Social Injustices Name______________________

Mr. Wadley

Schindler’s List: Questions For Discussion and Reflection

CHOICES

Examine the following case study:

Tadeusz Pankeiwicz, the Krakow ghetto pharmacist, described the actions of a Jewish woman who wanted to accompany her mother standing in line for deportation:

In the space between the pharmacy and the ranks of the SS men walked a woman with a slow majestic stride. She was a pretty, nicely dressed young lady, wearing a light green cape… He (the SS man) said something, she replied, and suddenly the German started to beat her… The woman bent her head slightly and remained motionless, rigid as a statue. She volunteered for deportation to be with her mother, and this aroused the fury of the SS men. She did not moan or cry, she did not beg. The German could not break her – he could not force her to plead for mercy… She stood next to her mother; they did not exchange a word. The SS men left, she wiped her face with a handkerchief; her mother patted her on the head. Moments passed. The German approached her again, and said something. I did not see her respond. The German grabbed her by her hair, pulled her out of the line and screamed viciously, indicating with his truncheon (club) in which direction she was to go. She was not permitted to remain with her mother; she was spared. This was the will of the SS. The woman left, she went slowly, helpless against the overwhelming power. The mother’s gaze followed her for the last time.

What choices did the young woman have?

What choices did the SS man have?

What choices did the mother have?

Using examples from the film, trace the development of dehumanization of the Jews as it leads to demonization.

How did the Jews resist?

Why did the Jews not flee?

Consider the following two speeches and the choices they represented for the listener:

Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now, the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history, and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago, Kasimierz the Great so-called told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They took hold. They prospered. In business, science, education, the arts. They came here with nothing. Nothing. And they flourished. For six centuries, there has been a Jewish Krakow. Think about that. By this evening, those six centuries are a rumor. They never happened. Today is history. – Amon Goeth

Just as daylight was breaking, the men arrived at the village of Jozefow and assembled in a half-circle around Major Trapp, who proceeded to give a short speech. With choking voice and tears in his eyes, he visibly fought to control himself as he informed his men that they had received orders to perform a very unpleasant task. These orders were not to his liking, but they came from above. It might perhaps make their task easier, he told the men, if they remembered that in Germany bombs were falling on the women and children. Two witnesses claimed that Trapp also mentioned that the Jews of this village had supported the partisans. Another witness recalled Trapp’s mentioning that the Jews had instigated the boycott against Germany. Trapp then explained to the men that the Jews in Jozefow would have to be rounded up, whereupon the young males were to be selected out for labor and the others shot.

Trapp then made an extraordinary offer to his battalion: if any of the older men among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, he could step out. Trapp paused, and after some moments, one man stepped forward. – Christopher Browning, from Ordinary Men

What does Browning mean when he writes, “After Jozefow, nothing else seemed so terrible?”

Would Amon Goeth agree? Would Major Trapp?

How do you account for the differences in these two speeches?

Browning writes of two men who took part in the murders. One said that he had not wanted to be considered a coward by his comrades. Another – more aware of what truly required courage – said quite simply, “I was cowardly.” Contrast these statements.

POWER

In the scene where Goeth and Schindler are speaking, and Goeth is obviously drunk, he tells Schindler, “The more I look at you – I watch you – you’re never drunk.” As Schindler stares, the commandant continues, “Oh, that’s, that’s real control. Control is power. That’s power.”

Schindler is not so sure. He wonders, “Is that why they fear us?”

To Goeth, the answer is easy. He argues that “they fear us” because “we have the power to kill.”

Schindler disagrees. “They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man commits a crime, he should know better. We have him killed, and we feel pretty good about it. Or we kill him ourselves, and we feel even better. That’s not power, though. That’s justice. That’s different than power. Power… is when we have every justification to kill… and we don’t.”

When Goeth says he does not understand, Schindler expands on the idea, “That’s what the emperors had. A man stole something, he’s brought in before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy. He knows he’s going to die. Then the emperor… pardons him. This worthless man. He lets him go. That’s power, Amon. That… is power.”

