Oskar Schindler is a German businessman who opens a factory in the early '40s using Jewish laborers from the nearby Ghettos. He builds monetary wealth off of the labor and in return, as he sees the pure madness of the Third Reich's "Final Solution" unfold, he sees his unique position as one who can help. He soon does everything in his power to make the conditions as best he can for those who work in his factories. Eventually he 'purchases' nearly 1,100 Jewish prisoners and moves them to another camp where their lives are spared. Schindler's List had a profound affect on me. I had seen the movie when it was first released in 1993 so this was my 2nd time to see it. It may be because I am older and more socially conscious, but the movie affected me more than when I was younger. I now know a little more about what went on in Europe during that time, so I am better able to empathize with the people in the movie than in my previous encounter with the film. Indeed, this is one of the best films ever made and it stands as a timeless chronicle of what is truly one of the darkest chapters of human history. It's important to mention how films such as this are often times one of the best ways to get a mass of people to better understand a historical event. In a movie, multiple dimensions of a scene are portrayed. Directly after seeing the movie, I found it difficult to concentrate on anything else, and I found that even eating seemed hard to do. One of the main themes that one can get out of the movie is how far people can go. On the one hand, it is terrifying to think about how far the Nazis were able to go with their murderous ideology. .
This is one of the most chilling parts of the movie. It is hard to even imagine how an entire group of people were so dehumanized by another group of people that they were treated like animals and killed as if they were nothing but 'bodies' without minds or emotions.
