The Holocaust Exposed In Schindler's List

The Holocaust did not happen like a movie; it is impossible to recreate fully the horrific and grotesque events that occurred. However; in Spielberg’s telling of a true story from the Holocaust, it strived for historic accuracy and exemplified realism to Hollywood’s

To begin with, to transport the Jews the Nazis used boxcars and they transported them to concentration camps. During the Holocaust Jews were stuffed amongst each other into railroad boxcars. At many times a lot of them didn’t all fit together so they traveled “with their hands raised in the air” (Deportation…)

Throughout the entire novel the theme of dehumanization is particularly evident in both the prisoner workers and the transport prisoners. The Nazi guards are said to have “beefy” (pg. 41) faces, while an S.S. officer is described as having a “rat-like smile” as she “sniffed around” (pg. 41) the ramp. Prisoners are referred to as “standing around like sheep” (pg. 48). Starving Greek prisoners are compared to “huge human insects” (pg. 35). Even the transport trucks are called “mad dogs” (pg. 41). Everyone is treated and processed like livestock. “Trucks drive around, loading up lumber, cement, people” (pg. 34), is yet another example of how a human life was lowered to that of a mere object. A corpse is simply a “mound of meat” (pg. 45), and dead babies are carried out of the transport “like chickens, several in each hand” (pg. 39). The poisonous compound Cyclone B used to kill the prisoners was “an effective killer of lice in clothing and of men in gas chambers” (pg. 29).

Thus, it can be concluded that in the beginning of the movie Schindler does not fully grasp the tragedy at hand, and consequently does nothing attempt to aid the Jews. Schindler's realizations of the horrors of the holocaust begin in one scene near the middle of the film. During this infamous turning point of the movie, Schindler, on top of a barren hill, traces the path of a young and helpless Jewish girl who wanders haphazardly through the streets of a devastated camp. Her lone image personalizes the slaughter. Schindler tries to track her progress as she invisibly makes her way, aimless and alone, past the madness and chaos in the street - a woman is machine-gunned behind her. He loses sight of the small figure as she walks behind a building, but then he glimpses her again, walking by a file of Jews being herded down a sidewalk. During the roundup, a German soldier fires at a single-file lineup of men, killing five with one bullet. Distressed and stricken by the nightmare below and the plight of the little girl in red, Schindler sees her entering one of the empty apartment buildings. There, she climbs the stairs and crawls under a bed for cover in a ransacked room. Her safety is only temporary, for later she will be hunted down and cold-heartedly murdered, forgotten to the world, destroyed by her own people.

I must say that this film is very traumatizing. There are some images in this film that will be burned and scarred into my mind for as long as I live. I have seen many holocaust films, but no one was as near as dramatic and depicting as Night and Fog. However I did like the theme of this movie. It is very sad but yet realistic. Our minds are murky and dull. We tend to only remember the important situation in our lives. Yet we don’t remember the importance of our own history. I say OUR history be cause we all are human beings on this earth. Whether we believe in Allah, Jesus, Jehovah, or whatever higher power, we are all one race, and that the human race. It is very sad to know that human beings were treated and

Schindler's List is one of the most powerful movies of all time. It presents the indelible true story of enigmatic German businessman Oskar Schindler who becomes an unlikely saviour of more than 1100 Jews amid the barbaric Nazi reign. A German Catholic war profiteer, Schindler moved to Krakow in 1939 when Germany overran Poland. There he opens an enamelware factory that, on the advice of his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, was staffed by Jews from the nearby forced labour camp at Plaszow. Schindler's factory prospered though his contacts with the Nazi war machine and its local representatives, as well as his deft skill on the black market. Then, somewhere along the way, Schindler's devotion to self-interest was

The Germans in charge of coming up with a sufficient means of transportation had a heavy sense of superiority in that their prisoners were lower than animals. They had only tried to maintain the cheapest, most efficient method of transit of the Jews to their concentration camp. The deportees who survived were left with a scarring imprint of this trip, as it was the first branch of their torture, for most, the rest of their lives. After two interviews with two different survivors, it is inferred that the same approach was used for all the prisoners being transported to their destination of their demise. The people who were forced to endure this dehumanizing means of transit underwent a complete stripping of humanity that foreshadowed their ultimate

