THE POWER OF VISUAL HISTORY
View Schools Film Montage
From the montage:
• What could you work out from the film?
• Which clips stood out to you?
Why was Schindler’s List made?
Steven Spielberg, who directed Schindler’s List, comes from a
Jewish family. Some of his relatives died in the Holocaust.
The film was made to tell the story of Oskar Schindler. When
Oskar Schindler died in 1974 he was penniless and almost
unknown.
Schindler’s List was made to make money. It made over $320
million worldwide.
The main purpose of any film is to entertain its audience.
Schindler’s List won many awards, including seven Academy
Awards and seven BAFTAs.
Schindler’s List was made to help people to understand what
happened during the Holocaust.
Steven Spielberg used the profits from Schindler’s List to set up
the Shoah Foundation. The Shoah Foundation has brought
together over 52,000 interviews with people who survived the
Holocaust.
Schindler’s List was based on a novel by Thomas Keneally called
Schindler’s Ark. A Holocaust survivor called Poldek Pfefferberg
persuaded Keneally to write about Oskar Schindler and
Spielberg to make a film based on the book. The novel is based
on interviews with over fifty Jews who worked in Schindler’s
factories.
How reliable is Schindler’s List as a historical
source?
Pros
Cons
Schindler’s List tells us about the Holocaust
through the story of one person
• Why do you think Steven Spielberg chose to focus on the story of
Oskar Schindler?
• Is it helpful or unhelpful to us in understanding what happened
during the Holocaust?
“(the story of Oskar Schindler) … provides an
avenue into a subject that is too horrendous for
words, let alone for pictures”
Steven Spielberg, 1993
• Do you agree that learning about the Holocaust through the story
of one person helps the viewer to understand?
Was Oskar Schindler a hero?
• Because of the actions that he took, over 1,100 people
survived the Holocaust
• He moved hundreds of his workers to Czechoslovakia
where they were safer
• He put himself in danger by taking action to protect his
workers
• He treated his workers with respect, providing food,
healthcare and allowing people to practice their religion
• Many of his former workers consider him to be a hero
Was Oskar Schindler a hero?
• Schindler joined the Nazi party in 1939
• He was a womanizer and a playboy
• One biographer claims that he helped the Nazi party
to plan the invasion of Poland
• He worked as a Nazi spy
• Several of the lists were not written by Schindler, but
by Marcel Goldberg, a corrupt Jewish member of the
security police
How can we make sense of this?
Does it mean that Schindler was not really a hero?
The power of visual history
‘The children’
‘The children wave goodbye’
Which of these clips is most helpful to an historian?
The voices of survivors
Steven Spielberg used the money made from Schindler’s list to set up
the Shoah Foundation, which works to educate people about the
Holocaust and atrocities that have happened in other countries. They
have collected over 52,000 films of survivors speaking about their
experiences. You can see the clips here http://sfi.usc.edu/clipviewer/
Why are these films important?