See "Judgment at Nuremberg" instead.

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 2005)

In one of the final scenes of "Schindler's List," which may serve as a microcosm of this terribly flawed movie, a camp inmate is depicted as being so grateful to his kindly and charitable Nazi liberator that with his own hand he removes a gold tooth from his own mouth and gratefully hands it to the Nazi as a gift. Allowing that such a thing may actually have taken place, still I believe one is entitled to question the artistic judgment the director exercised in showing it. Surely Mr. Spielberg has seen the film "Judgment at Nuremberg" and knows that among the damning evidence presented by the United States Army War Tribunal against Nazi war criminals were gold teeth that were forcibly removed from the mouths of inmates and kept as booty by the thugs who ran the camps. In the wake of the war crimes trials, the extracted gold tooth became one of the main icons or symbols of the horrible wrongs perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazis. What kind of a sick joke is it to show a camp inmate voluntarily extracting his own gold tooth, when it is very well known that it was usually either Nazi camp guards or "sonderkommandos" (camp inmates who turned traitor) who forcibly performed the extractions, sometimes before the victim was even put to death?
The entire movie is defective in my opinion, because it conveys the idea that there was significant Nazi sympathy for concentration camp inmates. For a generation of film-goer who did not live through World War II and who were born decades later, this film may be the only one they'll see on the subject of concentration camps and the Nazis. Many of the audience probably left the theaters after seeing this film with the false impression that it wasn't so bad in the forced labor camps because the guys running them were sympathetic, charitably minded human beings. In fact, most Nazis who had anything to do with the camps or forced labor were the worst sort of subhuman vermin (they were called the "scum of Europe" at the time). What purpose does it serve to depict any Nazi with control over concentration camp inmates as a philanthropist, with a charming romantic passion for his imprisoned slaves?
As a rule, any so-called historical truth is open to question and doubt, never more so in a movie than here. Although the facts in "Schindler's List" are generally accepted by film-goers and critics alike (according to the press), can we be absolutely sure they are true, when everything else we know about the subject runs 180 degrees in the opposite direction? Just because a work has been published or produced doesn't make it true. Many historical accounts have been proved wrong in spirit and in fact.
The danger of any movie that treats controversial and ethically difficult historical subject matter is that it is likely to be regarded as a universal truth about the period instead of as a particular story. So I don't regard this movie as true history, because it is misleading as a generalization. And possibly some or all of the relevant "facts" presented are false or distorted. I recommend to anyone who does not want to be misled about the holocaust that they see "Judgment at Nuremberg" instead!