March 1, 1994 | First reactions after the screening of the film ‘Schindler’s List’ in Germany
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March 1, 1994 | First reactions after the screening of the film ‘Schindler’s List’ in Germany
View Reddit by CurrentRoster – View Source
1 • Interviewer – Can we ask about your first impression?
Man – Excuse me (leaves)
2 • Interviewer – Can we ask you about your first impression?
Man – It is really touching and I need time to process it but these kind of movies are important. You can now see in Yugoslavia (Civil war was going on there in 1994) that these things keep repeating themselves. Hopefully we will finally start to think and hopefully many people will watch the movie.
Interviewer – (turning to the lady) What touched you the most?
Woman: I was very touched about how the families were torn apart…. kids separated from their parents… men from their wives…
3 • Man – Well, I am shocked, absolutely shattered.
Interviewer – What impressed or shocked you the most?
Man – Well, that something like that could even happen. And then that man… the way he saved so many people. It really fills me with hope.
4 • Man – I got to say that I am still somewhat upset but… something negative remains. I cannot even word it.
5 • Girl – I really cannot say anything. This was unbelievable.
6 • Man – I also believe that all right wing extremists at home and abroad should see this movie as an obligation
Whenever I think about movies like Schindler’s List or Passion of the Christ I can only think that somewhere out there is a blooper reel. Like Jim Caviezel messing around with the cast all bloodied up wearing a crown of thorns between takes, or Liam Neeson cracking jokes when he flubs a line during the “I should have done more” scene.
Random fact: also happening in Germany on this date, Nirvana plays their final show ever at Terminal 1 in Munich.
Emotions need no translation.
No matter how horrifying or soul shredding images and stories are – we forget quickly enough.
Soviets, and now Russians – threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers into a literal meat-grinder. People that are alive now still remember those losses. Yet votes keep on piling up for warmongering leaders. Their nephews are sent to die.
Nobody actually wants to remember.
I was on a school exchange trip to Germany when the film came out, and I went with my exchange partner and his mum to see it in Mannheim. I was 15 at the time and must admit it mostly went over my head, but the response from the German audience was very emotional. For many people this was their father or grandfather on the wrong side of history.
Thank you for translating!
what are the chances somebody will make a movie on Uighurs?
I hope there is a good chance.
I wept. Saw it at my gf’s on her couch. I had been to porim the previous couple years in a row with friends, my first introduction to any direct Jewish culture. I couldn’t/can’t stop thinking about their/any family going through that… heartbreaking.
The comment about how it was still happening (in Yugoslavia) could be repeated today with respect to the Uyghurs in China. History seems to be on a never ending loop.
Could only get through that movie the one time. Same with the Pianist and Life Is Beautiful.
I was in Germany when it came out and I remember protests about the movie and a person saying “Why did Spielberg tell such lies about the German people?”
As sad as Germans are about the Holocaust and the movie, almost zero Germans admit their families were Nazis. It was always some other family, or they were forced into it as a youth. Listening to them, nobody was actually responsible. It was always someone else.
Please, feed me with more of these type of cultural reaction videos. All the youtube channels that do it end up just reacting to food or pop music. It’s so boring. I want to see genuine, culturally specific reactions.
I didn’t need to speak a word of German to understand all of that.
japan could never
I had every single one of my friends watch this movie. I still have it on DVD and never intend to lose it.
A good portion of my family died in buchenwald. 2 uncles survived the liberation of the camp only to die 3 days later because they were too far gone.
I think this movie should be required viewing in school and maybe, just maybe we can avoid it again.
There is one more documentary, it’s called “Night and Fog” / “Nacht und Nebel”, that one should be mandatory.
Theres [a famous incident](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/13/us/laughter-at-film-brings-spielberg-visit.html) where some Oakland high schoolers took a field trip to see the movie, and after a tense on-screen murder, someone shouted “Oh, man. That was cold.”. The kids erupt in laughter, the theatre manager shuts down the movie and sends the kids home. This somehow ended up as news, with big backlash against the school and kids. It took the Governor of California and Stephen Spielberg himself giving a speech in their defense to end it. But that wasn’t all…
>One afternoon two weeks later, Steven Spielberg came back. This time, it was unannounced– no media. The kids from the field trip and the chaperones gathered in the school library.
>
>Aaron Grumet, the math teacher, says it was all very hush-hush. Spielberg said he wanted it to be just them– no hard feelings, no agenda.
>
>One of the kids asked Spielberg, have you ever made a movie about the Black Holocaust, about slavery? He said no. The kid inquired, well, why not? And Spielberg said, well, maybe I will. Three years later, he released Amistad, about a slave ship. In an email, Steven Spielberg confirmed that one of the reasons he decided to make that film was that student’s question.
Source: [This American Life #644: Random Acts of History](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/644/transcript)
Schindler’s List is a great film… a masterpiece.
A recent criticism (or old one) is that it’s very tough to capture or understand the scope of the Holocaust in a 2-hour film. You need quite a few prequels to understand how Germany had gotten to that point. The Holocaust wasn’t about Oskar Schindler and his hijinks with various German officers… it was about the people of Germany.
To put into perspective, this was as recent to them as it is watching a movie set in the 70s to us.
And Jerry and Rachel?
My Social Studies teacher in 9th grade lost her job after screening this movie at school without the principal’s permission.
My parents are immigrants from Hungary by way of East Germany/DDR. They have yet to see the film.
