Schindler's List

 

Someone showed me a review of Schindler's List which left me struggling to comprehend what I was reading. I have a high opinion of the film, the reviewer did not, but that's okay, everyone interacts with media differently, the issue is in why they did not like it. Neoliberalism and a Zionist ending, apparently.

If you're not familiar with the movie, it's based on real events and documents how a factory owner saved the lives of some of his Jewish labourers and conspired in some industrial sabotage of the Nazi German war effort. The ending is the surviving Jewish labourers and their children placing stones on the real Schindler's grave, which is a Jewish sign of respect for the dead. The only way that's zionist is if you equate Jewishness with zionism, which is deeply antisemitic and plays into the hands of the actual zionist movement. There's a lot more to the film than this brief synopsis I think the film is worth seeing, and there are many other places to get a deeper look at it as a movie. It's not a cheerful movie, obviously, I think you need to be prepared to experience it. 

As for neoliberal? I guess we have got to the point where that term has no meaning any more so whatever.

Personally speaking, I think that the movie does a very good job of exposing a mainstream audience to the capitalist nature of the Nazi regime. The racist bigotry and the militaristic brutality of the Hitlerites is popularly understood which is why even with a global resurgence in far right movements and personalities the really popular ones still try to obscure their connections. Less understood is the capitalist nature of the Imperial expansion, I think the most popular recent document to hammer that home was Germa Bel's documentation of privatisation in Nazi Germany, Against the Mainstream, and that's still stuck in the capital P politics corners of the web. 

In History circles the role of big business in Nazi Germany is well understood, but I can't think of a more popular example of this process than the book and film about Oskar Schindler. Who is Oskar Schindler? Well in the film he is a user of slave labour and an opportunist. He is a member of the Nazi Party and businessman, he arrives in occupied Poland with the idea to open factories because labour is much cheaper has no legal standing, and he will have the backing of the occupying state to do what he wishes. His decision to take on Jewish workers instead of Polish ones is nakedly financial, Jewish workers cost less and are even more vulnerable to exploitation than Polish workers.

 STERN
The standard SS rate for Jewish
skilled labor is seven Marks a day,
five for unskilled and women. This
is what you pay the Reich Economic
Office, the laborers themselves
receive nothing. Poles you pay
wages. Generally, they get a little
more. Are you listening?

Schindler turns from the wall of glass to face his new
accountant/plant manager.

SCHINDLER
What was that about the SS, the
rate, the - ?

STERN
The Jewish worker's salary - you
pay it directly to the SS, not to

STERN(CONT'D)
the worker. He gets nothing.

SCHINDLER
But it's less. It's less than what
I would pay a Pole. That's the
point I'm trying to make. Poles
cost more.

Stern hesitates, then nods. The look on Schindler's face
says, Well, what's to debate, the answer's clear to any fool.

SCHINDLER
Why should I hire Poles?

Schindler is an outsourcer, the only difference between him and the CEO of Nike who shifted production to Indonesia in the 1990s is the contexts in which they both operate. The amoral, nakedly self-interested logic is the same, "doing this ____ will benefit me, and I am allowed by the powers in charge to do ____, so why should I do anything else?"

And of course Schindler exploits the vulnerabilities of the Jewish community in order to acquire the capital as well as the labour to open his new company, which was seized as from its Jewish owners. And he relies exclusively on his assistant Stern to do the actual work of running a business, which gives Stern the latitude to start intervening on the behalf of his fellow Jewish inmates. He's nice and charming about it, makes it all sound like a good deal for everyone involved, but he's exploiting the market to compete to his advantage.

 SCHINDLER
Jews, yeah. Investors.
(pause)
You must have contacts in the
Jewish business community, working
here.

STERN
What "community?" Jews can no
longer own businesses, sir, that's
why this one's in receivership.

SCHINDLER
Well, they wouldn't own it, I'd own
it. I'd pay them back in product.

STERN
(pause)
Pots and pans.

SCHINDLER
Something they can hold in their
hands. They can trade it on the
black market, do whatever they
want, everybody's happy.

He shrugs; it sounds more than fair to him. In fact, so taken
with the spirit of his own largesse, he offers even more:

And at first once he's shuckdown his Jewish investors and opened the factory with his compliant workforce he lives it up and leaves Stern to do all that boring work. That last part at least gives Stern some time to get a support system off the ground. If the story (both real and fictional) ended here Schindler would be remembered as a villain. But history marched on.

Schindler's turn or redemption stems from two intertwined factors. He finds it impossible to avoid being directly confronted with the bloody context in which he operates, and he as he spends time with these Jewish labourers he's been exploiting for maximum profits he starts relating to them as people outside the employer v employee/master v slave relationship. He knew about the war, and the slave labour system, the racism and the ethnic expulsions and the dictatorship, and made his peace with all of them since he found a way to profit and thrive from it and the bad things were happening to people he didn't know. Those experiences changed him. But they didn't change him that much, throughout the film he's still businessman, he's just shifted from laissez-faire to paternalist boss. His early episodes of friction with the Nazi regime have him arguing with officials over their interference in his factory, and abusing his workers.

And he also works to sabotage the German war effort by producing faulty shells. Sabotaging the war effort is a good thing, but the issue is that Schindler himself as decided that his factory will not produce shells and bullets for the war effort and thus his workers must comply, which puts them in an extremely dangerous position, if its discovered even if no active sabotage is suspected they will be sent to their deaths, the only reason they survive is thanks to their designations as essential workers. 

If I sound critically I'm not particularly, this is largely what happens in the film and in real life, I just thought it was worth noting.  

Beyond Schindler there is another well remembered part of the film that demonstrates the murderous capitalist logic of the Nazis, it is the infamous "hinge" scene.

During this scene, the commandant tests a slave-worker's productivity by timing how long he takes to make one hinge. He performs the job very quickly only to release the trap, he made a hinge in excellent time and yet his overall output is low. Goeth the commandant then drags him away for what is supposed to be an execution but faults in both of his pistols grants a temporary reprieve. This is cruelty at its unadulterated, and it's clearly motivated by extreme racism, but there is also a cold economic logic, the camp is receiving more inmates and more slaves for its workshops, so the test. Of course that was just an excuse to demonstrate power over an "inferior" hence the game and the method of execution. However, the commandant would have to murder someone in these circumstances, either some of his slaves or the new arrivals, he can't afford to keep them all, and they have to meet their targets. 

I'm not arguing that Schindler's List is an anti-capitalist movie designed to radicalise the masses, that's taking the argument too far. It condemns the Nazis in all their facets, including the economic drives of mass subjugation and mass murder.