experience as most came ‘emotionally unscathed’. Or when the film has dramatized its scenes, such as the girl in the red coat, to connect with its audience on a deeper level but historical accuracies were often unacknowledged and the fact that the girl was obliviously walking down the streets is impossible back in Germany when the liquidation of the ghetto was occurring. Or when the film only puts its focus on Jews and Germans whereas BBC History pointed out that ‘The Jews were not the only victims of Nazism.’ To further an entertaining and dramatic nature of the film, many scenes as such have not adequately demonstrated the suffering of the Jews and acts as a limitation of the source.

By conveying realistic visual imageries, the film was able to express the struggles Jews endure during the Holocaust. Spielberg was able to replicate the reality of their experiences and overall, as a historical source, the film has many values that contribute in comprehensively depicting the Holocaust, but it is not a documentary and the source does have its limitations.