La liste de Schindler

Le scénario

The film opens, with one of its few color scenes, with a closeup of a hand lighting votive candles with a match in a pre-war Polish Jewish family's home on a Friday night Sabbath. After the singing of a prayer/incantation, the family vanishes from view. The two Shabbat candles burn down as they sit in solitary on a table. In a closeup shot, a reddish-glowing flame extinguishes itself, sending a small pillar of wispy smoke upward from the candle - the smoke in the color scene dissolves into the grayish smoke (the film becomes monochrome here) which bellows from a steam locomotive of a transport train pulling into a station in Poland, just as the juggernaut against the Jews begins.

September 1939, the German forces defeated the Polish Army in two weeks. Jews were ordered to register all family members and relocate to major cities. More than 10,000 Jews from the countryside arrive in Krakow daily.

One folding table with a wooden top is set up in rural Poland on a small train platform with a clipboard, paper lists-forms, an inkpad, blotter, stapler, stamp, and ink bottle to register a small rural Jewish family. The first spoken word of dialogue in the film is "Name?" [Names and lists are two of the film's major visual motifs.] The scene is repeated and multiplied with many more tables, government officials, and bewildered refugees as more and more Jews arrive in the big city of Krakow to be registered. Large, magnified typewritten letters rap out the Jewish names: Hudes Isak, Feber, Bauman, Klein, Chaim, Neuman, Samuel, Salomon, Horn, Steiner.

Soothing classical music from a radio plays before the scene switches to a hotel room. A mysterious man pours himself a drink, lays out ties on various silk suits on his bed, chooses a fancy cufflink, knots his tie, dresses himself in impeccable fashion with a folded handkerchief in the pocket of his double-breasted suit, counts out lots of money from his bureau for the evening, and pins, in close-up, a gold, Nazi (with swastika) Party button on his lapel.

The camera follows from behind the slickly-dressed gentleman as he enters a swanky nightclub in the Nazi-occupied city of Krakow and slips bank notes to the maitre d' (Branko Lustig) for placement at a fancy table. The handsome, majestic, slickly-dressed playboy with an eye for the ladies is the authoritative, aristocratic-looking Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), not yet identified by name. With sharp observational skills, he watches as SS Officers at another table are photographed - he sizes up the power elite in his high-stakes gamble to cultivate their friendship. He notices a conspicuously-empty table in the front of the club with a "RESERVE" card on it. With a hand held up with a wad of bills, the bon-vivant buys a round of premium drinks for the top brass (and their female companion) which soon occupy the front-and-center table, and persuades them with intimidating charm to join him at his table for more drinks. The group of people surrounding Schindler swells to include many more SS officers paired up with cabaret entertainers/dancers - the gracious host purchases endless plates of food, caviar, and French wines for the rowdy guests in his party. Schindler's self-promotion is successful - the separate tables in the club merge into one. An SS officer stuffs his mouth and brags about 'weathering the storm':

This storm is different. This is not the Romans. This storm is the SS.

Soon, the scheming and manipulative Schindler prominently insinuates himself and becomes the center of the party - he rubs shoulders with everyone in the room to make a name for himself - the first step in his pragmatic business scheme to become a war profiteer. Even a top colonel, Scherner, who is later brought to the RESERVED table, gravitates to him. Martin, the maitre d', authoritatively announces the name of the flamboyant man: "That's Oskar Schindler!" Schindler has his pictures taken (with a big camera with garish flashbulb) with all the top brass, the showgirls, and other women. [Later in the ghetto massacre scene, other flashes of light in window frames are the firings of machine-guns.]

More and more Nazis march in the streets of Krakow - one Orthodox Jewish man stands amidst several soldiers while one of them intimidates him by cutting off his payess (curly side locks of hair) with a slice of his bayonet. Schindler, identified by the camera with only his Nazi button-holed pin, walks along the street's sidewalk as he passes a long line of Jewish refugees, each wearing identifying armbands. They are part of the huge influx of rural Jews who arrive every day on SS trains. A truck with a loud-speaker mounted on its cab hood issues another alert or edict - a restrictive announcement during the occupation.

Schindler spirals his way up the staircase into the Judenrat, a virtually-powerless council of Jewish administrators:

The Judenrat

The Jewish Council comprised of 24 elected Jews personally responsible for carrying out the orders of the regime in Krakow, such as drawing up lists for work details, food and housing. A place to lodge complaints.

In the crowded office of the Judenrat filled with desperate people, one dispossessed Jewish woman complains about the intrusion of Nazis into their private lives and the confiscation of property: "They come into our house and tell us we don't live there anymore. It now belongs to a certain SS officer...Aren't you supposed to be able to help?" At the front of the line, Schindler's voice distinctively addresses the administrators: "Itzhak Stern. I'm looking for Itzhak Stern." A bespectacled, timid man in the back corner of the office finally manages to acknowledge his identity as Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a gifted accountant.

In another office with Stern, the suave enterpreneur Schindler [a Sudeten German who failed as a businessman before the war] discusses his capitalistic business plan to take over a former, confiscated pots and pans company to manufacture mess kits and cookware for the troops at the front, and to make Stern his accountant. [He is on the make with Jews as well as with the Nazis.] Schindler describes his strong suit in creating panache or "the presentation", while Stern's talent will be to recruit Jewish investors for capital and the 'free' workers for labor, and provide management to run the business:

Schindler: There's a company you did the books for on Lipowa Street, made what - pots and pans?
Stern: By law, I have to tell you, sir, I'm a Jew.
Schindler: Well, I'm a German, so there we are. (Schindler pours a shot of cognac into the cap of his flask and offers it to Stern - who declines.) A good company you think?
Stern: Modestly successful.
Schindler: I know nothing about enamelware, do you?
Stern: I was just the accountant.
Schindler: Simple engineering, though, wouldn't you think? Change the machines around, whatever you do, you could make other things, couldn't you? Field kits, mess kits, army contracts. Once the war ends, forget it, but for now it's great. You could make a fortune, don't you think?
Stern: I think most people right now have other priorities.
Schindler: Like what?
Stern: I'm sure you'll do just fine once you get the contracts. In fact, the worse things get, the better you will do.
Schindler: Oh, I can get the signatures I need - that's the easy part. Finding the money to buy the company, that's hard.
Stern: You don't have any money?
Schindler: Not that kind of money. You know anybody? Jews, yeah. Investors. You must have contacts in the Jewish business community working here.
Stern: What "community"? Jews can no longer own businesses. That's why this one's in receivership.
Schindler: Ah, but they wouldn't own it. I'd own it. I'd pay them back in product. Pots and pans.
Stern: (non-plussed) Pots and pans.
Schindler: Something they can use. Something they can feel in their hands. They can trade it on the black market, do whatever they want. Everybody's happy. If you want, you could run the company for me.
Stern: Let me understand. They'd put up all the money. I'd do all the work. But what, if you don't mind my asking, would you do?
Schindler: I'd make sure it's known the company's in business. I'd see that it had a certain panache - that's what I'm good at, not the work, not the work. (He spreads his open palms out) - the presentation. (A long pause)
Stern: I'm sure I don't know anybody who'd be interested in this.
Schindler: Well, they should be...Tell them they should be.

A young Polish Jew, Poldak Pfefferberg (Jonathan Sagalle) pauses in front of a shop window display where there is a picture of a human skull with lines indicating the smaller circumference (and lesser intelligence) of the Judaic brain. He discreetly removes his Jewish armband and enters a Catholic cathedral where he genuflects himself with holy water. As a priest performs Mass to parishioners scattered in the pews, a number of Jewish black marketeers use the cathedral to cover up their whispered business about the latest commercial deals: "Marks for Zloty at 2.45 to 1," "it's a nice coat - she'll trade it for ration coupons." Suddenly, Schindler (with his prominent Nazi button on his coat) appears next to them , asking: "That's a nice shirt. Nice shirt. Do you know where I can find a nice shirt like that?" Most of the other nervous Jews scatter quickly, but Pfefferberg remains behind to pursue the transaction. One of Pfefferberg's fellow hustlers, Marcel Goldberg (Mark Ivanir) gives a hollow excuse: "It's illegal to buy or sell anything on the street. We don't do that. We're here to pray," and then leans forward to feign praying. When the others won't chance it, Pfefferberg is left alone to bargain with Schindler for his expensive tastes for black market luxury goods - so he can bribe German officers and encourage his own business ventures:

Pfefferberg: Do you have any idea how much a shirt like this costs?
Schindler: Nice things cost money.
Pfefferberg: How many?
Schindler: I'm going to need some other things too as things come up...
Pfefferberg: This won't be a problem.
Schindler: ...from time to time.

