One of the scenes that has always stuck with me from Schindler's List is the scene in which the Nazi's are marching through the town with a group of Jews being led to the Ghetto and there is a little girl with a red coat among the black and white world. This stark contrast of an individual person is really not about the girl herself, she is not colorized only her coat is, but about the ability for wrong to stand out when it is presented properly. As a viewer our eye is drawn to this girl and the typical response is, 'I don't want that cute little girl to be killed.' But what is really being shown here is something similar to what the people of Europe during the time were dealing with. Your sympathy goes out to the girl in the red coat while the hundreds of other people being lead to their deaths simply blends into the background, they are for the films sake no differently colored than the Nazi soldiers. This is the mentality that was moving over Europe during the Nazi occupation, it was not that any individual person could not see the wrong being done, but that it all seemed to blend together with the war machine that was destroying everything. This same thought is echoed in Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg when Marja is detailing why she wants to be naked so she can show the soldiers that she is no different than they are that she has the same skin and hair as they do. She is dealing with the same type of blended mentality shown in this picture where only the drastic use of color make this small girl stand out. Both of these films dealt with men who tried to save as many Jewish people as they could, while Schindler's motivations are easily doubtable and Wallenberg's frantic attitude seems to lead to deaths of most of those Jews on the truck, they are nevertheless men of lists. For each of these men it was not about the individual Jew, Schindler doesn't save the girl in the red coat, it was about the amount of Jews that could be saved over all. While the rest of the worlds views of the Jew had turned to blend them into a mass of black and white people of sad but unchangeable lives for these men each Jew stood out in bright color as a person to be saved.
While I felt that Schindler was in his personal life quite dubious, I still view him as someone good, someone who risked his own life to save others still must be a hero in some way. For Wallenberg the movie makes him out to be obsessive and frantic but still a person who is unwilling to step away from his idea's, no matter the cost.
Otto: Comment on Coulter Blog Keeping Jews Safe Through Lists
ReplyDeleteAlthough I had never seen Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg before last week, I had seen Schindler’s List. The scene about the young girl in the red coat was also one that always stood out to me, obviously because throughout the movie there were few instances where color was seen, illustrating the black and white view that the world had taken of the Jewish population and the Holocaust. It could be argued that this scene was one that totally shifted Schindler’s view of what he was participating in and how he could help. It was, to me, much like the scene in Good Morning, Mr. Wallenberg, where Wallenberg see a young child being thrown from a moving train, an adult jumping out after him, and then being shot by men from the train as he hugs the young child helplessly. Wallenberg goes as far to say that it is the only real thing that he has ever seen, and it jumpstarts his, as you have described, frantic efforts to save others.
I agree that the fact that people did begin to see the Jewish people as one group instead of individuals made it easier for them to stand aside and let them be murdered. It made it easier to buy in to the Nazi propaganda that they weren’t really humans and were just a group that was standing in the way of their success. If they had been able to see the individual, such as the girl in the red coat, then perhaps they would have had more compassion and realized that those that are being murdered were individual people. They would have been able to see that they weren’t so different and hadn’t done anything to deserve being murdered.
ReplyDeleteThe Nazi’s were smart in putting these stereotypes around “the Jews” and brainwashing citizens into believing that they weren’t actual people but animals. Once people believed that they weren’t human it was made easier not to think of them as being someones child, parent or sibling. Once this personal connection was lost, mass murder began. This lost connection can be seen in the movie Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg where young Jewish boys had been lined up to shoot for fun. One of them came forward and tried to connect with one of the shooters by saying that his brother had been in the same class as him. But the shooter was too wrapped up in believing that Jews were not worthy of living and therefore had no problem shooting someone he used to be friends with in the face.
The Jews were always the outcasts of Europe and many other countries. They excluded themselves from the "group" or "population". Nor did they celebrate any nationalism or state holidays. This could be seen as a reason for their "scapegoat" stance for the Nazi's. It is easy to pick out the "loser" or the weakest or different person and separate them from the group. This is even easier accomplished if the person excluded themselves from the beginning. For the Jews, they were a black & white people living in a foreign land. They were never considered as true members of society, and were never viewed as a "colorful" people. This was a problem for their people in France, Spain, Germany, and many other countries. Therefore the image presented points out the "colorlessness" of the Chosen People and how they blend into the "War Machine" by being herded to their deaths and being dumped into mass grave sites. The little girl stands out from the rest, signifying that their is the loss of the individual in these pictures/events.
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