From: Death@yabbs
To: all@yabbs
Subject: Schindler's List
Date: Sat Jul 16 01:46:14 1994
I know that this is a little outdated, but it's something I wrote shortly 
after seeing the movie...

             "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire"

     Many Jews will recognize this verse as being from the Talmud.  Millions of
people, Jews and Gentiles alike, will now recognize it as the hebrew verse
inscribed on the gold ring given to Oscar Schindler by the eleven hundred Jews
who he saved from death in the Holocaust, just before he fled after the war
ended.  Steven Spielberg's movie, "Schindler's List," was an amazing depiction
of the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust and one man's fight to save
them.  The history of Oscar Schindler and the Shchindlerjuden, as told in
Spielberg's movie, is a means by which the whole world can be educated about the
Holocaust.  As I was coming out of the movie, I saw the line to get in stretching
all the way around the theater.  In that line were not only Jews, but Gentiles
too.  Spielberg's name lends the movie credence: people will see it. Then, they
will believe it.
     Throughout the movie the person sitting behind me was continually gasping
in horror.  She couldn't believe that it had been that gruesome.  While many
people complain that the killings in the movie were too graphic, I believe that
they were necessary.  The American public has been so sensitized to violence that
it would take something as graphic as seeing somebody shot in their head, with
the blood spurting out into the snow, to shock us.  Thus Spielberg, who until now
has shown hardly any violence (dinosaurs excluded) in any of his films, has
reached out to hit us with what will really sink in--"Schindler's List" will not
be passed off as "just another movie."  When the ashes from the fires at Krakow
were raining down on the car, the woman behind me said softly, terrified, "Oh my
G-d, those are ASHES..." and then faded into stunned silence.  The movie, even
in black and white, was just so real that, although it was unbelievable, it had
to be believed.
     I came out of the movie feeling more emotionally drained than I have ever
felt before, and thinking very much about what I had just seen.  I now know that
my decision not to go to Poland this summer, just to go on USY Israel Pilgrimage,
without the trip to Poland was a wise one--I wouldn't have been able to handle
it, at least not yet.  I also thought about two very important words:  NEVER
AGAIN.  This is a promise that every Jew makes to himself, and to the world. 
However, it is a promise being broken, even as I am writing this, right before
our eyes.  Today in Bosnia crimes just as atrocious, if not more so, as those
committed during the Holocaust are taking place.  We can not, as Jews or as Human
Beings, stand by and watch it happen.

      My heart still beats inside my breast
      While friends depart for other worlds.
      Perhaps it's better - who can say? - 
      Than watching this, to die today?

      No, no, my G-d, we want to live!
      Not watch our numbers melt away.
      We want to have a better world,
      We want to work - we must not die!

     These are the words of a 12 year old girl, Eva Pickov , during the
Holocaust.  There are people, children, in Bosnia today, who feel the same way. 
If we stand by and watch them die, then we are no better than the nazis
themselves, for the Jews had people like Oscar Schindler, but the people of
Bosnia have nobody but the rest of the world.


--Les