Contra "Schindler" and his "List": A Warning
"Schindler" has become a household term, thanks to the moving images conjured up by Steven Spielberg's magic wand of filmatographic special effects. To the chagrin of soberer observers, Spielberg's "Schindler" was embraced as synonymous with history's Schindler. Thanks to the power of the camera to manufacture "reality," the artificial "Schindler," became for viewers the actual Schindler of the Final Solution. Simply put, Holocaust History according to Spielberg followed in the footsteps of Hollywood's American History according to Oliver Stone : "JFK" is JFK.
So what is it that so offends the mind's eye upon viewing "Schindler's List"?
1)Third-hand history: The "Schindler" portrayed on the screen is a film director's interpretation of a novelist's impression of an obscure minor figure in the Europe of the Final Solution about whom very little of substance is known. So little in fact, that anything definitive said about this shadow Schindler of yesteryear is, at best, conjecture. His known life within the Holocaust, midway between the genocidists and the victims is, at best, enigmatic, at worst, spurious. In brief, the fragments known about Schindler raise central questions but provide no satisfactory answers.
And therein lies the problem: the "Schindler" film unabashedly supplies the "true" answers, leaving little room for serious doubt, let alone skepticism. The hollow vessel of the Schindler of history left unlimited room for the interpreter: a paradise for a fertile imagination.
2)Virtual reality: In the film, "Schindler", we are made to believe, undergoes an epiphany: somehow "Schindler", the petit-bourgeois, small-time war opportunist and profiteer from the Sudetenland, miraculously metamorphoses into a selfless conscience-ridden, horror-struck saver of Jewish lives, ready to risk his own. The movie "proof" is "Schindler's" witnessing, à distance, elegantly dressed on horseback, the brutal and bloody emptying of the Cracow ghetto. There is mention, though less dramatic, of such an abrupt conversion, from whore to saint, in the novel "Schindler's List". In the realm of known facts, there is not a shred of evidence of such a crise de l'âme. In other words, what we are asked to swallow - despite all violations of the standards of verisimilitude - is "Schindler's" moral transformation without any examination of this doubly fictitious film-novel character, in the face of no historically authoritative information. It is a classic case of meeting the demands of wishful thinking. We, the audience, need and, therefore, insist on a "Schindler" and not the Schindler as far as the facts permit. We need "Schindler" qua hero and reject Schindler the scoundrel (or worse) who was, quite likely, unaffected by his brush with the Holocaust in Cracow.
3)Prefabricated proof: As proof of "Schindler, the last-minute righteous gentile," we are given a post facto (post-conversion) sign of his anti-Holocaust heroism: Spielberg, the cinematographic spinner of Holocaust History, takes his "Schindler" into Auschwitz to rescue "his" Jews. There is only one problem with that climactic scene: the Schindler of history never set foot in Auschwitz. Thus, the basic underpinning for "Schindler, the Good" is kicked out from under him. There was not (according to the sparse historic record) a "Schindler, the heroic rescuer," nor is there today (according to the flawed and fraudulent argument insinuated in the film). So, if Schindler did not go to Auschwitz to save "his" Jews, then what about The List?
4) From "The List" to "a list": Towards the end of the film, we see "Schindler" and his Jewish foreman compile a list of Jewish workers who will accompany "Schindler" back to the Sudetenland, where, he thinks, he can set up a small factory after the war. This poses two problems:
On the one hand, we are led to believe the list of 1000 plus Jews contains the bulk of the Jewish workers "Schindler" had working for him from Day One when he arrived in Poland. In fact, the last list included only about 230 of the original Jews assigned by the SS to Schindler. The real Schindler contracted Jewish workers from the SS as did hundreds of other German "employers" looking for cheap labor. Many died and Schindler replaced them with new recruits in order to keep his factory producing at 100% capacity and to maximize his profits. This same mentality motivated him as the time drew near to retreat from the Russians. When the ghetto was dissolved, he lost many of his workers, making up for their loss by negotiating with (bribing) the SS in Auschwitz to replenish his quota of one thousand Jews. There were many lists, not one, that Schindler had compiled. The very last one was not the list, but simply a list.
That the people on it were grateful to him is understandable; but that is no reflection on "Schindler's" motives. Given the central doubt, the unlikelihood of his conversion, it is more accurate to conjecture the Schindler of 1940-1 was the same Schindler in 1944-5, an exploiter of human misery, though he himself was not a sadistic person and, though a womanizer, not a rapist. To be sure, he was capable of kindness; but was it ever anything more than the patronizing kindness of the Master rather than the kindness of a morally touched man? Very unlikely, in the absence of hard evidence. It is better and more honest we accept Schindler over "Schindler".
That a handful of Jews survived thanks to their association with Schindler - whatever his motives - is enough. They were fortunate, as were all survivors. Schindler played an instrumental part in shielding them from the murderous SS. He needed Jews; they needed him. Just as hundreds of SS guards fleeing concentration camps would bring along a handful of Jews as "insurance," and just as these genocidists marched towards the advancing Americans and English in the hopes of extracting some sympathy from their captors, so must we accept Schindler in moderation, a culpable but not evil German, a collaborator in the Holocaust hoping to shield himself with grateful Jews.
So which is it to be? Schindler or "Schindler"? Holocaust or Hollywood? The historians' less than palatable but human reconstruction of Schindler or the entertainers' "heroic" media celebrity "Schindler"?
Caveat Emptor!
The marriage of Holocaust and Hollywood has been long in coming. What the film "Exodus" did for pre-Israel "history" and what such egregious extravaganzas like "The Ten Commandments" did for Biblical "history," the "Holocaust" mini-series of the mid-seventies did to the actual Holocaust. Is it fair to rank Spielberg's "Schindler's List" on a par with these obviously marred predecessors? Yes: They all entertain, and they are all counterfeit history, no matter how "realistic," in good taste, and, perhaps, lacking in kitsch. As long as we accept them as pure entertainment, less harm is done. But as soon as we extend to them the credibility of authenticity and allow them "to teach," that is when the trouble begins, when the false images are taken at face values.
Spielberg's "Schindler" provides a fine yarn, but it also claims to be true. Therein lies the ethical problem; and the credulous public conspired with its vote of approval. Hollywood and the Holocaust need a permanent divorce. Those who periodically seek a Holocaust "high" should immerse themselves in the real images, of which there are tens of thousands.
Henry R. Huttenbach