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Schindler's List Essay

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Six million Jewish residents of Eastern Europe were exterminated during the Holocaust of the 1940’s. Families were taken out of their homes and put into ghettos, which were large prison type establishments that housed dozens of people in one small apartment. They were then separated from their families, "men to the left and women to the right", and were placed in concentration camps, where most of them were killed and cremated. In 1993, Steven Spielberg directed a film, Schindler’s List, which depicted the life of one man who risked his life and money to save the few Jewish families he could.

In the movie Schindler's List, the story of the Holocaust is told from a dual point of view; that of the Jewish people who are downtrodden, …show more content…

Thus, it can be concluded that in the beginning of the movie Schindler does not fully grasp the tragedy at hand, and consequently does nothing attempt to aid the Jews. Schindler's realizations of the horrors of the holocaust begin in one scene near the middle of the film. During this infamous turning point of the movie, Schindler, on top of a barren hill, traces the path of a young and helpless Jewish girl who wanders haphazardly through the streets of a devastated camp. Her lone image personalizes the slaughter. Schindler tries to track her progress as she invisibly makes her way, aimless and alone, past the madness and chaos in the street - a woman is machine-gunned behind her. He loses sight of the small figure as she walks behind a building, but then he glimpses her again, walking by a file of Jews being herded down a sidewalk. During the roundup, a German soldier fires at a single-file lineup of men, killing five with one bullet. Distressed and stricken by the nightmare below and the plight of the little girl in red, Schindler sees her entering one of the empty apartment buildings. There, she climbs the stairs and crawls under a bed for cover in a ransacked room. Her safety is only temporary, for later she will be hunted down and cold-heartedly murdered, forgotten to the world, destroyed by her own people.

This scene is the point at which Schindler becomes infuriated, and he asks himself why these things would happen, and

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