Schindler’s List, movie

The 1993 movie Schindler’s List, directed by Jewish-American director Steven Spielberg, is loosely based on Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Arc. The imprint of the 1982 edition of this book states:

“This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.”

This remark was removed in later editions. Over the years, orthodox historians have pointed out that the story line of both Keneally’s book and Spielberg’s movie are massively distorted. Spielberg openly admitted that he deliberately shot his movie in black and white and created unsteady camera effects to suggest it is a documentary of its time.

According to the movie, the German commandant Amon Göth of the Plaszow Camp randomly shot prisoners from his home balcony overlooking the camp. According to air photos made at that time, however, the commandant’s home was situated at the foot of a rise, with the camp itself located on top of this rise. Hence the scene depicted in the movie was physically impossible.

In another movie scene, a conveyor belt is seen transporting corpses toward a burning fire in a pit, dumping them into the blaze (see the illustration). While such a scenario may show what many people came to expect when it comes to the Holocaust – with the orthodox narrative speaking incessantly about a highly industrialized, conveyor-belt style mass extermination – such a device has never been attested to by anyone.

The fact that Amon Göth was arrested and prosecuted by the SS-internal court system during the war is of course not mentioned in the movie.

(For more details, see Rudolf 2019, pp. 253f.)