Must-watchWorld War II · Film · 1993
Schindler's List
A German businessman and Nazi Party member arrives in occupied Kraków to get rich on cheap Jewish labor, and slowly turns his enamelware factory into a refuge for the people the SS wants to kill.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 5 places.
Stop 1: Schindler's Emalia factory, Kraków
Schindler charms SS officers, takes over an enamelware factory and hires Jewish workers through the accountant Itzhak Stern.
Stop 2: Kraków Ghetto, Podgórze
Key location
From a hill above the ghetto, Schindler watches the SS clear it street by street and notices a little girl in a red coat.
Stop 3: Płaszów camp
Commandant Amon Göth terrorises the prisoners from his villa, while Schindler bribes him to keep his workers at a sub-camp beside the factory.
Stop 4: Auschwitz-Birkenau
The train carrying Schindler's women is sent to Birkenau by mistake, and he rushes there to bargain for their release.
Stop 5: Brünnlitz (Brněnec)
In the new munitions plant Schindler keeps the SS out of the workshops, lets his workers pray and makes sure nothing useful is produced.
What really happened
Oskar Schindler took over an enamelware plant in Kraków's Zabłocie district in late 1939 and staffed it largely with Jews from the ghetto the Germans sealed in Podgórze in March 1941. When the ghetto was liquidated on 13–14 March 1943, about 8,000 people were sent to the Płaszów camp run by Amon Göth and some 2,000 were murdered or deported to Auschwitz.
In October 1944, as the Red Army approached, Schindler moved about 1,100 Jewish workers to a munitions factory at Brünnlitz (Brněnec) in the Sudetenland; a transport of his women was diverted to Auschwitz-Birkenau and later released to him. The film compresses and dramatises events, and the famous list was actually typed by Schindler's staff, but its core is drawn from survivors' testimony collected by Thomas Keneally.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Schindler's List
- Directed by
- Steven Spielberg
- Countries
- United States
- Languages
- English, German, Polish
- Released
- 1993
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Eastern Front
- Themes
- Holocaust
- Biography
- True story
