Schindler's Jews

I am currently reading this biography of Hitler written by Ian Kershaw. I did not read the reviews of this book before buying it, but I liked the idea that this book was written about the rise of Hitler. It has events leading to World War II, nothing about the war itself. I had already seen so many movies and documentaries about WWII that I really did not want to read what happened, but mainly to read why it happened. I am not even halfway through the book yet, so can't say much about it, but while reading the book I remembered that I had never seen Speilberg's Schindler's List. So I rented the movie and saw it and really liked it......After that I was talking to a friend who reads Marx and Tolstoy and he said that he thought that he did not like the movie and it showed only one point of view. For example when According to him when Marx or Tolstoy write about something they take a neutral position and write objectively. I haven't read either, so I have to rely on his opinion. But that really surprised me. I don't think anybody can ever take a neutral position on Holocaust and discuss it objectively. For me it is an emotional topic. It is impossible to look at other side of the coin. I mean, no matter what anyone does taking their life is inexcusable, especially so when it is a well-organized and well-implemented task. Having said that one thing that I did notice in the movie was after the war when the SS officer gets executed, the narrator says "he was hanged for his crimes against humanity". How do you justify killing someone for crimes against humanity? Isn't the act of hanging/executing a person in itself against humanity????? That once again brings the question of death penalty to the fore. But that's for another day.

Coming back to Schindler, he was just an opportunist who conned Jewish traders to put money in his manufacturing business and ended up saving thousands of Jews because of his kind accountant. Of course, later in the war he did spend all his fortune bribing Nazi officers to save his Jewish workers' lives, but he did not really start as a humanitarian. He just got involved in it because of his accountant, and then acted on his basic human instincts to save the people he by then knew so well. You did not have to be Mother Teresa to do that. It's hard to believe that you would actually go ahead and kill someone you knew so well. But going back to my friend's question, why didn't the Nazi soldiers act on their basic human instinct? I don't know. Maybe it takes very little to recognize that instinct for some people and maybe some of them never realize they have it. No matter what the reason for their behavior, it cannot be an excuse and it certainly does not deserve an objective look. There cannot be another side to this story.....