March 20, 1941

Deadline for Entering the Ghetto
Edict 44/91 establishes a closed Jewish district south of the Vistula River. Residency in the walled ghetto is compulsory. All Jews from Krakow and surrounding areas are forced from their homes and required to crowd into an area of only sixteen square blocks.

Thousands of families carry their belongings or push them in barrows on the forced, mass exodus from rural homes. In the winter snow, they trundle up to more makeshift folding tables to be added to lists, have their cards stamped, and to be assigned to ghetto housing. In an elegant apartment as they are evicted under the watchful eye of the SS, the wealthy Jewish inhabitants, the Nussbaums, gather together framed pictures, silverware, and anything else of value that they can carry with them. They are herded out of the fancy building into the street, to join the throngs of others pushing large carts piled high with furniture toward the segregated ghetto. One Polish girl, one of many neighboring spectators, screams out at the parade with frightening prejudice and revilement: "Goodbye Jews."

With parallel editing, a smug Oskar Schindler is chauffeured to the same fashionable apartment and shown his new dwelling - the Nussbaums' lavish vacated apartment with its fine furnishings, Persian rugs, French doors, and hardwood floors. The dispossessed family is led up a crowded staircase inside a rundown ghetto tenement. They haul their belongings up to their assigned living quarters - while Schindler inspects his new apartment and sprawls himself out on their bed, commenting: "It couldn't be better." The Nussbaum family enters into one of the dingy, unheated, empty apartments - children cry as they look at each other in dismay:

Mrs. Nussbaum: It could be worse.
Mr. Nussbaum: (disbelieving) How? Tell me. How on earth could it possibly be worse?

More families, orthodox Jews, shuffle in by them to find their places in the ghetto.

At the ghetto gate, where the Jews are forced to check in at the folding tables for their housing assignments, Pfefferberg, with his attractive wife Mila (Adi Nitzan), is astonished to see that his Jewish friend Goldberg has sold out - he has somehow made an agreement with the Nazi Gestapo to be granted a position of authority as a ghetto policeman: "I'm a policeman now, could you believe it? That's what's hard to believe...It's a good racket, Poldek. It's the only racket here. Look, maybe I could put in a good word for you with my superiors...Come on, they're not as bad as everyone says. Well, they're worse than everyone says, but it's a lot of money, a lot of money."

Stern arranges to have several wealthy Jewish elders meet with profiteer Schindler in his car parked outside the ghetto gates to discuss investment backing in Schindler's factory. The Jewish investors are made to understand that conventional wealth and status no longer have any meaning. Their only bargaining power is to accept his harsh terms - he will supply them with some of the production goods - pots and pans - to sell on the black market:

Schindler: For each thousand you invest, I will repay you with (Stern provides the number) two hundred kilos of enamel ware a month, to begin in July and to continue for one year - after which time we're even. That's it. It's very simple.
Investor: Not good enough...
Schindler: Not good enough? Look where you're living. Look where you've been put. 'Not good enough.' A couple of months ago, you'd be right. Not anymore.
Investor: Money's still money.
Schindler: No it is not. That's why we're here. Trade goods, that's the only currency that'll be worth anything in the ghetto. Things have changed, my friend. (slightly irritated) Did I call this meeting? You told Mr. Stern you wanted to speak to me. I'm here. I've made you a fair offer.
Investor: Fair would be a percentage of the company.
Schindler: (laughs) Forget the whole thing. Get out.
Investor: How do we know that you will do what you say?
Schindler: Because I said I would. Do you want a contract? To be upheld by what court? I said what I'll do, that's our contract. (While they think it over, Schindler offers a drink of cognac to Stern - he stares at it and silently declines)

Valises filled with money are passed to Schindler for the purchase of the confiscated enamelware factory. He peers down from behind a wall of windows in the upstairs office - a Jewish technician pushes a button to start the machinery in the debris-strewn plant. Stern has been appointed the factory's accountant and plant manager. To Schindler, it makes good economic sense that he would make more money if Jews were hired as the unpaid work force, because they're obviously cheaper than Poles:

Stern: The standard SS rate for Jewish skilled labor is seven marks a day, five for unskilled and women. This is what you pay the Reich Economic Office, the Jews themselves receive nothing. Poles you pay wages. Generally, they get a little more. Are you listening?...The Jewish worker's salary - you pay it directly to the SS, not to the worker. He gets nothing.
Schindler: But it's less. It's less than what I would pay a Pole...That's the point I'm trying to make. Poles cost more. Why should I hire Poles?

Acting as his middleman, Stern recruits Jews to work in his enamelware factory located "outside the ghetto so you can barter for extra goods, for eggs, I don't know what you need. With the Polish workers, you can't get a deal. Also, he's asking for ten healthy women for the..." The names of 'non-essential' people (who can't contribute something valuable to the war effort), such as musicians or teachers, are placed on a list and then herded onto trucks bound for unknown destinations. With humanistic intentions to save those who have no 'essential' skills, Stern forges documents and provides work certificates to rescue from extermination those who would be considered 'not essential'. In one case, he saves the doomed life of a teacher of history and literature, transforming him into a metal polisher. The teacher's work documents are stamped by a satisfied German clerk, placing him in the category of Blauschein - an 'essential' worker with a "blue stamp" in a war-protected industry.

On Schindler's factory floor, the recruited Jewish workers, including the teacher, are given instruction by a technician on how to use the heavy machinery to manufacture a soup bowl, and dip the cooking utensils into vats of enamel. A sign painter brushes the words "DIREKTOR" on the frosted glass of the door to Schindler's office, as he interviews many young female candidates seated before him for secretarial positions: "Filing, billing, keeping track of my appointments. Shorthand. Typing obviously. How is your typing?" The scene jump-cuts through a succession of girls at the typewriter. Time passes, illustrated by the movement of the painters' ladders around the wall of the room. For comic relief in the film, Schindler show flirtatious interest in the prettier candidates who hunt and peck, but glumly sits back with utter disinterest when the fastest typist (a dour, cigarette-smoking, plump matron) is being tested. One of the sultriest young ladies does a seductively-slow one-finger dance with the typewriter - and with Schindler. Because Schindler can't decide, he hires eighteen of the prettiest, most 'qualified' young ladies as secretaries - and is posed with them by a photographer outside the re-possessed plant in front of the imposing sign:

D.E.F.
DEUTSCHE EMAILWARENFABRIK

In a scene with parallel editing and overlapping, voice-over dialogue, gadabout Schindler entertains - and seduces - SS German officers with rich food, caviar and drink in his apartment. As part of an elaborate confidence game, he provides some of his pretty secretaries to the men, as he reads off a list of black market items (including perishables and cognac) to be acquired (with invested Jewish money) from Poles by Pfefferberg:

Boxed teas are good, coffee, pate, uhm, kilbassa sausage, cheeses, caviar. And of course, who could live without German cigarettes and as many as you can find. And some more fresh fruit - they're real rarities, oranges, lemons, pineapples. I need several boxes of German cigars, the best. And dark and sweetened chocolate, not in the shape of lady fingers...we're going to need lots of cognac, the best - Hennessy. Dom Perignon champagne. Get L'Espadon sardines. And, oh, try to find nylon stockings.

Under a bridge crossing the Vistula River, a man pulls aside a tarpaulin covering boxes of fresh fruit in the bottom of his rowboat and is paid with cash. A bribed doctor opens a medicine cabinet and pushes aside medicines, revealing a hidden compartment behind holding several bottles of Hennessey cognac. Beneath the ties of train tracks, a metal case is pulled from beneath one of the timbers, revealing a case of sardines.

(Schindler's voice-over) It is my distinct pleasure to announce the fully operational status of Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik - manufacturers of superior enamelware crockery, expressly designed and crafted for military use, utilizing only the most modern equipment. DEF's staff of highly skilled and experienced artisans and journeymen deliver a product of unparalleled quality, enabling me to proffer with absolute confidence and pride, a full line of field and kitchen ware unsurpassable in all respects by my competitors. See attached list and available colors. Anticipating the enclosed bids will meet with your approval. And looking forward to a long and mutually prosperous association. I extend to you, in advance, my sincerest gratitude and very best regards. Oskar Schindler.

Elaborate gift baskets (of liquor, cigarettes, coffee, tea, fresh fruit, and other rare luxury goods) with the accompanying letter from above - are assembled and carried by Schindler's cadre of pretty secretaries through the factory (where novice workers struggle to learn the new craft), and strategically delivered to SS officers (the ones he had earlier been photographed with in the nightclub) to irresistibly stimulate bids and purchase contracts. The ultimate con artist, he bribes and schemes his way toward wealth.

