Schindler’s List
05 / 06 / 2013
There are thousands of reasons that could change a person from being an ordinary man to a hero. However, it is not actually that important to me to know why a man changes to a hero, but the important thing is how he becomes a hero. Oskar Schindler, the German businessman, had become a hero because he saved the lives of almost 1200 Jews by taking them out of Jewish liquidation camps and employing them in his factories. This, in turn, had saved their lives from being killed by the hands of the Nazi authorities in those camps. To me, this is what matters at the end. It is a heroic work beyond any dispute.
Anyway, it’s good to investigate Schindler’s life and analyze why he decided to help Jews, people whom he didn’t know before. In the movie “Schindler’s List”, Schindler, at the beginning, was a greedy profiteer that exploited the innocent Jews who were imprisoned in the Nazi camps. He was in need of rebuilding his fortune and increasing his monies by using imprisoned Jews and employing them in his factories. To do this, he had to make a good relationship with the Nazi authorities. Schindler actually made strong relationships with some Nazi officers since he was a Nazi party member. He started to take out some Jews from those liquidation camps and bring them to work at his factories. Those Jews were considered “free” workers to Schindler since they cost no money, except he just had to feed them and provide them a place where they could sleep. No salary, no healthcare, and no other benefits. However, this was a heaven for Jews since they were saved from being killed in the Nazi camps.
In my opinion, the most important thing that played a major role in changing Schindler was that when he started to notice how Jews were treated in those camps. As the movie showed, he saw how the German Officers were torturing and killing Jews all the time. Some of those Germans were even killing just for fun, such as the German Officer Amon Goth. He was a vile racist officer that killed Jewish children so excitedly. The other scene was when Schindler with his wife saw the atrocities in the Jewish camp where the Germans closed the whole camp and killed almost all Jews comfortably. He and his wife were standing together shocked when they saw how criminals the German Security Members were. As I think, this was the moment in which Schindler started to realize the difference between hating Jews as a different race and killing them with brutality. He realized that those Nazis had no borderline in their hate towards Jews. That’s why he started to sympathize with imprisoned Jews and take as many as he could out of that hell.
This was a heroic work because he had risked his life when he was saving Jews. He was arrested due to an innocent kiss to a young Jewish girl in his birthday party. Imagine how he would be punished, if German authorities knew what he was doing. But he didn’t care. He spent all his pennies in saving Jews until he became bankrupt. At the end when the war finished, he cried, for he didn’t save more lives. He said that he could have saved more lives if he didn’t spend his money on unworthy things. Schindler was a human at the end. He sympathized with the Jews, even if the movie didn’t clearly show why he changed to a good man.
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Anyway, it’s good to investigate Schindler’s life and analyze why he decided to help Jews, people whom he didn’t know before. In the movie “Schindler’s List”, Schindler, at the beginning, was a greedy profiteer that exploited the innocent Jews who were imprisoned in the Nazi camps. He was in need of rebuilding his fortune and increasing his monies by using imprisoned Jews and employing them in his factories. To do this, he had to make a good relationship with the Nazi authorities. Schindler actually made strong relationships with some Nazi officers since he was a Nazi party member. He started to take out some Jews from those liquidation camps and bring them to work at his factories. Those Jews were considered “free” workers to Schindler since they cost no money, except he just had to feed them and provide them a place where they could sleep. No salary, no healthcare, and no other benefits. However, this was a heaven for Jews since they were saved from being killed in the Nazi camps.
In my opinion, the most important thing that played a major role in changing Schindler was that when he started to notice how Jews were treated in those camps. As the movie showed, he saw how the German Officers were torturing and killing Jews all the time. Some of those Germans were even killing just for fun, such as the German Officer Amon Goth. He was a vile racist officer that killed Jewish children so excitedly. The other scene was when Schindler with his wife saw the atrocities in the Jewish camp where the Germans closed the whole camp and killed almost all Jews comfortably. He and his wife were standing together shocked when they saw how criminals the German Security Members were. As I think, this was the moment in which Schindler started to realize the difference between hating Jews as a different race and killing them with brutality. He realized that those Nazis had no borderline in their hate towards Jews. That’s why he started to sympathize with imprisoned Jews and take as many as he could out of that hell.
This was a heroic work because he had risked his life when he was saving Jews. He was arrested due to an innocent kiss to a young Jewish girl in his birthday party. Imagine how he would be punished, if German authorities knew what he was doing. But he didn’t care. He spent all his pennies in saving Jews until he became bankrupt. At the end when the war finished, he cried, for he didn’t save more lives. He said that he could have saved more lives if he didn’t spend his money on unworthy things. Schindler was a human at the end. He sympathized with the Jews, even if the movie didn’t clearly show why he changed to a good man.
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