In the face of an evil like the Holocaust, making a true
connection with the victims can be overwhelming. Separating the
victims from the numbers in order to comprehend the scope and horror
of the Holocaust is nearly impossible. Museums, books, and pictures
help to educate people, but more than six million Jews alone were slaughtered,
which is a tremendously difficult reality to grasp emotionally and
intellectually. The enormous number of victims and the many ways
in which they were tortured and murdered are so vast that one could
get lost in these statistical masses without ever really understanding
the plight of individual victims. Only the victims themselves were
truly able to feel the horror of the Holocaust. Steven Spielberg
hoped to address this difficulty with Schindler’s List. Since
it is easier for people to make connections on a personal rather
than an abstract level, Spielberg tried to replace the vast numbers
with specific faces and names. He tried to ensure that viewers would
make personal connections with the characters in the film and thus
begin to digest the events on a smaller scale.
Spielberg manages to convey the horror the Schindlerjuden
faced by making the viewers feel as if they are participating in
the events, not just watching. Viewers meet characters and follow
their plights closely, developing a connection to these individual
victims who are themselves representative of all Holocaust victims.
This connection is Spielberg’s main goal in Schindler’s
List. He wants the viewer to identify with the characters,
to feel their pain and fear. This individualization forces viewers
to confront the horror on a personal level and to realize that every
victim had a story, loved ones, a home, a business, and a life.
To look at the Jews of the Holocaust simply as a group or race dehumanizes
them a second time, removing their individuality and uniqueness.
The Nazis dehumanized Jews in the camps by tattooing numbers on
their arms in order to identify them by number rather than name,
and Spielberg makes an effort to recognize individuals’ names in
his film.
Oskar Schindler himself embodies this idea of recognizing
and caring for the individual. He is unable to stand by and watch
his Jewish workers perish, for he makes a personal connection with them
and does not want to see them killed. This relationship between
Schindler and the Schindlerjuden parallels the connection the viewers
make with the latter. In a sense, the viewer knows and cares about
these people, wants them to survive, and feels triumphant when they
do.
Spielberg personalizes the Nazis as well, however. The
character of Amon Goeth allows an intimate glimpse into the mind
of a Nazi officer corrupted by anti-Semitism. He shoots Jews from
his balcony for target practice. He sees the Jewish people as a
mass, not as individuals with thoughts and feelings. However, he
is intoxicated by his Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch, and struggles with
his conflicting feelings of attraction to Helen and pure hatred
of Jews. Unlike Schindler, Goeth denies his connection to an individual.
He cannot overcome his hatred, just as the Nazi Party in general
could not overcome its wholesale hatred of Jews.
Spielberg carries the idea of individualism through to
the powerful final scene in the film. Here, in full color, the real
surviving Schindlerjuden appear. Lined up as far as the eye can
see—many with their actor counterparts in the film—they place rocks
on Oskar Schindler’s grave. Spielberg’s decision to show the actors
accompanying the actual survivors serves two purposes. First, the
scene drives home the point that the characters in the film are
real people rather than just invented figures. Viewers can feel
a great sense of satisfaction in seeing the actual survivors who
triumphed over evil. Second, Spielberg is sending a message to all
those who doubt the reality of the Holocaust that human proof of
the tragedy exists and that what happened can never be erased. Witnesses
to the horror are still alive to tell their tales and to make sure
we never forget.