The Direktor strides through his factory, dictating to a parade of his secretaries about production demands and delivery details. As expected, one of the many SS officers, Julian Scherner (Andrzej Seweryn), signs and stamps his approval of an materials contract with D.E. F. To praise his accountant's efforts for reaping profits and to treat him as an equal, Schindler calls the self-effacing Stern to his office to share a drink from his decanter:

Schindler: My father was fond of saying you need three things in life. A good doctor, a forgiving priest, and a clever accountant. The first two, I've never had much use for them. But the third - (he raises his glass to recognize Stern, but the accountant doesn't respond) Just pretend, for Christ's sake. (Stern mechanically raises his glass slightly)
Stern: Is that all?
Schindler: I'm trying to thank you. I'm saying I couldn't have done this without you. The usual thing would be to acknowledge my gratitude. It would also, by the way, be the courteous thing.
Stern: (in a hollow tone) You're welcome. (Schindler finishes both drinks)

Schindler's girlfriend, Victoria Klonowska (Malgoscha Gebel), wearing his silk robe covering her slip, answers the door of his apartment early one morning, feeling herself embarrassed to see Emilie Schindler (Caroline Goodall), his estranged wife from back home, standing there. His mistress of the evening hurriedly leaves, thoroughly self-conscious. With self-deprecating innocence and charm after being caught as an adulterer, Schindler flatters his wife: "You look wonderful." That night, they emerge from his apartment building in formal clothes to go to a fancy restaurant. With his reputation for women, the doorman can't quite believe that the woman on Schindler's arm is indeed "Mrs. Schindler." During dinner, Schindler explains that his wealthy accoutrements (car, apartment) are "not a charade" - he has 350 workers on his factory payroll.

Schindler: Three hundred and fifty workers on the factory floor with one purpose...to make money - for me!...They won't soon forget the name Schindler either. I can tell you that. Oskar Schindler, they'll say. Everybody remembers him. He did something extraordinary. He did something no one else did. He came here with nothing, a suitcase, and built a bankrupt company into a major manufactory. And left with a steamer trunk, two steamer trunks, full of money. All the riches of the world...There's no way I could have known this before, but there was always something missing. In every business I tried, I can see now it wasn't me that had failed. Something was missing. Even if I'd known what it was, there's nothing I could have done about it, because you can't create this thing. And it makes all the difference in the world between success and failure.
Emilie: Luck.
Schindler: War.

The next day, after being given no assurance of love or steadfast devotion, Emilie boards a departing train, shakes his hand as it pulls away, and waves goodbye.

In his office above the factory, Schindler is presented with a financial report by Stern. The factory is doing "better this month than last," but next month may be worse if the war ends. Stern asks permission to bring in a grateful machinist, Mr. Lowenstein (Henryk Bista), to personally thank Schindler for giving him a job. The elderly, one armed man with bruises on his face appears in the doorway - Schindler appears long-suffering as he listens perfunctorily to the praise of the man: "The SS beat me up. They would have killed me, but I'm essential to the war effort, thanks to you...I work hard for you...I'll continue to work hard for you...God bless you sir...You're a good man...(To Stern) He saved my life...God bless him...(To Schindler) God bless you." Later, Schindler angrily tells Stern that the 'one-armed,' old, unskilled worker shouldn't have been allowed to work: "What's his use?"

One snowy winter morning, Schindler's workers are marched out of the ghetto gate, under armed guard, to the factory for their work day. A squad of SS troopers halts them and orders them to shovel snow from the street. In flashback, Schindler's SS contact sits behind a desk rationalizing the incident: "Jews shoveling snow. It's got a ritual significance." Lowenstein, proudly proclaiming himself as "an essential worker for Oskar Schindler," is plucked from the group by a few SS, declared "twice as useless" and inefficient, led a short distance away, and shot point-blank in the head. Blood slowly flows from the corpse's head wound, darkening, drenching, and melting the snow. Oskar is maddened by the senseless death and loss of a worker, but he knows that filing a grievance with the Economic Office for compensation (for the "one-armed machinist") wouldn't do any good.

On a train platform, soldiers and clerks with typed lists are supervising the boarding of hundreds of Jews into cattle cars. They are promised: "Leave your luggage on the platform. Clearly label it...Do not bring your baggage with you. It will follow you later." Pfefferberg has summoned Schindler from a love-making session to the station to search for Stern - who has been mistakenly placed on one of the slatted livestock cars bound for liquidation. Boldly and brazenly, Schindler asks for the Gestapo clerk's name who has identified Stern's name on the list and dutifully refuses to release him: "I'm sorry. You can't have him. He's on the list. If he were an essential worker, he would not be on the list."

In a tense scene, he cooly threatens both the clerk and a superior, an SS sergeant, who refuse to release his plant manager, bluffing them into compliance: "I think I can guarantee you you'll both be in Southern Russia before the end of the month. Good day." He walks along the cars - joined by the intimidated clerk and sergeant, urgently calling out Stern's name, as the locomotive begins to move and pick up speed. After Stern is located in one of the cars, Schindler orders that the train is stopped. The brakeman responds, and the wheels screech to a grinding halt. The gate on the door is opened and Stern climbs out in the last-instant rescue. Schindler is instructed by the clerk to sign and initial his name next to Stern's name on the clipboard list: "It makes no difference to us, you understand. This one, that one. It's the inconvenience to the list. It's the paperwork."

The camera tracks backward from the two of them as Stern hurries along to keep up with the long stride of Schindler - he explains and apologizes for his grave error: "I somehow left my work card at home. I tried to explain them it was a mistake, but...I'm sorry, it was stupid." Schindler replies about the concern for his own fate: "What if I got here five minutes later? Then where would I be?" They pass one of the handcarts with the carefully-labeled luggage. The camera leaves them and follows the cart as it is wheeled into a warehouse/garage where the suitcases are piled up. Under SS guard, the clothing is removed and thrown onto one pile. Other large piles hold shoes, metal items, photographs, and wrist watches. Some of the more valuable possessions with gold and silver content (candelabra, Passover platters) are tagged and sorted on shelves. Jewish jewelers sift, sort, weigh, and grade the value of diamonds, pearls, pendants, brooches, and rings. The jeweler reacts when a satchel of extracted human teeth with gold and silver fillings is dumped on his desk.

"JEWISH TOWN"
KRAKOW GHETTO WINTER ' 42

In the backseat of an open, staff SS car, Untersturmfuhrer Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) is driven through the cold, wind-swept ghetto which is divided into two halves. On one side (Ghetto A) are the cramped housing units for civil employees and industrial workers. On the other side (Ghetto B) are where surplus laborers live, including the elderly and infirm.

Plaszow Forced Labor Camp Under Construction

Outside Krakow, new construction, the pouring of foundations, and renovation are occurring. Teams of forced Jewish laborers are doing the work. A villa high on a hillside is assigned to the new commandant as housing. From a line-up of young women, Goeth selects a "very lucky girl" for a job "away from all this backbreaking work" in his villa. The ones with domestic experience are ignored ("all those annoying habits I'll have to undo") - he chooses a shy, trembling girl named Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz) as his villa's maid.

A female Jewish worker trained as an engineer at the University of Milan, Diana Reiter (Elina Lowensohn), is the foreman who supervises the construction of a half-finished barracks at Plaszow. When she complains loudly about the faulty, poorly-laid foundation, she tells the vicious Goeth:

The entire foundation has to be torn down and repoured. If not, there will be at least a subsidence at the southern end of the barracks. Subsidence and then collapse.

Calmly, Goeth turns to his inferior and arbitrarily commands: "Shoot her." All are stunned by the sudden order and she pleads for sanity and reason: "Herr Commandant, I'm only trying to do my job." He curtly replies: "Yeah, I'm doing mine...I'm not going to have arguments with these people. Shoot her here, under my authority." As the officer unholsters his pistol, her last words are: "It will take more than that." Goeth calmly replies: "I'm sure you're right." Her body goes limp and crumples to the ground after she is shot in the head - there is more blood-stained snow after the indiscriminate, random killing. Without pausing, Goeth then orders the structure rebuilt: "Take it down, repour it, rebuild it, like she said."

To establish the similarity of the two male characters, both Schindler and Goeth - in two different locations - are brushing shaving soap onto their fair faces and sliding a straight razor through the lather on their Aryan cheeks. Prefaced with a short voice-over transition, the soon-to-be Commandant Goeth stands before his assembled young Sonderkommandos in Krakow and addresses them in the dawn light. He preaches the liquidation of the ghetto and of the Jews in Krakow:

Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now, the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago, when elsewhere, they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Kazimierz the Great, so called, told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled, they took hold, they prospered. In business, science, education, the arts, they came here with nothing. Nothing. And they flourished. For six centuries, there has been a Jewish Krakow. Think about that. By this evening, those six centuries are a rumor. They never happened. Today is history.