Supposedly my mother’s father was a translator for the Nazi side because he spoke a bunch of languages, and later turned his talents to the courts. (I have no way of confirming this.)
I have though, I cried hard, and I haven’t been able to see it since.
I remember watching that movie at home. Maybe 10 years ago or so, it was such a touching movie however I’ll never watch it again same with all movies like that, like 12 years slave I will remember forever and I can’t bring myself to watch them again.
Just a friendly reminder: Spielberg didn’t take a commission for making Schindler’s List, and making the film was so harsh on his mental health that Robin Williams helped out and performed Stand-Up material on the phone with Spielberg to make him laugh and lighten the mood.
Powerful.
Sadly sometimes I feel like we as a society have learned little since these events.
More than any other time in history, the WW II era intrigues me the most. That said, I’ve never watched Schindler’s List. I just can’t watch anything to do with the Holocaust. War is one thing, but the inhumanity of the Holocausts is just more than I can take. I know all of the horrific things that were done and the terrifying numbers. And all to innocent people. My father in law’s dad was a major that was involved in combat in WWII. My father in law was born in Europe, and spent a good chunk of his childhood in Germany. Once when he was young he was riding in the car with his dad. At this point a lot of reconstruction had been done. But there was this one particular building that was riddled with bullet holes among all of the new construction. My father in law asked “Dad, why don’t they fix that building?” His dad replied “So they don’t fuckin’ forget!”.
Watched this again a couple weeks back.
An absolute masterpiece of a film, truly. The music was some of the best ever put to film.
We live in a time of maxims, so I know it doesn’t adequately convey the power of this movie to portray what it was like to live in that time, but this movie really is the best.
I’m 48 y.o., and I remember when this movie first came out and how it won a bunch of awards. It’s one of those movies that I still have not seen till this day. It’s actually a bucket list item that I’ve just been putting off.
You know – I occasionally make the complaint that Schindler’s List is more optimistic than a Holocaust movie should be, because it focuses on a man who saved a few people instead of the vast numbers who had no savior. And I make this complaint because for so many people, it’s the only film they’re going to watch on the topic.
But seeing this, that complaint really seem petty. It’s still giving people a much more concrete mental image of what it was like, and if it has to use some Hollywood optimism to get people into the cinemas I’m okay with that.
Left the theatre in silence (downtown Seattle) and took the elevator down to the parking garage. Stuffed into the handrails of the elevator were holocaust-denying literature. We gather it up and trashed it on the way out. JFC.
Just a Fyi, Youtube has a auto translate for its closed caption.
What I remember most about seeing Schindlers List was the total quiet after the movie… Lights was off for almost five minutes while people slowly left the theater. Not a sound, just people leaving without making a sound…
After watching this movie, my wife sobbed off and on for almost three days. She starts crying (and then I do) if I just mention it. She wants to watch it again but needs to plan a couple of days of not being responsive.
I never watched Schindler’s list for the same reason i never watched Roots. I don’t have the emotional strength. I don’t even understand what these people are saying and I’m practically crying. ❤️
Meanwhile, some joy boy comedian from the Upper West Side was making out with his girlfriend at one showing of Schindler’s List.
My German grandmother, who was a teenager at the time, had a “cardiac event” while watching it at home.
I still haven’t watched it.
I had a conversation with a friend recently where she said my gramma, as a child, was complicit. At first I said that was ridiculous [and naturally, I got really defensive] but by the end of the conversation she had somehow convinced me but now I don’t remember how.
It’s so ~~ironic~~ naive, as I was coming of age in the 90s, feeling so safe and thinking that this could *never* happen again.
Spielberg was filming Schindler’s List during the day and checking the editing and special effects of Jurassic Park during the night. Any other director would have produce two mediocres movies.
As a German I remember my reaction after watching the film in a British cinema. Afterwards I was unable to speak and felt so ashamed as I waked away.
An anecdote, in case anyone wants to read it …
It’s 1994 and I’ve had zero success in going out on dates with anyone from high school. But, hey, there’s a German exchange student at the school and she’s nice. Hey, she’ll talk to me. I’ve had three years of German so I figure we have plenty to talk about. Soon enough, I scrounged enough courage to ask her out. She agreed! Callooh! Callay! Now, what shall we do? Oh, go see a movie. That’s easy. And there’s a Steven Spielberg film out now, too? Great. Let’s go!
It’s *Schindler’s List.*
**But wait, it gets worse.**
At no point prior to the date did I think there was anything wrong with this idea. The simple A+B+C equation I had in my head was “She’s German, I speak German, the movie’s about Germans.” Regardless, she had no objections and we went. The movie is … the movie. If you’ve seen it, you know. It’s horrible. I was at least aware enough of the situation to not try to “make a move” of any sort. I thought, maybe, she might hold my hand if shit got worse, but she didn’t.
At any rate, we’re watching, and Oskar Schindler has a confab with Ben Kingsley about putting more names on the list, so Ben Kingsley types and types. Suddenly, my date slams her face into her hands and nearly curls up into a ball in her seat. I registered this out of my peripheral vision and only had enough time to ask in my head, “What’s wrong?” when I saw it.
>!Her family’s name was on the list.!<
It was only at *this* point that I thought, “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
I barely remember anything else and I think we parted amiably, but … yeah.
My mom passed away earlier this month. Her family was taken to a holding camp in The Netherlands but my great grandfather bribed the Nazis to let her and her immediate family go.
Still, many other family members perished and she never really recovered from the trauma (mostly a fear that people were basically evil and out to get her).
Even many decades later the scars remain.