“The Jews were transported, either by trains or trucks to six camps; Poland, Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Majdanek-Lublin. These camps were called extermination camps. The trips on the train took a few hours and sometimes it took days. The people were crammed into boxcars until there was no room for anyone to move. Freight cars had no seats, no bathroom facilities, and only slatted openings as windows, so inside it was dark, and the air reeked with the smell of bodies and human waste” (Bachrach, 1994, p. 48). Mendy Berger, a Holocaust survivor remembered the train ride and stated, “One hundred people standing in a locked railroad car, no food, no water, people dying, the smell of the dead, and we had no toilets. We did it right where we were standing, and we couldn’t move away from it” (Adler 1989, p. 67). Arthur Rubin, another Holocaust survivor recounts “children were crying for water, and mothers’ hearts were torn because they were unable to help them…..The train stopped at various stations. There were women standing near the railroad tracks with

The rise of Anti- Semitism was affecting the Jews all over Europe. Jewish towns and neighbourhoods were confined to ghettos starting in 1939. After living in ghettos for approximately 2 years and under unbearable conditions, German soldiers rounded up Jews and began to place them on trains. The experiences of Elie Wiesel and Irene Fogel Weiss are just two of the millions of stories that exist. Their experiences in the concentration camps have many similarities as well as many differences and not only has the Holocaust left physical scars but psychological scars too, which Viktor Frankel has written a book about, being a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor.

Inmates resembled skeletons and were so weak they were unable to move. The smell of burning bodies was ever present and piles of corpses were scattered around the camp. However, you could be “saved” from the crematoria to be used as test subjects to cruel experimentation and used as lab rats for any experiment the scientists wanted to conduct. Later in the war, extermination camps were built. These were specialized for the mass murder of Jews using Zyklon B to ensure a painful, long, and torturous death. The bodies would then be thrown into the fire and all clothes, teeth, and shoes would be sent to pursue the German war front. At max efficiency, 20,000 people would be killed in the gas chambers a day. As the red Army approached near to liberate the Jews in concentration and extermination camps, SS officers sent prisoners on a death march across hundreds of miles, where they ran with no food or water, no matter the weather, until they reached the closest camp. SS officers proceeded to blow up the camps to hide the genocide from the

The cinematography of the film gives the audience striking images which expose the taboos of Holocaust film-making, but this gives authenticity to the film itself. The cinematography utilizes accurate content such as dead bodies, nudity, and defamation to show the harsh truths of the Holocaust. For example, there was a pile of the dead jews shown in the beginning of the film shown after they entered the gas chamber. The pile was shown in the background of the main character within the initial 30 minutes of the movie.This was a daily occurrence in many extermination camps. However, one child seemed to survive the gassing, but he was suffocated by a nazi doctor on the table. The main character on the table took him away, because he

Schindler's List The film Schindler's list directed by Steven Spielberg based on Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Arks tells the story of an entrepreneur and womaniser Oscar Schindler. Schindler uses the war to his gain by exploiting cheap Jewish labour to run his factory with dreams of earning "steamer trunks" full of money who with the twist of fate ends up saving the lives of 1100 Jews by bribing the Nazi with all his assets during one of the darkest period of history, the Holocaust. Although the film is based on a true story, it does get pampered with some Hollywood treatment to highlight Schindler's hero

     These camps were set up along railroad lines so that the prisoners would be conveniently close to their destination. Unfortunately, many prisoners didn't even survive the train ride to the camps. Herded like cattle, exhaustion, disease, and starvation ended the long treacherous journey for many of the prisoners. On the trains, Jews were starved of food and water for days. Nearly 8% of the people did not even survive the ride to the camps. (Nyiszli, 37)

‘Schindler’s List’ is no less a “Jewish story” or a “German story” than it is a human story. And its subject matter applies to every generation.’ [Stephen Spielberg] Discuss.

In the film, Schindler’s list, many film techniques were used to present important ideas of the film. There were many scenes that took place in the movie that stood out and was filled with film techniques. The liquidation of the ghetto was filled with important themes and ideas that were shown through various film techniques. The ending also presented various film techniques.