In a quick montage of scenes during the speech's delivery, a Jewish man sings a prayer incantation, the Dresner family shares a meal in their ghetto apartment, Mila smiles up at her husband Poldek, and Stern notices through his window that the clerks and listmakers are setting up their folding tables and chairs and setting out their ink pads and stamps in the square. Meanwhile, as Schindler gallops his horse across the countryside with mistress Ingrid (Beatrice Macola), trucks of troops are moved into the ghetto.

LIQUIDATION OF THE GHETTO
MARCH 13, 1943

The terrifying Goeth commands that the stormtroopers, many of whom have leashes on muzzled dogs, start with Ghetto B in his massive orchestration of the coordinated effort. The riders stop on a hilltop clearing above the Krakow ghetto buildings - from a distance and on horseback, they look down at the peaceful, early morning scene - soon they will watch the extermination of the Jewish ghetto. Echoes of the noise of the growling dogs, trucks, and orders shouted out are heard in the distance. The stormtroopers surround the buildings and roust the Jews from their apartments. Fear registers on the faces of the children. In one of many vignettes, some of the refugees roll their valuable jewels into wads of bread to be swallowed - like a communion ritual. Any resistance or questioning is halted with the report of a gun. Suitcases are dumped from upper balconies and abandoned as litter. Pfefferberg tells Mila that he is planning to escape through the sewer tunnel, but she refuses to join him. He pries off a manhole cover and descends into the steamy depths. Frightened Jews are yelled at and herded into groups. One father is killed with machine gun fire for deflecting a soldier's aim toward his son's back as he flees - the boy is also arbitrarily shot as he is dragged back.

To prevent even crueler deaths, a doctor in the hospital calmly measures out doses of poisonous (Thucizna) cocktails that are soon administered by nurses to threatened, helpless, terminally-ill Jewish patients. The lifeless corpses are machine-gunned until the soldiers realize they're already dead. Without regard to family considerations, women are segregated from the men, splitting husbands and wives. Young Danka Dresner (Anna Mucha) is dragged away from her family. As he rounds the corner at one end of the sewer tunnel, Pfefferberg barely escapes being gunned down by waiting troops. He turns back and comes up in a street littered by dead bodies and strewn luggage, and is unable to locate Mila in their apartment.

As they are herded along, Danka and Mrs. Dresner duck into an open ghetto apartment. Danka lowers herself into a sunken floor compartment to hide, but a stunned Mrs. Dresner is intentionally left outside by another woman who claims: "There's not enough room for you...I can fit the girl, but not you." Conspicuously caught in the middle of a suitcase-littered street, and with nowhere to hide, Pfefferberg thinks fast - he begins to stack the suitcases against a wall when Goeth and other soldiers appear - he faces them, clicks his heels and salutes, masquerading as a recruit:

Pfefferberg: I respectfully report I've been given orders to clear the bundles from the road so there will be no obstructions to the thoroughfare.
Goeth: (amused) Finish and join the lines, little Polish clicking soldier. (The troops move on)

As a terrified Mrs. Dresner hurries down the apartment building steps, a young Jewish boy (an OD) who is assisting the Germans considers blowing his whistle on her to alert the soldiers, but then he recognizes her - she is the mother of one of his friends. He encourages her to hide under the stairs, and then tells approaching SS troops: "I've searched the building. There's no one here." The young lad Adam Levy (Adam Siemion) saves both her and Danka, promising: "Come with me. I will put you in the good line." Mrs. Dresner blesses the boy: "You are not a boy anymore. I'll say a blessing for you."

From his vantage point, Schindler's attention is directed to a young girl in a drab red coat - a small spot of color on the large black and white screen. Her lone image personalizes the slaughter. The camera follows her - and 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.

The final chapter of the Krakow ghetto liquidation scene occurs that evening, with a night-time hunt by special squads of SS killers for Jews still in hiding in the ghetto apartments. They listen with stethoscopes on ceilings and stealthily enter rooms with flashlights. Machine-gun fire produces flickers of starbursts and flashes of light in the nightmarish darkness. When one of the Jews hiding in a piano missteps on the keys, the sour notes are met with rattling gun fire. Bullets pepper an attic floor and tear through kitchen cupboards and pantries, searching for imperceptible targets. Contrapuntally, one of the soldiers plays the piano (is it Bach or Mozart?) in one of the apartments as his comrades roam from room to room - the sounds of death are brought to those that are discovered. Behind him, as the search continues - punctuated by dazzling gunbursts dancing in windows - Goeth cools off his face: "I wish this f--king night were over." Schindler stands in his factory office, staring silently down at the empty D.E.F. factory floor - realizing the implications of the liquidation for his profitable, exploitative business enterprise.

From the perch of his villa's balcony, the young, monstrous, unpredictable commandant Goeth, stripped to the waist, stands with his gut hanging out, surveying from his detached vantage point an open area in the Plaszow work camp (rock quarry) - his kingdom. Relocated to the labor camp outside of Krakow, Jews who survived the liquidation stand in long rows. Goldberg, the turncoat Jew, and other listmakers call out names on lists.

In one of the film's most wrenching scenes, the psychotic, sadistic madman picks up his gun for target practice and aims the high-powered, long-range rifle inscrutably from one unsuspecting figure to the next. He viciously fires and kills a slow-moving woman working in the distance, disturbing his half-naked girlfriend in his own bedroom. She groans and buries her head in a pillow, as Goeth sits down and picks up his burning cigarette from the ledge with his mouth, and resumes his aim and fires toward another of his prisoner-victims. He turns back toward his lover with his scope rifle aimed at her in bed - annoyed, she chides him as "a damn f--kin' child." The barbaric, evil killer of Plaszow pisses into the toilet.

Schindler's shiny Mercedes, a symbol of his wealth, drives through the camp on a road made entirely of broken tombstones scavenged from nearby Jewish cemeteries. Many of the camp's workers are former enamel factory workers of his - one man kneels with his hands in the air with a sign around his neck (for an offense he committed) as a reminder to the others. Schindler is chauffeured to Goeth's villa for a fancy meal with high-ranking German officers and other industrialists:

The SS will manage certain industries itself inside Plaszow. Metalworks, a brush factory, another for re-possessing Jewish clothing from the ghettos to use by burned-out families back home. But it's private industry like yours that stands to benefit most by moving inside the wire of commandant Amon Goeth's...

After Schindler meets Goeth - his evil counterpart, one of the SS officers explains the benefits of moving factories into Plaszow. "Since your labor is housed onsite, it's available to you at all times. You can work them all night if you want. Your factory policies, whatever they've been in the past, they'll continue to be, they'll be respected." Later, in a one-on-one encounter in Goeth's study while they share a drink of cognac, the self-indulgent Schindler describes his economic predicament - and asks for a favor:

Schindler: I go to work the other day. Nobody's there. Nobody tells me about this. I have to find out, I have to go in. Everybody's gone.
Goeth: They're not gone. They're here.
Schindler: They're mine! Every day that goes by, I'm losing money. Every worker that is shot costs me money. I have to find somebody else. I have to train them.
Goeth: We're going to be making so much money, none of this is going to matter.
Schindler: It's bad business. (Goeth's Jewish maid-girlfriend Helen serves them)...
Goeth: Scherner told me something else about you.
Schindler: Yeah, what's that?
Goeth: That you know the meaning of the word 'gratitude.' That it's not some vague thing with you like it is with others. You want to stay where you are. You've got things going on the side, things are good. You don't want anybody telling you what to do. I can understand all that. You know, I know you. What you want is your own sub-camp. Do you have any idea what's involved? The paperwork alone? Forget you got to build the f--king thing, getting the f--king permits is enough to drive you crazy. Then the engineers show up. They stand around, they argue about drainage, foundations, codes, exact specifications, parallel fences four kilometers long, twelve hundred kilograms of barbed wire, six thousand kilograms of electrified fences...I'm telling you, you'll want to shoot somebody. I've been through it, you know, I know.
Schindler: Well, you know, you've been through it. You could make things easier for me. (Goeth shrugs) I'd be grateful.

Schindler's opportunism and sense of timing pay off, but at a price. Five hundred Plaszow worker/prisoners are marched back into the factory gates of the D.E.F. under Schindler's stoic gaze. The Jews are flanked by armed guards, barking dogs, and barbed wire. When the last of them passes by, Schindler asks concernedly about the whereabouts of his competent, disciplined accountant: "Where's Stern?" Stern has been set up in a separate office in the work camp at Plaszow to deal directly with Goeth:

Make sure I see my cut from the factory owners in this camp. I'm leaving you to take care of my main accounts - the Schindler account. He wants his independence. I gave it to him. But independence costs money. This you understand? (Stern nods)...Don't forget who you are working for now.

