The triumph of “Schindler’s List” lay in sensitivity, in size, then in severity, in brutality, in gentleness and in intimacy, in all that was necessary to approach the Shoah. Nothing seemed suggestive. And the few scenes that were actually supposed to show humor were actually funny.
When Steven Spielberg received the Grand Cross of Merit for the film from the then Federal President Roman Herzog in 1998, the director spoke of the most important award he had ever received.
27 years later, “Schindler’s List” has the same impact as it did in 1993. It’s not the fame – seven Oscars, including best director – that will be remembered, but the countless scenes in which Spielberg recalled the horrors of the Holocaust the screen brings, be it directly or symbolically.
The girl in the red coat. The piano-playing Nazi during the Warsaw Ghetto shootings. Amon Göth’s “I forgive you”. The boy fleeing into the cesspool of the labor camp, classical music in his ear. “There’s more to it than that.” Itzhak Stern’s walk past the executed room boy. And in the whole film, Hitler appears only once (in a portrait photo in the background), and only one take with the Hitler salute.
In the end, the director begrudges his main character, the industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a breakdown. There are critics who dismiss Schindler’s “I could have done more” as undue self-pity; but perhaps Schindler’s thought is precisely the bitter thought that would have occurred to anyone in his situation who had finally recognized the extent of his own willingness to help.
The “Shoah Foundation”, founded by Spielberg in 1994, still collects eyewitness reports from Holocaust survivors to this day.