Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Do Schindler's Good Deeds Outweigh His Bad
We recently finished watching the movie “Schindler’s List” and most of us liked and appreciated the main character Oskar Schindler. We all liked him for the good he did and because we understood why he did the things he did but we didn’t take much time to think about or discuss the bad things he did. Just because he was taking advantage of the jews in a nicer way than most other Germans, doesn’t change the fact that he was still taking advantage of them and making a huge profit using slave labor. This was something Mr. Stewart briefly mentioned after we watched the film and I was wondering what other people thought. Where is the line for when the bad will outweigh the good? And does that line apply to all situation or is this one an exception? How much of it is he responsible for since most Germans were taking advantage of the Jews and slave labor anyway? He seemed to have done his best to do good in the most efficient way possible at the time but there were other ways he could’ve helped without dealing with the Nazis and taking advantage of slave labor. Although my personal opinion is that the good things he did and the lives he saved far outweigh the bad things he had to do to achieve that.
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At least according to the movie, Schindler's character changed. In the beginning he was profiting from the Jews and in fact his goal wasn't even to save them. However, the list marked a turning point where it became about saving Jews. We know this because Schindler was no longer making a profit, his factory produced goods that were unusable. He spent the money he had made earlier (by profiting off of slave labor) to undo his previous bad deeds. In the end I do believe he is an example of an upstander because he went against what everyone else was doing, which was profiting. Whether behavior is "good" or "bad" is too objective.
ReplyDeleteI believe that he was in a place where everyone around him promoted the Nazi party, and sense nobody thought it was wrong rounding up the jews and putting them camps, he felt justified using their work. However, when he saw how they were treated and killed, this made him epathetic and he bought and saved thousands of Jews. In my opinion, I respect him for being one of the few Germans to try to make a change during this time period. So I do think it is justified because in the end he still saved thousands of lives.
ReplyDeleteHaving a large amount of the population who were in/supported/tolerated the Nazi party meant that whatever they did was seen as justifiable in the eyes of the people. Businesses would exploit and use slave labor of the Jews to bring in more revenue. However Schindler initially started his company on merely the prospect of money to be made on their labor. The only difference was when he was able to see the treatment of the Jews(in the ghetto where his workers resided) he started to use his factory as a safe haven for them. He in the film when confronted by Itzhak Stern about how the product is being called bad for not working tells him that if the bullets and other things they made worked and was able to kill more Jews then that would be bad.
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