SCHINDLERS LIST an appropriate way of dealing with the holocaust?

1.  Introduction  3

2.  Oscar Schindler and his deeds during WWII  3

3.  From Paul Page’s idea to the film debut  4

3.1.  Page’s try to convince Fritz Lang  5

3.2.  The first contract between Page and MGM  5

3.3.  Spielberg’s Schindler’s List  5

4.  The film’s reputation  7

4.1.  “Hollywoodian Holocaust with Happy End  7

4.2.  Is the holocaust filmable at all  8

4.3.  The good German  8

4.4.  Anti-Semitic clichés  8

5.  Is Schindler’s List and appropriate way of representing the holocaust?  9

5.1.  Holocaust as historical background, not subject of the film  9

5.2.  The critics’ anti- Americanism  10

5.3.  The good Nazi, and the survivors, Goeth and 6 000 0000 Jews  11

5.4.  The good capitalist  11

5.5.  Holocaust and Zionism  13

6.  Conclusion  13

7.  Literature  15

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1. Introduction

In 1951 the idea of producing a film about Oskar Schindler´s deeds during the Second World War was mentioned by Paul Page. Page was known as Poldek Pfefferberg before he emigrated to the USA as one of 1200 holocaust survivors saved by Schindler. 1

In March 1994, just a few months after several racist attacks against asylum seeker hostels in Germany, Steven Spielberg presented his new film to an audience including Ignatz Bubis, head of the Jewish community in Germany, and the German President Richard von Weizäcker in Frankfurt/Main. As the film was so shocking, an old lady from the audience suddenly felt faint and had to be brought out of the hall. The extremely high security precautions at the film debut, as well as the violence against asylum seekers some weeks before, suggested that Anti- Semitism and violence against minorities still were problems in the reunified Federal Republic Of Germany. At the presentation ceremony Spielberg made it clear that this film was meant to be for thousands of US- American high school kids who had not even heard of the Nazis. 2

As a Hollywood movie, Schindler’s List was able to open people’s minds to the unique cruelties that had happened during the Second World War. The film became a great commercial success and provoked a firestorm of controversies. The critics’ most important question was whether the film dealt with the holocaust in an appropriate way or not. In order to give the reader an idea about the film’s history, this paper will first explain how Schindler´s List came into being and what it is about. Afterwards it will present some criticisms on the film. The last chapters discuss common criticisms on Schindler’s List, and develop an own stand towards the question whether Spielberg’s movie was an appropriate way of dealing with the holocaust or not. As it is assumed that the reader roughly knows the film, this paper does not give a summary of the film.

2. Oscar Schindler and his deeds during WWII

Schindler’s List is based on reality. In December 1939 Oscar Schindler came to Crakow in order to take over a formerly Jewish company. The Jews were evacuated from the city by the Nazi- regime. Schindler was member of the NSDAP, worked for

¹ Erika Rosenberg (Hrsg.): Ich, Oskar Schindler, München 2000, p. 409

² Die Tageszeitung, Tränen zur Deutschlandpremiere, 3.3.1994

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the German Secret Service, and even supplied the “Wehrmacht” with polish uniforms for their first attack on Gdansk at 1 ^st of September 1939. In Krakow he took over a ceramics factory in order to avert attention from his work as a spy. As Schindler was a man who enjoyed life, women, alcohol, gambling and spending money, he wasn’t a hardliner in the Nazi- party and therefore didn’t have ideological problems to cooperate with the former owner of his new factory. Until December 1942 he employed about 370 Jewish forced workers in his factory and paid about 6 Reichsmark per worker per day to the SS. Schindler, who became more and more opposed, was in prison twice, first because he had kissed a Jewish girl, and then because he was accused of being involved in illegal black market activities, which in fact kept Schindler’s factory alive. Only his excellent contacts to high SS- officials spared his being heavily punished. In 1943 Schindler opened his own camp near the factory and started to produce ammunition in order to be supported by the Wehrmacht. When the frontline obviously moved westwards, Schindler transferred more than 1000 people and all his transportable machines from Krakow to the Czech town of Brünnlitz.

When Schindler’s camp was liberated by the sowjet army he and his family had already left. As he had lost all his belongings and all his money, the postwar years were very difficult for Schindler. He had to live in Bavaria because there was no future in Czechoslovakia for the Sudeten Germans. Supported by the “Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.“ he emigrated to Argentina in 1949 and failed to lead a nutria farm. Living in Germany again, Schindler visited Israel for the first time in 1962 and was honored by several institutions before he died in 1974 in Germany; he was buried in Jerusalem. ³ In 1983 Thomas Keneally wrote a book about Schindler and in 1993 Spielberg produced Schindler’s List, which became a great success in the United States as well as in Europe.

3. From Paul Page’s idea to the film debut

It took about 42 years from the first idea for a film about Schindler to its realization. Paul Page, formerly known as Poldek Pfefferberg, played a very important role in pushing the film project forward. The realization of the film may be divided into three major phases.

³ Johannes M. Noack: „Schindler´s Liste“, Authentizität und Fiktion in Spielbergs Film, Eine Analyse, Leipzig 1998, p.15-29

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• Page’s first try in the fifties, which wasn’t much more than an idea plus an interested film director. (1951)

• A first contract was signed between Page and a film company in the

• During the eighties Spielberg started to realize his project and finally finished it in 1993. (1980-1993)

3.1. Page’s try to convince Fritz Lang

In 1951 Paul Page and some other “Schindlerjuden” arranged contact between Schindler, who was living in Argentina at that time, and the Austrian film director Fritz Lang. Though Schindler was very interested in a film project about his deeds during World War II, Lang decided not to realize it. But from this moment on it was Schindler’s and Page’s greatest wish to start a project about Schindler’s deeds during the Second World War.

3.2. The first contract between Page and MGM

About twelve years later it was again Page who told an American film producer called Martin Gosch about Oskar Schindler. In 1964 after one year of research Gosch decided to sign a contract with Page, who was authorized by Schindler. 4 In 1963 Page also bought some pictures that were illegally taken in the Plazow Camp. Later these pictures were of great importance for Spielberg’s film. ⁵ In 1965 Schindler realized that Gosch and his company “Metro Goldwyn Mayer” (MGM) hesitated to speed up the project.

At the same time Schindler met Camille Honig who was “Ehrensekretär” at “Martin Buber Gesellschaft.” Tough Gosch and MGM were still holding the rights to the story about Schindler, Honig was allowed by Schindler to start negotiations with the BBC. When Gosch learned about this, his relationship to Schindler cooled down and he decided to stop cooperating with him. Honig turned out to be a swindler who had embezzled donations that were dedicated to the production of the film. 6

3.3. Spielberg’s Schindler’s List

In October 1980 purely by chance the Australian author Thomas Keneally met Paul Page in his store “Beverly Hills Handbag Studio”. Page convinced Keneally to write

⁴ Erika Rosenberg (Hrsg.): Ich, Oskar Schindler, München 2000, p. 409

⁵ Der Spiegel, Vom großen Morden, Hamburg, 8/1994, p.182-183

⁶ Erika Rosenberg (Hrsg.): Ich, Oskar Schindler, München 2000, p. 409

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