Goeth roars. He mockingly gestures like a Roman emperor and laughingly says, “I pardon you.” Yet the next day, Goeth seems taken by the notion and even practices “pardoning” prisoners, particularly Lisiek, the young Jew responsible for cleaning his bathtub. But in the end, he returns to his old ways and the shootings begin again. His first target is young Lisiek.

What is power to you?

What did the word mean to Goeth? To Schindler?

Why did Schindler distinguish between “the power to kill” and “the power to kill arbitrarily?”

Is there a relationship between power and goodness? -- evil?

Support or deny the following statement, citing examples from the film if possible: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

OBEDIENCE

Concerning the Stanley Milgram experiments on obedience, John P. Sabini and Maury Silver noted:

When the learner makes his first error, subjects are asked to shock him. The shock level is 15 volts. A 15-volt shock is entirely harmless, imperceptible. There is no moral issue here. Of course, the next shock is more powerful than the last. The quality of the subject’s action changes from something entirely blameless to something unconscionable, but by degrees. Where exactly should the subject stop? At what point is the divide between the two kinds of action crossed? How is the subject to know? It is easy to see that there must be a line; it is not so easy to see where that line ought to be.

Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University, focused on the behavior of those who refused to obey:

The question to ask of Milgram’s research is not why the majority of normal, average subjects behave in evil (felonious) ways, but what did the disobeying minority do after they refused to continue to shock the poor soul, who was so obviously in pain? Did they intervene, go to his aid, did they denounce the research, protest to higher authorities, etc.? No, even their disobedience was within the framework of “acceptability”, they stayed in their seats, “in their assigned place,” politely, psychologically demurred, and they waited to be dismissed by the authority. Using other measures of obedience in addition to “going all the way” on the shock generator, obedience to authority in Milgram’s research was total.

What encourages obedience? Is it fear of those in power? A desire to please authority figures? A belief in authority? Peer pressure? A need to conform – to go along with the group?

What is the difference between obedience and conformity?

Why do you think it is difficult to harm someone we touch? Why is it easier to inflict harm upon a person we only see at a distance and easier still on someone we only hear?

Does this explain why it is quite easy to be cruel towards a person we neither see nor hear? Explain.

SYMBOLS

Tom Keneally, the author of the book, Schindler’s List casts light on why one particular event influenced Schindler. Schindler described the March Aktion in the Krakow ghetto this way: “Beyond this day no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system.

What is the significance of the girl in the red coat?

What are some symbols of power in the film?

How important are they to the various bearers of those symbols? Do symbols come with power, or are the symbols irrelevant if the individual has real power?

RESCUE

Keneally quotes Schindler as having said, “A life is not worth a pack of cigarettes”. Yet Schindler risked his own life.

Why?

When Schindler was asked why he did what he did, he at one time replied, “There was no choice. If you saw a dog going to be crushed under a car, wouldn’t you help him?”

Another time, he replied, “The persecution of Jews in occupied Poland meant that we could see horror emerging gradually in many ways. In 1939, they were forced to wear Jewish stars, and people were herded and shut up into ghettos. Then, in the years ’41 and ’42 there was plenty of public evidence of pure sadism. With people behaving like pigs, I felt the Jews were being destroyed. I had to help them. There was no choice.”

How are the quotes similar to each other?

How are the quotes different from one another?

Which one do you think most accurately explains Schindler’s reason for assisting the Jews? Explain.

Ervin Staub, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary and a scholar on altruistic (helping, selfless, kind…) behavior, has written, “Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren’t born. Very often the rescuers make only a small commitment at the start, to hide someone for a day or two. But once they had taken that step, they began to see themselves differently, as someone who helps. What starts as mere willingness becomes intense involvement.”

Does Staub’s argument apply to Schindler? How?

When do you think Schindler made the decision to rescue Jews?

When does he take the first step?

