Schindler's List

Schindler's List is a 1993 movie based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally (the book was later renamed Schindler's List as well). The movie, adapted by Steven Zaillian and directed by Steven Spielberg, relates the tale of Oskar Schindler, a German entrepreneur who was instrumental in saving the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust. The title refers to a list of the names of 1,200 Jews whom Schindler hired to work in his factory and kept from being sent to the concentration camps.

The Movie

The movie was directed by famed director Steven Spielberg, who later spoke of the making of the movie as affecting him deeply. It was produced almost entirely in black and white (with a color prologue and epilogue, a red coat in two scenes, and color candle flames in another). It starred Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern, and Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth. Its tagline was simply, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire" a quote from the Talmud. Critically acclaimed, the film won praise for depicting—often in exceptional, graphic detail—the horrible brutality of the Holocaust.

Related Topics:
Steven Spielberg - Liam Neeson - Ben Kingsley - Ralph Fiennes - Amon Goeth - Talmud

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Nominated for twelve Academy Awards, this movie won seven, including the coveted Best Picture and Best Director awards for Spielberg, which many of his supporters felt he had been unfairly denied for prior productions, although he had previously received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

Related Topics:
Academy Awards - Best Picture - Best Director - Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award

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In the years since its release, Schindler's List has risen in status to be considered one of the greatest movies of the 1990s, if not of all time. It is also considered to be Steven Spielberg's greatest directorial accomplishment by many viewers and critics; the former vote it consistently among the top ten (#6) movies on the Internet Movie Database Top 250, while the latter voted it #9 in the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Movies series. In 2004, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. As of 2005, it is the most recently released film in the registry.

Related Topics:
1990s - Internet Movie Database Top 250 - American Film Institute - 100 Greatest Movies - 2004 - Library of Congress - National Film Registry - As of 2005

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Following the critical and box office success of Schindler's List, Spielberg founded and continues to finance the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a non-profit organization with the goal of providing an archive for the filmed testimony of as many survivors of the Holocaust as possible, so that their stories will not be lost in the future.

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However, the Holocaust historian David M. Crowe has questioned in a new book the authenticity of the facts portrayed in the movie.

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"Schindler had nothing to do with the list," the author writes in the new biography of the German businessman.

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Oskar Schindler was in jail for bribing the Secret Service commander Amon Goeth when the famous list was being drawn up and had little involvement in it, according to a New York Times report.

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From the total of nine lists, four were drawn up primarily by Marcel Goldberg, a corrupt Jewish assistant to the SS officer in charge of transporting Jews, Crowe wrote.

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