Schindler's List

Ryan Watkins

Ms. Golub

5/27/14

AP Euro G block

Schindler's List

      I watched "Schindler's List" directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Steven Spielberg, Starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes. I watched it at home with my parents on Thursday. It was based on Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally.

      In the beginning, Oskar Schindler puts on his Nazi pin and heads to an expensive bar. He quickly becomes the life of the party, with everyone at his table and everyone is trying to take pictures with him. He then uses his political powers to start a Jewish run metal factory. He has the Jews from the ghettos work for him at lower prices making him more money. As they start to be sorted between non essential and essential workers, people who say they are trained in machine shop or metal working go to Schindler's factory and not to concentration camps. After all non-Aryan's were ordered into concentration camps, Schindler moved his factory into one of the camps. There he kept watch over all his workers and essentially safeguarded their lives. Once he learned of the death camps, he opened a concentration camp in his home town and make a list of all the people, and workers he had ever known, Schindler's List. He then paid for every person out of his own pocket using the money he gained from his metal factory. At his camp he made sure that everybody was treated fairly, nobody went hungry, nobody was every hurt. all the guards were kept in their rooms, never to touch the workers. Schindler saved hundreds of people and spent every last penny he had to do so.

      All the characters in this movie were based on real people. Oskar Schindler was an actual person, all the people he saved were called Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews). All battles and events where treated with extreme accuracy and where 100% correct. From the forced move into the ghettos to the end of the war all events were kept accurate.

      It is set in Germany in 1939 when Germans moved Polish Jews into Krakow. Every location shown, presented the brutality and the horrible deeds the Jewish people had to endure. It covered all of World War Two. Every last detail was shown with great intricacy. The Nazi officials uniforms were very convincing and the guns where all accurate to the time period and location.

      This movie is one of the most captivating and interesting movies I have ever seen. It takes you on a journey that leads you through an emotional roller coaster where fear and sorrow are only a few scenes away from hopeful euphoria. It shows the brutality of the human existence and the slim glimmer of hope and forgiveness. It is by no means predictable yet isn't to far in left field. I cannot come up with one complaint about this movie.