Oskar Schindler: War Criminal

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I really don't want to rehash the Schindler's List debate. But since this
list seems to be populated now with even more devotees of the film than
when we last visited this topic more than a year ago, I will briefly
restate my case against it.

The movie glorifies a man, Oskar Schindler, who profited from the use of
prison/slave labor. To make him a "hero"--with the obligatory "slight hint
of moral ambiguity" to add "depth" to his character--for attempting to
"save" from extirmination "some" of the laborers who had built and largely
managed his "business" is, I contend, a dangerous and deceptive use of
artistic propaganda--hence my earlier parallel of Spielberg to Leni
Reifenstahl--though Leni is by far the more gifted film-maker, and, oddly
enough, has probably more heart than Mr. S, despite his talent for selling
schmaltz.

Schindler's factory was a *negelganger,* a side camp designed to exploit
the same kind of prison labor pools that were assembling rockets at
Nordhausen (Dora/Buchenwald), chemicals and Xyklon-b gas for Dow and IG
Farben at Dauchau and Mauthausen, film for IG Farben at Ravensbruck,
electronic equipment for Phillips and Siemens at Herzogenbusch, car parts
for BMW and Daimler-Benz at Sachsenhausen, and amunitions for Krupp at
Gross Rosen and Neuengamme.

In aiding the escape of the "Schindler Jews," Schindler was shrewdly acting
in his own self-interest: first, the gassing of his best and most
experienced employees would be bad for business; and, second, he saw the
writing on the wall--the war was coming to a rapid close, the Soviet troops
were moving in to liberate the death camps, and he needed to take some kind
of action to save his own ass. This is the liberal (in John Locke's sense
of the word) theme of the movie: that enlightened self-interest is both
heroic, moral, and redemptive. The socio-political implication: Germany can
be rebuilt with capitalist and social/democratic institutions and we'll not
have to worry about another spasm of genocidal tendencies breaking out.

Yes, of course, Speilberg shows us the children, taunting "the Jews, the
Jews," and it is a typical cheap trick on his part. Where are the parents
of these children? Probably out with the local police posse, known as the
Einsatzkommando, ordinary citizens--not the crazed Ralph Fiennes
character--that slaughtered between 2.5 and 3 million Jews--not in death
camps, but on the streets, in the markets, and in their homes.

Schindler was a war criminal in my view, as surely as Rieber, Henry Ford,
and the executives of IG Farben, Volkswagen, Daimler-Benz, Dow Chemical,
Shell, and the hundreds of other corporations who used the genocidal
rampage of the Nazis to increase their profit margins. If Spielberg had
wanted to concentrate on the heroism of a resistance to the Nazis, and
profile people who really put their ass on the line to save Jews, he should
have focused on the courageous citizens of Denmark or the underground in
Italy, the countries which had the highest rate of survival for Jews under
Nazi occupation. I recommend two sources: Zuccotti's The Italians and the
Holocaust and Leni Yahil's The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's remarkable book, Hitler's Willing Executioners,
has been much abused by the Speilberg allies on this list. I won't defend
Goldhagen's conclusions, except to say that his work is a chilling
masterpiece that must be confronted. But I would recommend the following
less controversial works as antidotes to those who believe Schindler's List
is "pretty bold stuff":

The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies by Frank
Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn

Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazi's: Robert Proctor

The Nazi Doctors: RJ Lifton

Hitler's Professors: the part of scholarship in Hitler's Germany: Max Weinreich

Blowback: Christopher Simpson

Jews for Sale: Yehuda Bauer

Education for Death: the making of a Nazi: Gregor Ziemer

The Splendid Blond Beast: Christopher Simpson

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