During another hedonistic party at Goeth's villa attended by Schindler, he has been able to summon Stern from his barracks and speak to his accountant outside Plaszow's work camp gates. Stern prompts his incompetent ex-employer - now without his useful financial, organizational, or middleman skills - to remember the birthdays of their SS friends' wives and children, and the proper method of payoffs (without paperwork, invoices, or receipts) to the main administration and economics office and the armaments board, the governor general's division of the interior, the chief of police's fees and black market contacts. Exasperated, Schindler gives up: "It gives me a headache," he complains. Stern is concerned: "Herr Direktor, don't let the things fall apart. I worked too hard." Schindler shares food scavenged from the party with Stern.

Metalworks factory inside Plaszow forced labor camp.

Goeth inspects the busy metalworks factory, reaching a particular worker (a former Rabbi) who is making hinges. He mentions that workers coming in the next day from Yugoslavia will cause problems - "I've got to make room." The commandant begins timing the making of a hinge with his pocket watch - Rabbi Lewartow (Ezra Dagan) feverishly cuts and crimps the piece and presents the finished product in about forty seconds. Although impressed, Goeth questions the worker's output: "What I don't understand is that you've been working since I think what, about six this morning, yet such a small pile of hinges." After providing his own death sentence, the self-condemned Lewartow is led out by the neck to be shot in an open courtyard. Goeth's malfunctioning gun repeatedly clicks without discharging, as Lewartow drops to his knees and explains: "Herr Commandant, I beg to report that my heap of hinges was so unsatisfactory because the machines were being re-calibrated this morning. I was put onto shoveling coal." Frustrated, Goeth slams the weapon across Lewartow's head, sending the man slumped and dazed to the ground.

Schindler hoists an elaborately-oiled saddle from his car's trunk and delivers it and other gifts to Goeth's villa. Stern approaches Schindler with a serious problem and describes the hinge controversy - he is given Schindler's gold cigarette lighter. In the next scene, the lighter has been transferred into the hands of Goldberg - the bribe has been rewarded with a protective job transfer for the rabbi from the work camp. Goldberg jots Lewartow's name down on a personnel list of workers for the D.E.F.

Goeth paces before a work detail of about twenty men holding their heads down, while dangling a dead chicken in his hand. He demands a confession about the stolen bird - when no one responds, he indiscriminately shoots one of the workers at random with a rifle. After waiting a few more moments, a fourteen-year old, orphaned lad (Adam, the same one who saved Danka and Mrs. Dresner in an earlier scene) steps forward, weeping and shuddering - he points at the dead man, accusing him of the theft. Goeth believes the boy, to everyone's astonishment. A second gift to Stern - a cigarette case - likewise appears with Goldberg. The honored young lad is subsequently assigned to work in the enamelware company.

A nervous, plain-looking young woman, Elsa Krause/Regina Perlman (Bettina Kupfer), summons up her courage to cross the street in front of the D.E.F. and contact the director of the company through the security guard. Schindler glances with disapproval from a second floor landing down a long stairway at her - he turns away from allowing her entry. She returns to her Krakow room, applies lipstick and dresses more provocatively to gain entrance into his office, where she audaciously, yet tentatively, pleads for the transfer of her elderly, unskilled parents from the work camp. Schindler is infuriated, fearing that his own reputation for providing sanctuary and a haven for Jews lacking skills will endanger his financial well-being - he sees himself not as a savior but as a money-maker:

Schindler: So, what can I do for you?
Krause: They say that no one dies here. They say your factory is a haven. They say you are good.
Schindler: Who says that?
Krause: Everyone. (He turns and walks away) My name is Regina Perlman, not Elsa Krause. I've been living in Krakow on false papers since the ghetto massacre. My parents are in Plaszow. Their names are Chana and Jakob Perlman. They are older people. They're killing older people now in Plaszow. They bury them up in the forest. Look, I don't have any money. I-I borrowed these clothes, I'm begging you - please, please bring them here.
Schindler: I don't do that. You've been misled. I ask one thing: whether or not a worker has certain skills. That's what I ask and that's what I care about...Such activities are illegal. You will not entrap me, Miss Krause. Cry and I'll have you arrested, I swear to God.

Slamming and opening doors provide the transition to the next scene in Stern's office in Plaszow. Schindler aggressively admonishes his crafty accountant, frustrated about the jeopardized predicament he has been thrust into by the acceptance of rabbis, orphans, and unskilled workers [evidenced by the three previous film sequences]. However, he relents and allows Stern to bring more favored, selected few - the Perlmans - to his factory 'haven':

Schindler: People die, it's a fact of life. He wants to kill everybody? Great, what am I supposed to do about it? Bring everybody over? Is that what you think? Send them over to Schindler, send them all. His place is a 'haven,' didn't you know? It's not a factory, it's not an enterprise of any kind, it's a haven for rabbis and orphans and people with no skills whatsoever. You think I don't know what you're doing? You're so quiet all the time. I know. I know.
Stern: Are you losing money?
Schindler: No, I'm not losing money, that's not the point.
Stern: What other point is -
Schindler: (interrupting) It's dangerous! It's dangerous to me. You have to understand, Goeth is under enormous pressure. You have to think of it in his situation. He's got this whole place to run, he's responsible for everything that goes on here, all these people - he's got a lot of things to worry about. And he's got the war. Which brings out the worst in people. Never the good, always the bad. Always the bad. But in normal circumstances, he wouldn't be like this. He'd be all right. There'd just be the good aspects of him - which - he's a wonderful crook. A man who loves good food, good wine, the ladies, making money -
Stern: - killing -
Schindler: He can't enjoy it....What do you want me to do about it?
Stern: Nothing, nothing. We're just talking.
Schindler: (He pulls out a slip of paper and reads a name) - Perlman.

In a line-up and rollcall, Goldberg (wearing Schindler's wristwatch) shouts out "Perlman" - the elderly couple are pulled from the line - in a flashcut, parallel scene, Schindler unstraps his expensive wristwatch and instructs Stern: "Have Goldberg bring them over." Outside the D.E.F., a relieved, grateful Regina is rewarded by seeing her aging parents escorted into the factory.

During one of Goeth's villa parties, Schindler goes to the basement/wine cellar for a bottle of wine. Housekeeper Helen's living quarters are in the tomblike room. Realizing how downtrodden and depressed she is as Goeth's arbitrary, reluctant object of affection, he shows his odd liking for her. [Goeth confronts Helen in a similar sequence later in the film.] Schindler encourages her to speak about the agonizingly tortured existence she faces every day. She describes how there is no sure strategy or formula for actions or behaviors to reliably increase one's chances of survival:

Schindler: Why don't you build yourself up?
Helen: My first day here, he beat me because I threw out the bones from dinner. He came down to the basement at midnight and he asked me where they were - for his dogs...I said to him, 'Why are you beating me?' He said, 'The reason I beat you now is because you ask why I beat you.'
Schindler: I know your sufferings.
Helen: It doesn't matter. I have accepted them...One day, he will shoot me.
Schindler: No, he won't shoot you.
Helen: I know. I see things. We were on the roof on Monday, young Lisiek and I, and we saw the Herr Commandant come out of the front door and down the steps by the patio right there below us. And there on the steps, he drew his gun - he shot a woman who was passing by. A woman carrying a bundle, through the throat. Just-just a woman on her way somewhere. You know, she-she was no fatter or thinner or slower or faster than anyone else and I couldn't guess what had she done. The more you see of Herr Commandant, the more you see there is no set rules that you can live by. You can say to yourself, 'if I follow these rules, I will be safe.'
Schindler: He won't shoot you because he enjoys you too much. He enjoys you so much, he won't even let you wear the star. He doesn't want anyone else to know it's a Jew he's enjoying. He shot the woman from the steps because she meant nothing to him. She was one of a series - neither offending or pleasing him. But you, Helen. It's all right. It's not that kind of a kiss. (He tenderly kisses her on the forehead)

On the balcony with Schindler after the villa party, Goeth is so drunk he can barely stand up. Appealing to Goeth's ego-maniacal streak and vanity, Schindler delivers a monologue preaching power with restraint:

Goeth: You know, I look at you. I watch you. You're not a drunk. That's, that's real control. Control is power. That's power.
Schindler: Is that why they fear us?
Goeth: We have the f--king power to kill, that's why they fear us.
Schindler: They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man commits a crime, he should know better. We have him killed and we feel pretty good about it. Or we kill him ourselves and we feel even better. That's not power, though, that's justice. That's different than power. Power is when we have every justification to kill - and we don't.
Goeth: You think that's power.
Schindler: That's what the emperors had. A man stole something, he's brought in before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy, he knows he's going to die. And the emperor pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power. (Schindler gestures toward Goeth as a merciful emperor) Amon, the Good.
Goeth: (He smiles and laughs) I pardon you.

