In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This led to a chain of tragic events during which the Nazis cynically murdered millions of Jews. In October 1944, the businessman Schindler made a list of his employees whom the Nazis had no right to touch. All of the employees on this list were Jews and escaped the brutal fate of death in the ovens. A book was written and a movie was made about the famous Schindler’s List.
Schindler had 7 “life lists”. During the war, Schindler and his accomplices compiled 7 such lists: two of them are kept by the Yad Vashem organization in Israel, one is in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and one fell into the hands of a private owner. He tried to sell the list on eBay for $3 million, but instead of a stir, he was met with a wave of criticism. Most of all, he was criticized for wanting to make money from the tragedy, while the list itself is worth much less than 3 million: it is the history that preceded the compilation of these lists that is valuable, not the lists themselves.
The granddaughter of Nazi Amon Göth is half Nigerian, and his daughter believed that her father was a hero. Among Amon Göth’s many mistresses was a girl named Ruth Calder-Göth (or Mayola). During her two-year affair with the Nazi, she became pregnant and gave birth to Monika. Monika was 10 months old when Amon was hanged for his crimes. Until she was 11 years old, she was convinced that her father was a war hero, until one day, after a fight with her mother, she told her: “You are like your father and you will die like him!” How could she die like Amon if he died during World War II? Monika’s grandmother answered this question by saying that her father was hanged for killing Jews. Monika learned that Steven Spielberg was making a movie about Schindler and her father in the newspaper Spiegel, 24.05.1993. “When I watched the movie, I expected to see my father. Amon Göth was not in the first part of the movie. But then,” she recalls, “suddenly, a car drove through the ghetto, and I realized from the first moment that it was my father. I knew because I had his photo, and his profile (the actor’s) was the same. I was shocked when the young woman said: “Comandante, I’m just doing my job!” and my dad looked at her and said: “I’m doing my job too, I’m going to kill you now”. I started to hate Spielberg… Spielberg showed me the truth and I attacked him for the truth, I didn’t want to know everything.” In 2008, the movie Inheritance was released about her reflections.
Jennifer Tidj, Amon Gyot’s granddaughter, found out about her grandfather when she was 38. Her mother, Monica, had an affair with a Nigerian man, became pregnant, and after giving birth to a child, gave it to an orphanage. Jennifer grew up, studied at the Sorbonne, and lived in Israel for five more years, learning Hebrew. In 2008, she walked into a bookstore in Hamburg and saw a book about the Holocaust. There was a biography of her mother, and detail by detail, she realized to her horror that her grandfather was a brutal Nazi. Because of this, she fell into depression, and it was writing a book of reflections that pulled her out of this depression: “My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past).
The story came to light from a salesman in a leather goods store. One of the Schindler Jews, Leopold Pfefferberg, worked in a shop selling handbags after the liberation. Whenever influential people came in, he told them the story of his liberation, dreaming that the world would hear about it. One of these customers was the writer Thomas Keneally. In the introduction to his book Schindler’s List*, he recalls this historic meeting as follows: “In 1980, I walked into a handbag shop in Beverly Hills, California, and asked for a price on briefcases. The store was owned by Leopold Pfefferberg, who owed his life to Schindler. And it was at the shelf of imported Italian leather goods in Pfeffenberg’s shop that I first heard about Oskar Schindler, a German bon vivant, merchant, heartthrob, controversial man, and how he saved many representatives of different social strata of a doomed people during the time that is now called the Holocaust.” This meeting will be the beginning of Thomas Keneally’s long-term research on this story, when he will interview fifty people saved by Schindler and several of his associates, visit Plaszów, where Amon Göt was located, Lipowa Street, where Schindler’s factory stands, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the businessman rescued women. In addition, Thomas will analyze the materials of this case, which are kept by the organizations Schindler’s Jews and Yad Vashem. Kinelly’s book will be published for the first time on October 18, 1982, under the title Schindler’s Ark.
Spielberg put off making the movie for more than 10 years because he was unsure of his abilities and thought it was a story for mature producers. Thomas Keneally’s book came into the hands of filmmaker Steven Spielberg in the 80s, and after reading it, he said: “This is an amazing story! Is it true?”. The studio immediately bought the rights to make a movie based on Kinneally’s book, but for 10 years Spielberg did not take up the idea because he considered it too difficult for him. He even tried to convince another producer, Roman Polanski, whose mother died in Auschwitz, to make the movie.
There were dinosaurs between this movie and Spielberg. Steven Spielberg hesitated to make Schindler’s List for so long that the head of Universal doubted his ability to do so. In order to test him and make a profit in any case, they agreed that Spielberg would first make another movie. This movie was Jurassic Park. While directing the creation of artificial dinosaurs, he was simultaneously thinking about the real tragedy of genocide. In an interview, Spielberg commented on this double experience as follows: “I had to go back home two or three times a week and, despite the poor satellite connection to Northern California, approve shots of the T-rex. And it built up an incredible resentment and anger in me that I had to do that… All I could express at the time was how angry I was about it all, that I had to go from the emotional weight of Schindler’s List to dinosaurs chasing a jeep.”
They were looking for an unfamiliar actor to play Oskar Schindler, so that people would pay attention to the plot, not the face. Among the candidates for the role of Oskar Schindler were Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson (director of The Passion of the Christ, 2004). However, Spielberg was looking for someone less famous and recognizable. This person was an Irish actor Liam Neeson, who was unknown at the time. Later, in an interview with the New York Times, Spielberg would say that this particular man had a physique, look, and behavior similar to Oskar Schindler.
Initially, the film was supposed to be in Polish or German. The filmmakers wanted the audience to be immersed in the events of those times, even involving their ears. Mel Gibson, for example, pursued the same goal when he made The Passion of the Christ (2004), which was actually filmed in Aramaic. However, Steven Spielberg changed his mind. His motivation for making the film in English was that people could look down at the subtitles to avoid the realistic illustrations of the tragedy.
The little girl in the red coat is a symbol of the indifference of powerful states. In Thomas Keneally’s book and numerous interviews with survivors, it is mentioned how much Oskar Schindler was struck by one incident. It was during the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, when there was shooting all around, people were put in cars, someone was trying to escape, the Nazis were shouting, and a little girl was walking down the streets in a bright red coat, and no one seemed to see her! Spielberg sees symbolism in this: “For me, it meant that people: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and perhaps Stalin and Churchill knew about the Holocaust. It was their secret, which they hid well, and they did nothing to stop it. It was as if the Holocaust itself was dressed in red.”
Spielberg refused to be paid for this movie, calling it “blood money.” At that time, Spielberg was already a wealthy man, thanks to his successful previous projects, and this movie guaranteed another huge profit. However, Steven refused to accept a salary for a movie about Holocaust victims, calling it “blood money.” He transferred all the money that was supposed to go to his account to charity: in 1994, he created the USC Shoah Foundation, which aims to collect stories of rescued Holocaust victims and give them a public voice. By the way, he also refused to put his autograph on anything related to this movie.
Behind every great work are ordinary people, like Spielberg, who have taken on the role of describing a profound idea as best they can. The book and the movie Schindler’s List are an incredibly vivid depiction of the events of the liberation of more than a thousand Jews by a prosaic businessman who saw the historical tragedy in time. And for us, it is a reminder not to forget about the reality of our existence, where we too will someday be able to witness someone’s tragedy and intervene in time.
