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1-Page Summary of Schindler’s List
Overview
In Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, we’re introduced to the film through a close-up of hands lighting candles and the sound of Hebrew prayer. It quickly cuts to black and white, which sets up our scenario for most of the movie. It is 1939 in Krakow, Poland when an ethnic German businessman named Oskar Schindler arrives with plans on making money from Jews being relocated there by Germany. He befriends SS officials who are in charge of procurement so that he can get his own factory manufacturing army mess kits.
Schindler is unsure of how to run a factory that will employ Jews. He goes to the Jewish Council in Krakow for advice. The council official, Itzhak Stern, knows about business and has connections with the black market where they can get products. With his help, Schindler opens up a factory that employs Jews from the ghetto by falsifying documents so he can hire as many people as possible.
In the winter, construction on a new concentration camp is completed. Amon Goeth, an SS officer in charge of Plaszow concentration camp arrives to see its completion. He orders the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto and families are rounded up and herded outside. Anyone who does not cooperate is shot immediately as are those who are elderly or ill. The Jews are divided into groups based on whether they can work or not and Schindler watches it all from atop a hill with his mistress and he’s deeply disturbed by what he sees but despite how disgusted he was, he makes sure to befriend Goeth in order to ask for the continuation of his factory and supply of workers because otherwise there would be no more business for him so anyway Schindler bribes him by giving him alcohol which works out well for both parties because without Schindler’s bribe there would have been no guarantee that Goeth wouldn’t just execute everyone at once anyways eventually after some time had passed Schindler convinces Goeth that instead of executing people every day they should kill them off one by one when their labor becomes unnecessary so this way they’re able to get rid of most people however not before figuring out ways to make money off them first such as through slave labor etc
When Schindler hears that Goeth has ordered the dismantling of Plaszow and all its remaining Jews to be sent to Auschwitz, he at first plans on leaving Poland with his money. However, when he realizes that doing so would go against his conscience, he convinces Goeth to let him purchase those workers who are not yet in the concentration camps. Together they compile a list of 1,100 people who will be allowed safe passage out of Poland if they come work for Schindler instead. The train carrying these men arrives safely at the factory, but one carrying women is accidentally directed to Auschwitz instead. After receiving word about this mistake from Stern, Schindler rushes into action to make sure that it is corrected before any harm comes to them. Meanwhile in Auschwitz-Birkenau’s gas chamber disguised as a shower room…
Schindler’s factory is a munitions plant, but he ensures that none of the weapons it produces will ever be fired. He has his workers make defective artillery shells so they can’t hurt anyone. He asks his wife to come back home with him because she left him for another man when he was unfaithful to her. Schindler loses all of his money and goes bankrupt just as Germany surrenders in World War II. So, he calls a meeting at the factory and tells everyone there that Germany has surrendered and that they must not shoot each other anymore since it would be murder now instead of war. The soldiers agree to stop fighting, return home as men, not murderers, and let Schindler go free because he is an official member of the Nazi party even though he never participated in any atrocities against Jews or others during the war. Then, Schindler tells everyone who works for him that they should try to find their families again after the war ends since their family members are probably scattered across Europe by now due to all of the chaos caused by World War II.
