Schindler's List Pics

The film begins in 1939 with the German-initiated relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding areas to the Kraków Ghetto shortly after the beginning of World War II. Meanwhile, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an ethnic German businessman from Moravia, arrives in the city in hopes of making his fortune as a war profiteer. Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, lavishes bribes upon the Wehrmacht and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a close collaborator in Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), an official of Krakow's Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the Jewish business community and the black marketers inside the Ghetto. The Jewish businessmen lend Schindler the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced. Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his newfound wealth and status as "Herr Direktor", while Stern handles all the administration. Schindler hires Jewish Poles instead of Catholic Poles because they cost less (the workers themselves get nothing; the wages are paid to the SS). Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and Stern falsifies documents to ensure that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" to the German war effort, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps, or being killed.

SS-Lieutenant (Untersturmführer) Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes) arrives in Kraków to oversee construction of the new Płaszów concentration camp. Once the camp is completed, he orders the final liquidation of the ghetto and Operation Reinhard in Kraków begins, with hundreds of troops emptying the cramped rooms and arbitrarily murdering anyone who protests or appears uncooperative, elderly or infirm. Schindler, watching the massacre from the hills overlooking the area with his mistress, is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to befriend Goeth and, through Stern's attention to bribery, Schindler continues to enjoy SS support and protection. During this time, Schindler bribes Goeth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers, so that he can keep his factory running smoothly and protect them from being randomly executed. As time passes, Schindler acts on information provided by Stern to try and save as many lives as he can. As the war shifts, Goeth receives orders from Berlin commanding him to exhume and destroy the remains of every Jew murdered in the Kraków Ghetto, dismantle Płaszów, and ship the remaining Jews—including Schindler's workers—to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

At first, Schindler prepares to leave Kraków with his fortune. He finds himself unable to do so, however, and prevails upon Goeth to allow him to keep his workers so that he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, in Moravia away from the Final Solution, now fully underway in occupied Poland. Goeth eventually acquiesces, but charges a massive bribe for each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers who are to be kept off the trains to Auschwitz.

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Schindler's List is a 1993 film about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film was directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel (SS)-officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.