In Goeth's stables, he berates the stable boy Lisiek (Wojciech Klata) for carelessly leaving his expensive saddle on the ground - but he pardons him instead of punishing him. He rides majestically through the camp high on his white horse, surveying his great domain. He notices a woman prisoner who was smoking on the job being dragged by the hair by a guard. Goeth deliberates a judgment and then pronounces an uncharacteristic sentence to spare her: "Tell her not to do it again." In his villa's bathroom, Goeth is told by Lisiek that the boy is unable to remove the stains from his bathtub. Incredulous that the boy is using soap and not lye, he takes a deep breath, calmly gestures with a tap on the shoulder, and forgives him: "Go ahead, go on leave. I pardon you." He stands at the mirror fascinated with his papal-like power, imagining himself with the restrained might of emperors, but it doesn't fit. At a distance, two gunshots from the villa miss the young lad on either side. A third shot causes Stern, who is walking by, to flinch - he passes by the fresh corpse of Lisiek. Goeth has callously killed with lethal accuracy - a pardon wasn't powerful enough.

Three scenes are intercut together: the marriage of a Jewish couple (Rebecca Tannenbaum and Josef Bau) in the women's barracks in Plaszow camp, a smoke-filled nightclub in Krakow where Schindler watches a floor show with other SS officers - the cabaret singer slides into his lap and kisses him during the entertainment, and a disturbing confrontation between the lusting Goeth and Helen in the villa's basement.

In one of the film's most brilliant, powerful scenes, Goeth descends the cellar steps and speaks to a glisteningly-sweaty, nubile Helen in a flimsy, clinging chemise that is semi-transparent (she dares not answer and remains speechless with downcast eyes throughout). As he circles around her in the tomblike room, he delivers a sinister monologue, alternating between threats and seduction. Taught to disregard the humanity of the Jews, he nonetheless wants to sexually force himself on her and taste the forbidden fruit (a sexual liaison between a pure Aryan and a Jew is a punishable, capital crime). But then he remembers that she is supposed to be detested like a rat. Pathologically filled with deep self-loathing, he beats the tempting young Jewess for seducing him:

I came to tell you that you really are a wonderful cook and a well-trained servant. I mean it. If you need a reference after the war, I'd be happy to give you one. It's kind of lonely down here, it seems, with everyone upstairs having such a good time. Does it? You can answer. 'What was the right answer?' That's-that's what you're thinking. 'What does he want to hear?' The truth, Helen, is always the right answer. Yes, you're right. Sometimes we're both lonely. Yes, I mean, I would like, so much, to reach out and touch you in your loneliness. What would that be like, I wonder? I mean, what would be wrong with that? I realize that you're not a person in the strictest sense of the word. Maybe you're right about that too. You know, maybe what's wrong isn't - it's not us - it's this. I mean, when they compare you to vermin and to rodents and to lice, I just, uh...You make a good point, a very good point. (He strokes her hair) Is this the face of a rat? Are these the eyes of a rat? That's not a Jew's eyes. (He brings his hand over her breast) I feel for you, Helen. (He decides not to kiss her) No, I don't think so. You're a Jewish bitch. You nearly talked me into it, didn't you?

The bridegroom's shoe breaks a lightbulb under a handkerchief at the instant that Goeth savagely strikes Helen across the face. He pitches a shelf over - it crashes on top of her.

The scene instantly becomes a drunken celebration in the upstairs offices of the D.E.F. where a party is held to honor Schindler's birthday. The factory owner is surrounded by friends, Stern, Goeth, and other SS men. He embraces some of his female lovers - Klonowska and Ingrid. A Jewess from the shop floor is admitted - she timidly approaches and haltingly thanks him, bringing along an even younger girl carrying a homemade cake:

On behalf of the workers, sir, I wish for you a happy birthday.

In everyone's company (including the top German military), Schindler kisses the younger girl on both cheeks, and then gives the stunned factory girl a sustained kiss on the mouth, followed by heartfelt thanks: "Tell them thank you from me."

Empty cattle cars are brought to the train depot in Plaszow. In the muddy open space between the barracks, the clerks set up their folding tables. Goldberg distributes clipboards with lists. White-gowned doctors with stethoscopes are assembled. On his villa balcony during his semi-annual physical - with the entire population of the camp within view behind him, Goeth announces that a shipment of Hungarians to his camp means he must reduce the size of the Plaszow work force: "We've got to separate the sick from the healthy to make room." A health action is required.

A needle is placed on an old phonograph record. As the scratchy tune plays during the sorting process of the healthy from the unhealthy, the men on one side (and women on the other) are stripped of their clothing and forced to run through the muddy compound in front of doctors to prove that they are fit in a harrowing endurance test. Instant medical exams quickly make fateful selections. In the barracks, some of the women prick their fingers and rub their own blood on their cheeks to redden them and add a little healthy color. Goeth saves his mechanic, Pfefferberg, from suffering through the indignities of being stripped and evaluated.

A new record, a sing-along children's song, is designed to draw out the innocently-happy children from the barracks - they are placed in large transport trucks. The women who are declared fit and healthy are ordered to pull their clothes back on and return to their barracks. They are overjoyed with their luck in being saved - until they notice their children being guided and transported away like lemmings. A mass riot breaks out as wailing women protest and surge forward toward the departing children. Young Olek Rosner slips away and desperately tries to find a place to hide - he slips down a toilet hole inside an outhouse latrine, sinking in waist-deep into the fecal cesspool of waste matter where Danka Dresner and other children are already submerged and hiding.

The 'unfit,' now wearing striped uniforms, are marched like 'human cattle' toward the gates of cattle cars for transport elsewhere. As the heat rises within the confines of the long string of train cars during the hot day, turning the cars into ovens, the tightly-packed Jews begin to bake, suffocate, and die of thirst as they wait for the last cars to be filled. Schindler, who joins the Nazis on the platform as they sip cold drinks, mercifully suggests that Goeth allow him to hose down the cars filled with desperate, pleading Jews: "What do you say we get your fire hoses out here and hose down the cars? Indulge me." The hoses spray cold water into the cars to cool down the doomed people inside. Amused, Goeth believes the gesture is futile: "This is really cruel, Oskar, you're giving them hope. You shouldn't do that. That's cruel." Longer fire hoses are retrieved from the D.E.F. to reach down the full length of the cars.

A German staff car with Gestapo men pulls up in front of the D.E.F. and arrests Schindler in his factory office. He warns them of the risk: "I'm not saying you'll regret it, but you might. You should be aware of that." Klonowska moves to make the necessary phone calls to help release him from a short stay in the Krakow prison. In his cell, he tells his imprisoned cellmate the reason for his arrest:

I violated the Race and Resettlement Act. Though I doubt anyone can point out the actual provision to me. I kissed a Jewish girl.

In an office of the prison, Goeth defends the racial improprieties of Schindler's action to a stiff-faced SS colonel behind the desk, vacillating between joking, serious rationalization, and bribery tactics:

He likes women. He likes good-looking women. He sees a beautiful woman - he doesn't think. He has so many women. They love him, yeah, they love him. I mean, he's married, yeah, but... All right, she was Jewish, he shouldn't have done it, but you didn't see this girl. I saw this girl. This girl was, wuff, very good-looking. They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews. When you work closely with them like I do, you see this. They have this power, it's like a virus. Some of my men are infected with this virus. They should be pitied, not punished. They should receive treatment, because this is as real as typhus. I see this all the time. It's a matter of money, hmm?

Schindler is eventually released due to SS Colonel Scherner's intercession, and then told about future extermination policies for all Jews: "God forbid you ever get a real taste for Jewish skirt - there's no future in it. No future. They don't have a future. And that's not just good old-fashioned Jew-hating talk. It's policy now."

In Krakow, what appears to be falling and raining from the sky is not snow, but macabre flakes of ash (cinders of flesh and bone) from the burning pyres of bodies.

CHUJOWA GORKA,
APRIL, 1944

Department D orders Goeth to exhume and incinerate the bodies of more than 10,000 Jews killed at Plaszow and the Krakow Ghetto massacre.

Billowing smoke and flames roar from the apocalyptic inferno consuming the thousands of victims of the Ghetto massacre and the Plaszow camp. [The Nazis are covering up the evidence of the slaughter of Jews in the Krakow ghetto by digging up all the corpses and incinerating them in pits.] Their decomposed bodies are exhumed from the mass graves in the earth and placed on conveyor belts to be dumped onto enormous, raging pyres. Wheelbarrows of corpses are trundled along by workers who mask themselves to prevent gagging. One of the SS officers, with eyes ablaze, fires madly at the burning corpses on a massive pyramid of bodies. Feeling overworked and unfairly burdened, Goeth whines piteously, fearing his days are numbered due to a scheduled evacuation: "The party's over, Oskar. They're closing us down, sending everybody to Auschwitz...As soon as I can arrange the shipments, maybe 30, 40 days. That ought to be fun." Schindler glimpses one of the wheelbarrows which holds the red-coated corpse of the little girl seen running between buildings during the Ghetto massacre.

