Otto-A Good Man is Hard to Find

During the time of the Holocaust thousands of people were killed and many, although they considered themselves to be good people, did not help the effort to keep innocent humans alive. This might have happened because they were cowardly, or just looked away because, to be honest, it may not have affected their lives. They were still getting everything they needed, so they may have asked themselves, Why get involved? Why help? This was not the case for Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.

In Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg(1990), Raoul Wallenberg(Stellan Skarsgard) witnesses a horrific scene where a child is thrown dead from a moving train, then an older male jumps out after him only to be shot by one of the officers on the train. Wallenberg describes this scene as the only real thing he has ever seen and begins a journey that takes him to German-occupied Budapest where he helps Jews get to Sweden. Wallenberg risked his life to save many others; he knew that the German army was wrong in murdering thousands, and wanted to help the victims of the situation. Unfortunately, he was abducted into a camp and never to be seen again. What exactly happened to Wallenberg remains to be unseen. Wallenberg was a good man from the start, doing his part in a world crisis where thousands, including himself, were murdered.

In Schindler’s List(1993), Oscar Schindler(Liam Neeson) was a man of class and fanciness. He loved everything glamorous in life and when WWII began he found a way to make money, providing first bowls, plates, and utensils, and then military equipment for the German Nazi Party(although none of it was functional because Schindler didn’t want to help with the effort). In the beginning Schindler was merely a man who wanted to make more money, but as time wore on he grew as a person, to understand what was really going on in the world, and he became attached to his Jews and saved them from the camps. Schindler was not the best guy in the beginning but he eventually saved over a thousand Jew, and he was distraught over the fact that he didn’t save more. Towards the end of his life, Schindler was taken care of by the Jews who he had saved, as if they were thanking him for saving their lives.

These two men did so much to help the Jewish population during WWII. Although not both of them started with the idea of saving people, eventually, they both did their part to save many lives from being murdered. Others could have, however, did not, which begs the question Why? It takes us back to Elie Wiesel’s Night when he describes “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent? No. All this could not be real. A nightmare perhaps...” (p. 32). People did not seem concerned with the fact that thousands were being killed, turning away, because they did not want to take the risk, or saw only what they wanted to see, because these horrific murders did not personally affect them. Both Wallenberg and Schindler were two men who stood up and fought to save lives at their own personal expense. They are the example that should have been followed.