Schindler's List (1993)

Schindler's List is about the German entrepreneur Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson) who was a member of Nazi party. Schindler was living in Czechoslovakia but moved to Poland to try to make a fortune by exploiting Jewish prisoners during World War II. Schindler enlists the help of Itzhak Stern (a Jewish accountant and one of the select members of the Jewish council) to help him run a business making pots and pans to sell during the war. Itzhak takes care of hiring highly skilled laborers deemed "essential" for the war effort. In reality, Itzhak was trying to save as many Polish Jews as possible by giving them jobs at Schindler's factory.

Schindler's workers lived in the forced housing of the Krakow Ghetto. At one point there is a huge massacre in the Krakow Ghetto by the German army. Jews who were not murdered were sent to the Plaszow concentration camp. The Plaszow camp was overseen by Amon Goeth, a German officer. Schindler was really upset when all of his workers were either killed or sent to the camp. While working with the Jews in his factory, Schindler develops a regard for the prisoners. At first you believe he's mostly upset about losing his cheap labor, but we find out that he really has the best interest of the people at heart. Schindler gets to be good buddies with Goeth and pays him off in order to save 1100 Jewish prisoners on his famous list from going to the Auschwitz concentration camp where they would definitely be murdered. He takes them back to his home town of Zwittau-Brinnlitz in Czechoslovakia to open a weapons factory.

Schindler decides to make faulty weapons in order to thwart the German/Nazi war effort. In the end, when the war is over and the Germans surrender, Schindler is riddled with guilt that he wasn't able to save more prisoners. His former slaves grant him pardon due to his efforts to save as many Jews as he was able.

I thought this movie was really well done but it was really difficult to watch. It makes you wonder how people could have so little regard for the lives of other human beings. A few points in the movie were especially disturbing: 1) When Amon Goeth shoots the prisoners in the Plaszow camp from his balcony like it was a sport, 2) Goeth hires a pretty Jewish maid to work in his mansion, he's very attracted to her, but he can't understand his attraction because as he states, she's barely human, little more than a rat, 3) At both Plaszow and Auschwitz, when they burned the bodies of the murdered Jews, the ashes fell like snow in the cities, children played in the ashes like it was a holiday. Overall, this movie makes you pretty disgusted with human nature. How could it be possible that over 6 million people were slaughtered simply because they were Jewish or of Jewish decent? It really doesn't make any sense to me. Again, I thought the movie was great, quite realistic, and very disturbing.