In Stern's office in Plaszow, both he and Schindler feel resigned to their fates. Schindler reassures his beloved accountant that he will make sure that he receives "special treatment." Stern demurs, mentioning that "special treatment" is the euphemistic term, being used more frequently in directives from Berlin, to send Jews to death camps. Schindler changes the wording to "preferential treatment...we have to invent a whole new language?" Defeated and weary, Schindler knows he will lose his Jewish workers, and he has lost the desire to revive the business with Polish workers:

Schindler: I'm going home. I've done what I came here for. I've got more money than any man can spend in a lifetime. Someday this is all going to end, you know. I was going to say we'll have a drink then.
Stern: I think I'd better have it now.

Unlike so many other times, Stern now accepts a glass of cognac, raises it slightly to acknowledge Schindler, and then drinks.

Schindler is on the brink of leaving with suitcases packed solid with his fortune, when his moral conscience speaks to him. Acting like a guardian angel in the major turning point in his evolution toward self-discovery, he decides to attempt to save as many people as he can with his war profiteer's fortune. On the balcony of the villa, Schindler bargains and negotiates with Goeth to buy back his workforce, transport the workers to Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia (his safer home town on the Polish-Czechoslovakan border), and create a military weapons factory. Cinematically, the two men are distinctly separated in two window frames. Appearing to be acting in his own economic self-interest, Schindler hides his ulterior, compassionate motives. Within his business proposition, he includes his characteristic wheeler-dealer phrase: "Everybody's happy":

Goeth: (puzzled) You want these people?
Schindler: These people, my people, I want my people.
Goeth: Who are you, Moses? Come on, what is this? Where's the money in this, where's the scam?
Schindler: It's good business.
Goeth: Yeah, it's 'good business' in your opinion. Look, you've got to move them, the equipment, everything to Czechoslovakia, pay for all that and build another camp. It doesn't make any sense...You're not telling me something.
Schindler: It's good for me. I know them, I'm familiar with them, I don't have to train them. It's good for you. I'll compensate you...It's good for the Army. You know what I'm going to make?...Artillery shells...tank shells. They need that, everybody's happy.
Goeth: Everyone's happy except me. You're probably scamming me somehow. If I'm making a hundred, you've got to be making three. And if you admit to making three, then it's four, actually. But how?
Schindler: I just told you.
Goeth: Yeah, you did, but you didn't. Yeah, all right, don't tell me, I'll go along with it. It's just irritating I can't work it out.
Schindler: Look, all you have to do is tell me what it's worth to you. What's a person worth to you?
Goeth: No, no, no, no. What's one worth to you?

The keys of Stern's typewriter crisply rap out names to create a list of the individuals (and investors) who will be saved/employed - it is Schindler's List: Dresner, Wein, Rosner, Poldek Pfefferberg, Mila Pfefferberg, Stagel, Scharf, "all the children," Lewartow, and more. The list grows from four hundred, to six hundred, to eight hundred, to almost 1,100 individuals. Schindler's Mercedes pulls up outside the villa where he takes a small valise - payments to Goeth. He is unable to convince fellow industrialist Madritsch to join together with him with his Jewish workers: "I've done all I can. No Oskar, I can't do anymore." When the list nears completion, Schindler instructs Stern:

Schindler: That's it. You can finish that page.
Stern: What did Goeth say about this? You just told him how many people you needed, and - you're not buying them. You're buying them? You're paying him for each of these names?
Schindler: If you were still working for me, I'd expect you to talk me out of it. It's costing me a fortune. Finish the page and leave one space at the bottom.
Stern: The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.

With Goeth, Schindler gambles with a deck of cards in a game of Twenty-One for his maid - he proposes to put Helen's name in the last line left on the final page: "I'll never find a maid as well-trained as her in Brinnlitz. They're all country girls." Goeth's twisted affection for the girl, and his distrust of Schindler's consummate deal-making, sleight-of-hand talents makes it difficult for him to agree to a card game to decide Helen's fate:

Schindler: She's just going to Auschwitz # 2 anyway. What difference does this make?
Goeth: She's not going to Auschwitz. I'd never do that to her. No, I want her to come back to Vienna with me. I want her to come work for me there. I want to grow old with her.
Schindler: Are you mad? Amon, you can't take her to Vienna with you.
Goeth: No, of course I can't. That's what I'd like to do. What I can do, if I'm any sort of a man, is the next most merciful thing. I should take her into the woods and shoot her painlessly in the back of the head. (Goeth reconsiders the wager) What is it you said for a natural twenty-one? Fourteen thousand, eight hundred?

On the train platform at Plaszow, the workers on Schindler's List pronounce their names to clerks at folding tables. The results of Oskar's card game are implied when the final one to give her name is Helen Hirsch. The prisoners are segregated by sex into different transport trains. The men's train crosses the snowy landscape, arriving at its rural destination:

ZWITTAU-BRINNLITZ, CZECHOSLOVAKIA
OSKAR SCHINDLER'S HOMETOWN

A grinning Schindler stands on the platform, wearing a Tyrolean hat. Ignoring an SS officer, he climbs up a few steps and assures his workers: "The train with the women has already left Plaszow and will be arriving here very shortly. I know you've had a long journey, but it's only a short walk further to the factory where hot soup and bread is waiting for you. (With arms outstretched) Welcome to Brinnlitz."

However, the train with the women in cattle cars has been misdirected (due to a paperwork mistake) and is headed for Auschwitz. As they pass by the countryside, a young Polish boy smiles and gestures with a grisly, lateral swipe of his forefinger across his throat as if it were being slit - a portent of what awaits them. As their train thunders into the infamous Auschwitz camp, the stunned, confused women climb down from the railcars. Trembling from the intense cold and from fear, they are lined up. Mrs. Dresner rhetorically asks: "Where are the listmakers?" Ashes and cinders rain down from Auschwitz's crematoriums.

The hair of Schindler's women is shorn, and they are stripped naked of their clothing - and identity. In one of the film's most haunting, harrowing scenes, they tensely clutch each other in fear and shiver from the cold as they are herded into a room with shower nozzles. Expecting that they are going to be lethally gassed rather than cleansed, they hyperventilate and cringe - hysterical as they stare up at the ominous, menacing shower heads. When the lights go out, they collectively scream and huddle together, but then water comes out of one shower fixture, and then others, and they weep with relief when they realize they are in the delousing plant of Auschwitz and not the gas chamber. After being dressed, they are brought through the camp, past other lines of Jews destined for death after descending into another building with gas chambers - next to the crematorium with a belching chimney stack.

A doctor representing the notorious Josef Mengele (Daniel Del Ponte) moves along the rows of women the next day, pausing to ask an ironically-endearing question of the elderly ones: "How old are you, Mother?" Mrs. Dresner daringly informs him of the mistake in their routing:

Mrs. Dresner: Sir, a mistake has been made. We're not supposed to be here. We work for Oskar Schindler. We're Schindler Jews.
Mengele: Who is Oskar Schindler?
Guard: He had a factory in Krakow. Enamelware.
Mengele: A potmaker.

Schindler intervenes at Auschwitz in the office of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolph Hoss (Hans Michael Rehberg), bringing his list and authorizations for his female workers - and a sachel of loose diamonds - "portable wealth." He is purchasing them twice to liberate them. The ox-faced German whose visage is horizontally split between light and dark shadows covering his eyes, is tempted by the offer:

Hoss: I have a shipment coming in tomorrow. I'll cut you three hundred units from it. New ones. These are fresh. The train comes, we turn it around. It's yours.
Schindler: Yes, I understand. I want these.
Hoss: You shouldn't get stuck on names. That's right. It creates a lot of paperwork.

The next day, the names from Schindler's List are called out - as each woman or girl steps forward, she is brushed/slashed with a swath of paint across her front by a guard. They are directed toward cattle cars in the train yard of Auschwitz. Guards try to seize the young daughters of the women, including Danka Dresner, and prevent them from leaving. Witnessing what has happened, Schindler audaciously approaches and ingeniously cons a guard to let the kids rejoin their mothers on the departing train:

What are you doing? These are mine. These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're skilled munitions workers. They're essential. Essential girls. Their fingers polish the insides of shell metal casings. How else am I to polish the inside of a 45 millimeter shell casing? You tell me. You tell me!

