Teaching Schindler’s List:

Fact, Fiction and Film in Representing the HolocaustTeacher Edition

Based on a book, Holocaust as Horror by:Caroline (Kay) Picart, Florida State

David Frank, U. of Oregon Shortened versions have been published with

The Horror Film (Rutgers UP, 2003) and Film and History.

Schindler’s List’s “Realism”

How “real” does Schindler’s List seem?Why does it “look” so real?

Schindler’s List’s “Realism”

“Shooting in black-and-white gives everything a sloppy urgency . . . Which is what real life is.”

Spielberg on SL

The BilderverbotCan you think of any objections on moral or aesthetic grounds to how Schindler’s List visualized the Holocaust?

The BilderverbotSL is too realistic in rendering visible an event that defies depiction, whose horror renders any attempt at direct representation obscene.

             

Key ArgumentSpielberg “acted out” the Holocaust by framing it as a Hollywood horror-psychological thriller.Acting out, vs. working through, re-enacts trauma, rather than heals it.

To confront the trauma of the Holocaust, he resorted to conventional cinematic depictions of evil as unproblematically monstrous, victims as simply passive, & suffering as an act of violent erotization.

Key QuestionWho is the “monster” in Schindler’s List? What makes this character monstrous?

Key ArgumentSL’s portrayal of suffering borrows from sado-masochistic horror conventionsSL’s portrayal of Nazism renders it unproblematically “monstrous” (monere/monstrare)

Two Key Scenes: Describe them briefly, both in terms

of content and form.The shower scene at Auschwitz

The seduction-turned-torture of Helen Hirsch by Amon Goeth

The Shower Scene in SLWhose gaze do we share?

Whose point of view do we share?

Kaminski (the cinematographer) and Spielberg heightened the terror by using techniques that would make a viewer a participant in the scene.

Schindler’s List and Psycho

Can you see any similarities between the shower scene in Psycho and the one in Schindler’s List?

Schindler’s List and Psycho

Schindler’s List uses formal properties that mime Psycho but produces a different storyClip from Schindler: His Story as Told by the Actual People he Saved (Thames/HBO)

Key QuestionWhich two stereotypes are illustrated particularly in the scene where Goeth hovers around Helen Hirsch?

The Seductress and the Monster

Two stereotypes:The Jewish woman as irresistible, tabooed, reluctant seductressThe German man as irrational, demented killing machine

Jungian ShadowsThe inferior/feminized shadow: the Jewish feminized victimThe technologized/hypermasculinized shadow: the insane and monstrous German male

Law and CrimeHow are law and crime depicted in Schindler’s List?What cinematic conventions are used to code the “good German” (Schindler) vs. the “bad German” (Goeth).

Discussion QuestionsCompare Schindler’s List’s holocaust narrative with Shoah. Do the comparisons both in terms of content and film form. Choose one scene from each film to back up your comparison.Comment on how Spielberg and Kingsley interact re. representing the Holocaust in Survivors of the Holocaust (Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation).

Appendix

Oskar Schindler, circa 1943.

Oskar Schindler with his horse in the camp he built at the Brinnlitz

factory, 1944-45. (Copyright Leopold Page.)

Oskar Schindler, 1944, wearing the Tyrolean hat for which he had become famous. He wore this hat at the Brinnlitz station when he greeted the train that brought the 298 women rescued from

Auschwitz. (Copyright Leopold Page.)

Oskar Schindler, second from right, Munich, 1946, with some of the Jews he

saved.Left to Right: Manci Rosner, Mundek Horowitz, Ludmila

Page, Oskar Schindler, Rose Kippel. Seated, left to right: Halinka Horowitz, Olek Rosner, Pesia Bloch. (copright L.

Page)

Amon Goeth sleeping on a lawn chair at his villa, Plaszow Camp,

1943-44 (copyright Leopold Page)

Amon Goeth on the balcony of his villa overlooking Plaszow

camp.(Copyright Leopold Page.)

Amon Goeth in the witness box at his trial, Krakow, 1945.

(Collection of Anna and Robert G. Ware.)

Jews being made to clean away the snow, Krakow, January 1940.

(Collection of the State Archive of Krakow.)

Jews in Krakow being loaded onto freight cars for transport to

concentration camps. (Collection of the State Archive of Krakow)

German officer checking the papers of a Jewish couple on their way to the

ghetto. (Collection of the State Archive of Krakow)

Women laborers pulling large ore cars (three in tandem, filled with stones)

uphill in the Plaszow camp (copyright Leopold Page)

Men in the Plaszow camp pushing ore cars filled with stones. (copyright

Leopold Page)

Oskar Schindler, seated, and Leopold Page, Paris, November

1963.(copyright Leopold Page.)

Leopold Page with Steven Spielberg discussing the filming of the scene in

the Catholic cemetery, Jerusalem, May 1993.

(copyright Leopold Page.)

Steven Spielberg documenting his first visit to Krakow with a video

camera, January 1992, at the Remuh synagogue.

(copyright Marek Brozski)

During the filming of the poker game between Amon Goeth and Oskar Schindler that is to decide the fate of Helen Hirsch. Spielberg contemplating “how to do it.”

(c. L. Page.)

Oskar Schindler’s grave in the Catholic cemetery, Jerusalem.

(copyright Leopold Page.)

Helpful ResourcesThomas Keneally, Schindler’s List (Touchstone, 1982).Thomas Fensch, ed., Oskar Schindler and his List (Paul S. Eriksson, 1995)Yosefa Loshitzsky, ed., Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List (Indiana University Press, 1997)Franciszek Palowski, Anna and Robert G. Ware, trans., The Making of Schindler’s List (Birch Lane Press/Carol Publishing Group, 1998).