Film Lesson:Schindler's List

Oskar Schindler
- Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who owned a factory in Poland. Schindler was unemployed during the time he joined the Nazis, looking for an opportunity took make money and naturally took advantage of Germany's invasion of Poland. Instead of employing Polish laborers, Schindler used Jewish slave workers. They were much cheaper to employ and Schindler became wealthy.

- In 1942, Schindler witnessed the wrath of Nazis against the Jews. He watched the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto whose inhabitants were being sent to concentration camps. Schindler persuaded the Nazis to let him keep the Jewish workers as a way to protect them from the gas chambers. He recruited more Jewish workers, and did everything possible to keep them alive. He saw the Jewish people as human beings instead of animals who were being slaughtered.Towards the end of the war Schindler freed his workers and became a hero. He was buried in Jerusalem and received " The Righteous Among Nations". This award was given to the people who put their own lives in danger in order to save the Jews.

The Movie
- The scenes that were very powerful to me were the children who were hiding from the Nazis in the concentration camps. The children were being put into trucks, some had escaped and were being chased by the soldiers. One boy desperately began to look for a place to hide and he ended up hiding in one of the bathrooms. Another scene was when the Jewish people were shoveling all the snow and the Nazis took out an old man from the line. He was killed in front of everybody, and because of his age he couldn't work as fast as the others.

-The images that will stay with me forever are the piles of dead bodies the Nazis were burning to hide the evidence. Hundreds of Jews were carrying the dead ones in wheelbarrows while the Nazis watched with towels on their faces. One Nazi soldier becomes deranged and begins to shoot the dead bodies. Schindler is horrified but does not stop the Nazi from shooting. One scene that I thought showed that Schindler cared for his workers was when he let them free and dared the Nazi guards to take them away. One by one the guards left, and Schindler asked the Jews for a moment of silence for those who had perished.

-Oskar Schindler may had been a greedy Nazi but his heart saved 1,200 Jews from dying. He was a hero in many ways and earned the respect of thousands of Jews generations after the Holocaust.