Jonathan Dresner, one of the Schindlerjuden (Schindler’s Jews), has said that Schindler “was an adventurer. He was like an actor who always wanted to be center stage. He got into a play, and he couldn’t get out of it.”

Luitgard Wundheiler, a psychotherapist, has investigated Schindler’s behavior during the Second World War. His theory is as follows:

In Nazi-occupied Krakow, Schindler found himself in a position to assist those who were in a precarious state: the Jews. They had been dehumanized. They were on the verge of destruction. Any act of humanity (a job, a kind word, a place to stay) was received with exaggerated but understandable appreciation. “Vain and insecure”, with little family life to speak of, Schindler was moved by the attention a desperate people bestowed upon him.

Initially, Schindler was motivated by friendship to individual Jews (specifically, it would seem, to Stern). But gradually the Nazi industrialist won a reputation as a kind and compassionate man. He was “a savior”. His factory was “a haven”. The Jews working in his factory became “his Jews”, the Schindlerjuden. Schindler began to glory in his reputation as a kind and compassionate man. He liked the role he was playing. It made him feel good. It filled a psychological vacuum in his life. This self-definition was a motivating factor.

Wundheiler argues that Schindler, “being defined by others as a compassionate and caring man,” began to see himself in the same light. As a result, he acted in line with that idea, which in turn reinforced others’ views of him as a humanitarian, and it spiraled.”

In your opinion, did Schindler rescue the Jews to please others or did he rescue Jews out of a subconscious desire to please himself?

The issue of Schindler and self-interest is an important one for you to consider. It demonstrates that a person can be a scoundrel yet can still be capable of selfless acts. Emilie Schindler described her late husband as a “saint of the devil”.

Keneally observed that Schindler and the sadist Amon Goeth may have been two sides of the human personality: “The reflection can hardly be avoided that Amon was Oskar’s dark brother, was the berserk and fanatic executioner Oskar might by some unhappy reversal of his appetite, have become.”

It must be emphasized that Schindler came to Krakow as a war-profiteer. At no point in his early life did Schindler demonstrate a hint of the altruistic behavior for which he is now so widely acclaimed. He became involved with the Jews when he realized that it made economic sense to employ them in his factory (formerly a Jewish factory). His early efforts helping the Jews, it might be argued, were efforts that he made to assure the continuation of his profits. In June 1942, he rescued Jews from a transport on its way to a death camp. In the film, he asks Stern, “Where would I be?” if the train had departed? Stern, of course, might have asked the same question about himself and the other Jews.

What examples are there in the film of Itzhak Stern nudging Schindler in the direction of rescue?

In the film, Schindler sits down with Stern and proposes a toast to the factory’s success. With the Nazi destruction of Jews taking place outside of Schindler’s factory and throughout Poland, Stern in not interested in a toast. “Pretend, for Christ’s sake,” Schindler pleads. “I’m trying to thank you, and acknowledge I couldn’t have done it without you.” Stern replies, “You’re welcome.” But he does not lift his glass.

How does this exchange influence Schindler?

How does Stern, overall, influence Schindler?

It is as if Schindler is backed into the role of being a rescuer, almost against his will. These scenes provide an opportunity to discuss the ways in which humans respond to moral expectations of those around them. In this sense, morality is a social product. A society’s values are sustained by mutual expectations. If we expect people to act decently, they will discover the decency in themselves.

In a 1973 documentary for West German television, Emilie Schindler said that Schindler had done nothing astounding before the war and had been unexceptional since. He was fortunate to have in that “short fierce era met people who summoned forth his deeper talents.”

Schindler developed a strong relationship with the elder Stern that continued after the war. The relationship has been described as one of a “father and son”. When Stern died in 1969, Schindler attended the funeral and wept uncontrollably at the grave.

NOTE: Material in this hand-out was based on or lifted from the following sources:

Facing History and Ourselves, A Guide To the Film Schindler’s List

The Southern Institute For Education and Research at Tulane University, Schindler’s List: Student Discussion Questions (http://www.tulane.edu/~so-inst/slguid8.html)