Sunday, September 6, 2015

Oskar Schindler Was a Minority of One and Look What He Did by Himself

"Schindler's List" is my pilgrimage and I need it not so much to refresh my memory on how badly Jews were treated as how could anyone possibly forget.  What's much easier to forget is how good people can be even when every possible logical action says don't.  Save yourself.  They will kill you for it.  Run away.

"If this factory ever turns out a shell casing which can actually be used, I will be very unhappy." - Oskar Schindler


There is a secondary importance after affirming the ability of a single human being to rise up and shine for all others in that the story also affirms the Germans were not a massive population of pushovers who automatically started shouting Seig Heil like a bunch of Pavlovian goldfish every time Hitler wiggled his Charlie Chaplin mustache.


For some it's ok in believing Jesus was good so we can all be.  Well, that's, um, good ... but that was two thousand years ago.  Am I to accept he's the only good guy who ever showed up.  You know that's not true and Schindler is one of many proofs of it.  But we quickly forget as we remember horror much longer than goodness so we need to be reminded, yes, we really can be this good.  What's more, almost all of us want to be.


Many times I feel like a Minority of One and there's more frustration than loneliness in that.  Perhaps I'm the Resistance and so be it.  The Resistance will continue and it will be as dead accurate as I can make it.  Someone's got to do it and there's precious little of that anywhere else.

I'm no saint and I'm not trying to save my soul but the lying just busts my ass and it's everywhere.  Schindler didn't put up with it so why should anyone.


Eternal thanks to Steven Spielberg for the gift of this knowledge as it's not likely I would have found it otherwise.  I had read previously of the Warsaw ghetto and knew various things about it but I never knew anything of Schindler until Spielberg made the movie.  He's one of the most brilliant of directors insofar as he can make the most charming entertainment in movies or go to full-bore cinema and apparently do both with equal facility.

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