Outside the Brinnlitz camp, Schindler joins the procession of women, girls, and guards as they approach. The men spot their wives and daughters from a nearby building.

Schindler addresses the camp's guards, warning them of interference or unlawful brutality toward his workers:

Under Department W provisions, it is unlawful to kill a worker without just cause. Under the Businesses Compensation Fund, I am entitled to file damage claims for such deaths. If you shoot without thinking, you go to prison, I get paid, that's how it works. So, there will be no summary executions here. There will be no interference of any kind with production. In hopes of ensuring that, guards will no longer be allowed on the factory floor without my authorization. (To the Commanding Officer, Josef Liepold (Ludger Pistor)) For your cooperation, you have my gratitude.

With his usual panache, he has cases of schnapps opened and set out on tables for the guards.

In a cathedral in his hometown, he slips behind Emilie, his estranged wife, and promises loyalty: "No doorman or maitre d' will ever mistake you again. I promise." She is brought to the Brinnlitz factory to meet Stern - she has also volunteered to work in the clinic. In private, Stern brings sobering, disquieting news about quality-control failures, but it doesn't bother Schindler - he has decided to manufacture only defective munitions and sabotage the German war effort:

Stern: We've received an angry complaint from the Armaments Board. The artillery shells, tank shells, rocket casings, apparently all of them have failed quality-control tests.
Schindler: Well, that's to be expected - start-up problems. This isn't pots and pans. This is a precise business. I'll write them a letter.
Stern: They're withholding payment.
Schindler: Sure. So would I. So would you. I wouldn't worry about it. We'll get it right one of these days.
Stern: There's a rumor you've been going around miscalibrating the machines. They could shut us down, send us back to Auschwitz.
Schindler: I'll call around, find out where we can buy shells, pass them off as ours.
Stern: I don't see the difference. Whether they're made here or somewhere else.
Schindler: You don't see a difference? I see a difference.
Stern: You'll lose a lot of money, that's the difference.
Schindler: Fewer shells will be made. Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I'll be very unhappy.

Rabbi Lewartow is buffing a shell casing at a machine when Schindler stuns him by reminding him that he should perform long-forgotten and forbidden Sabbath rites: "Sun's going down...It is Friday, isn't it?...What's the matter with you? You should be preparing for the Sabbath, shouldn't you? I've got some wine in my office. Come." In one corner of the factory, Lewartow sings in Yiddish and lights candles during a Shabbat service - the candles glow a warm, reddish-yellow color - a symbol of the rebirth of hope, life and humanity for the Jewish people - a perfect counterpart to the candles which burn out in the film's opening scene. Guards in their bunks, and Commandant Liepold in his quarters listen in silent bewilderment to the strange, distant singing.

FOR THE SEVEN MONTHS IT WAS FULLY OPERATIONAL, SCHINDLER'S BRINNLITZ MUNITIONS FACTORY WAS A MODEL OF NON-PRODUCTION. DURING THIS SAME PERIOD, HE SPENT MILLIONS OF REICHMARKS TO SUSTAIN HIS WORKERS AND BRIBE REICH OFFICIALS.

Stern brings the penniless and bankrupted Schindler more reports of financial hardship - he has spent all his fortune to save his Jews, provide them with safety and sanctuary, while also producing defective munitions for the war effort:

Stern: Do you have any money hidden away someplace that I don't know about?
Schindler: No. Why, am I broke?
Stern: Uh, well...

In the workers' barracks (and the guards' barracks) - a pan switches from one to the other, a radio broadcast is attentively listened to - in the scratchy static is the distinctive voice of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announcing the surrender of Germany - and the end of the war:

Yesterday morning, at two forty-one am, at General Eisenhower's headquarters, General Goebbels signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea, and air forces in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command. The German war is therefore at an end. But let us not forget for a moment...

Schindler, seen in dark silhouette, knocks on the door of Commander Liepold's quarters: "I think it's time the guards came into the factory." In the ominous, uncertain, and tense atmosphere, he addresses all twelve hundred workers and guards gathered together for the first time - the guards are on an upper balcony and the workers are on the factory floor below. No one cheers the news of the defeat of Nazi Germany:

The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war is over. Tomorrow, you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment.

Realizing the inevitable reality of his own threatened German status, Schindler confesses simple statements about himself:

I'm a member of the Nazi Party.
I'm a munitions manufacturer.
I'm a profiteer of slave labor.
I am a criminal.
At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted.
I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight. After which time, and I hope you'll forgive me, I have to flee.

He then turns toward the guards and convinces them to go home without killing the Jews under their jurisdiction:

I know you've received orders from our Commandant - which he has received from his superiors - to dispose of the population of this camp. Now would be the time to do it. Here they are. They're all here. This is your opportunity. Or...you could leave. And return to your families as men instead of murderers.

One young soldier breaks ranks and walks out - many of the guards follow suit until Liepold is the only one left to decide - after wavering a bit, he also disappears. The ultimate showman and conman, Schindler winks at Stern. In memory "of the countless victims" among the Jewish people, he asks for an observance of three minutes of silence.

In the metalworks section of the factory, a man volunteers to have a tooth (with a gold filling) pulled. The flame of a hot welding torch melts down the extracted filling - the liquid is cast into a small gold band. Schindler and Emilie pack their suitcases for their flight. All eleven hundred workers respectfully remove their hats as the Schindlers leave the factory and walk toward their car in the courtyard. In the background, some of the workers take off their striped concentration camp uniforms.

Lewartow presents Schindler with several pages containing a list of the signatures of all the workers vouching for him - a new list with their names supporting his:

We've written a letter trying to explain things in case you are captured. Every worker has signed it.

Stern hands Schindler the finished gold ring, with an inscription of a Talmudic adage:

It's Hebrew from the Talmud. It says, 'Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.'

He drops the ring, then slips it on his finger, thanks Stern and shakes hands with him as an equal for the first time in the film. Then, with self-loathing in a melodramatic speech [the film's most controversial, unnecessary, and sentimental scene], Schindler berates himself for not having saved more lives as tears flow down his cheeks. He looks at the eyes of the workers, seeking their apology for not doing more:

Schindler: I could've got more...I could've got more, if I'd just...I could've got more...
Stern: Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.
Schindler: If I'd made more money...I threw away so much money, you have no idea. If I'd just...
Stern: There will be generations because of what you did.
Schindler: I didn't do enough.
Stern: You did so much.
Schindler: This car. Goeth would've bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people, right there. Ten people, ten more people...(He rips the swastika pin from his lapel) This pin, two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would've given me two for it. At least one. He would've given me one. One more. One more person. A person, Stern. For this. I could've gotten one more person and I didn't.

He breaks down in Stern's arms, convulsing in remorse and guilt - some of the workers step forward and comfort him in their arms. Mrs. Dresner picks up one of the striped uniforms from the ground. Emilie, Schindler, and their driver wear the easily-identifiable uniforms of prisoners as they are driven out of the compound - Schindler's tortured, yet heroic face is reflected on the car window as they slowly pull out, superimposed over the faces of the workers passing by.

The next morning, a lone, tattered-looking Russian officer rides up on horseback to the gates of the Brinnlitz camp - the workers have slept on the ground where they left the Schindlers hours earlier:

Russian: You have been liberated by the Soviet Army.
Stern: Have you been in Poland?
Russian: I just came from Poland.
Stern: Are there any Jews left?
Worker: Where should we go?
Russian: Don't go east, that's for sure. They hate you there. I wouldn't go west either, if I were you.
Worker: We could use some food.
Russian: (pointing toward the town of Brinnlitz) Isn't that a town over there?

The moving crowd of hundreds of Jews come over a hillside, crossing the land, walking free, marching to the tune of the Hebrew song "Jerusalem the Golden."

Amon Goeth was arrested while a patient in a sanatorium at Bad Tolz. He was hanged in Krakow for crimes against humanity.

Oskar Schindler failed at his marriage and several businesses after the war.

In 1958, he was declared a righteous person by the council of the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous. It grows there still.

The Schindler Jews today.

The black and white scene of the workers crossing the open countryside on the horizon dissolves into color, and the actors/actresses are transmuted into "The Schindler Jews today." Over one hundred of the real-life survivors of the Holocaust, the Schindlerjuden, are in a long line, accompanied by their counterpart actors who portrayed them in the film. In tribute, each of the present-day survivors places a fragment of stone, following Jewish tradition, on the Jerusalem gravestone of Oskar Schindler (who died in 1974). One rock is laid there for every life saved - the small stones become a massive pile. The last mourner, who lays flowers on the gravestone and stands with head bowed in reverence, is actor Liam Neeson.

There are fewer than four thousand Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than six thousand descendants of the Schindler Jews.

In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered.