| SCHINDLER’S LIST opens
in a Jewish family’s home. The Jews are reciting in prayer for the Sabbath day around
a table full of brightly-lit candles. When the Jews are gone from the house the candles
slowly burn out. The German forces defeat the Polish in weeks.
Soon afterward, the Jews are forced out of their homes to report to the train station,
where their names are registered. Over 10,000 Jews are being shipped off to Krakow. People
tease and yell at any Jew they see in the street.
In Krakow the ghetto is overcrowded with Jews. The Jewish people are all
gathered together and organized into working groups by the Judenrat (Jewish council
comprised of twenty-four elected Jews responsible for the order). Oskar Schindler visits
the ghetto. He is a German businessman, who wishes to see Itzhak Stern, a Jew that owns a
pot-making factory. Jews are no longer allowed to own businesses, so Oskar makes a deal
with Itzhak, and plans to take over the factory after trading money and appointing him his
factory manager.
It is now March 20, 1941 - the deadline for entering the ghetto. Edict
44/91 establishes a Jewish district. All Jews are now forced to pack their belongings and
move out of their homes by German soldiers. When the Jews arrive to the ghetto, they
receive housing assignments and are forced to be in tight living quarters.
The next morning, the people are gathered outside and information on
their education and working experiences are reported. Some of the Jews that can’t be
used for work are loaded onto trucks and sent off to horrible camps. Some of the Jews that
are able to work will soon report to Oskar Schindler’s factory.
Under Sterns influence, Schindler has come to feel an empathy and responsibility toward
his workers, and when the Nazis confine all Jews to a forced labor camp commanded by the
sadistic Amon Goeth, Schindler volunteers to keep "his Jews" confined at the
factory. At his own expense, he constructs barracks and strings barbed wire. He apparently
creates a outpost of the labor camp which in reality is a safe haven from the sinister
Goeth, who regularly sends "unfit" Jewish workers to Auschwitz.
Oskar starts to promote his new factory by sending baskets full of goods
to many German leaders. The Jews begin their work in the factory. They are taught how to
make pots and pans. These workers are very grateful to Oskar for the jobs because it keeps
them out of the camps and alive. A one-armed man personally thanks Oskar for his job. The
Germans later murder him because of his handicap.
Thousands of Jews are shipped off on a train to a concentration camp.
The entire luggage is stolen and gone through by German soldiers. By mistake, Itzhak Stern
is placed on a train. Oskar hears of this mistake and rushes down to the station and
desperately retrieves him from the train.
Untersturmfuhrer Amon Goeth is the German officer that is in charge of
the construction of the Plaszow labor camp. The Jewish people build the camp, along with
Goeth’s house located inside the camp. Goeth is sadistically cruel -- a man that is
not reluctant to shoot anybody in the camp. He is very angry about the success of the
Jewish people, and says that all they have done in the past will soon be forgotten.
Intermission
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