Schindler's List

Hostility, prejudice, or bias toward Jewish people as an ethnic and religious group, antisemitism has a long and complex history in Europe. Before the late 19th and early 20th century, anti-Jewish bias was strictly religious in nature and was common throughout Europe under the Church. For example, during the Spanish Inquisition, anti-Jewish hatred extended only to religious practices: Once Jewish people converted to Christianity and held to its traditions, the Inquisition ceased persecuting them. Nazi race pseudoscience claimed that inherent, unalterable differences existed between ethnicities. A belief from Nazi race pseudoscience that still lingers today is that people from Africa and people from Europe are inherently different on a moral, psychological, and intellectual level. Nazi pseudoscientists believed that Jewish people were their own distinct ethnic group with inherently different morals, brains, and intelligence than the white Aryans of Europe. This movement of Jewish identity from religion to ethnicity created an anti-Jewish bias now referred to as antisemitism. Since World War II, antisemitism has almost always arisen from the perception and hatred of Jewish ethnicity, and Jewish religious identity is treated as an outgrowth of this ethnicity.

Antisemitism’s ethnic component was the basis for Nazi ideology. The Nazis believed that a “race war” between ethnicities and races was inevitable because of so-called differences between the races. This belief in a race war, coupled with the idea of Jewish ethnic identity and Lebensraum, allowed the Nazis to portray Jewish people as an inherent threat to Aryans. Making Judaism a matter of ethnicity made the anti-Jewish biases of Europeans irreconcilable with Jewish people existing; converting Jewish people was no longer possible, since the Nazis had located the “problem” with Jewish people in the core of their existence. This new anti-Jewish belief system of antisemitism provided justification for the Nazis to enrich their own regime with Jewish belongings, business, and infrastructure while providing a racist justification for the genocide of Jewish peoples in Europe.

A member of the “master race” (See: Übermensch), which the Nazis theorized was the natural master of humanity, an “Aryan” was supposedly a genetically superior human. “Aryan” is now an obsolete term to refer to peoples of Proto-Indo-European descent, the shared groups of peoples that came up from Africa and eventually split off in different directions to populate Asia and Europe. The Nazis latched onto the term as an ideologically pure, common ancestor of the people of Europe, using fabricated evidence to suggest that these Proto-Indo-Europeans were white. Aryanism created a racial hierarchy based on one’s proximity to the antiquated Aryan race, which conveniently placed ethnic Germans as the closest to the Aryans of Europe. The Nazis believed that Germans had the most stereotypically Aryan features, such as blue eyes and blond hair.

A Polish-Jewish resistance group in German-occupied Poland, the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB) was instrumental in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and provided major resistance against the Nazis’ plans in Poland. The group was a mixture of several preexisting groups that came together out of a shared need for strength against the Nazi threat. A coalition of Jewish people across the political spectrum, ZOB united people in resisting German fascism. These people were some of the first to understand the Nazis’ plans for Europe’s Jewish population.

An antisemitic conspiracy theory, Judeo-Bolshevism was concocted by the Nazis to demonize two of their greatest enemies at the same time: Jewish people and communists. The disproven theory proposes that Jewish people secretly controlled the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union, and that they wished to destroy European society. This conspiracy theory created a bogeyman perceived as pure evil by Nazi Germany. The fear and hatred toward both Marxists and Jewish people in the novel stems from the Nazi belief in this conspiracy theory. It’s also why the novel depicts communists (or “Marxists,” as Thomas Keneally refers to them) as some of the first people the Nazis execute in the novel.

A racist settler-colonial ideology, Lebensraum (“Living Space”) was foundational to German politics from the late 19th century to the end of the Nazi regime. Lebensraum relies on debunked ideas of social Darwinism and imagines the State as a living, biological organism. The term originated from a German review of Charles Darwin’s Origins of Species in the mid-19th century.

The State-organism under Lebensraum was supposedly mandated by laws of nature to require constant expansion to make room for its ideal citizens to thrive. For Nazi Germany, the State needed to expand and capture territory that was ideally suited to the thriving of Aryan citizens. This included the idyllic territory of the Alps and many parts of Central Europe like Moravia, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. The Nazis believed that these environments were somehow uniquely fitted to the thriving of Aryan peoples.

Keneally doesn’t use the term Lebensraum, but the concept is vital to the actions of the Nazis within the novel. Lebensraum shaped nearly every aspect of Nazi life and politics, from the idyllic villa of Goeth situated in the concentration camp to the annexation of Poland.

A contentious and likely fictional postwar secret Nazi organization, ODESSA (Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, or “Organization of ex-SS Members”) is said to have orchestrated underground escape plans for Nazi party members to evade prosecution for their war crimes at Nuremberg. While no concrete evidence proves that ODESSA existed, numerous other organizations orchestrated the escape of Nazi war criminals. Many of these escape routes, sometimes called “ratlines,” took Nazi war criminals to places where they were kept safe, often by the local government. Some of the most common destinations for ratlines were Argentina, the US, and various locations in Central and South America. ODESSA is likely a conglomeration—within the popular consciousness—of several organizations that actually existed.

A system of railways owned and operated under German rule in Nazi-occupied Poland, the Ostbahn (Eastern Railway) was owned by the Deutsche Reischbahn company. The company was privately owned yet had an intimate relationship with the Nazi regime. The Ostbahn railway system singlehandedly facilitated the mass transfer of prisoners and the raw goods required for the Nazi regime to kill millions of victims. Exclusively staffed by German citizens, the railway system was used to enrich Nazi party members while facilitating the Nazis’ plans in Poland.

A communist-led Polish army formed in 1943 to combat the Nazis in Poland, the Polish People’s Army (Ludowe Wojsko Polskie, or LWP) was associated with the Allies and received most of its support from the Soviets. LWP forces participated in many battles between the Soviets and the Nazis, while also performing guerilla warfare in their home territory against the Nazis. The LWP supplied information to the ghetto of Cracow and many other ghettos.

The Jewish people who survived the war because of their place on Schindler’s list of names or who ended up under his care in some other way (such as the runaways Schindler purchased in Brinnlitz) are referred to as the Schindlerjuden. The term literally translates to “Schindler’s Jews” and was used both by the Schindlerjuden themselves and by others. The use of this term implies a personal, intimate connection between Schindler and the Jewish people in question given the term’s possessive connotation.

The main branch of the Nazi party that appears in Schindler’s List, the Schutzstaffel (“Protection Guard”), or SS, was a paramilitary group that owed its allegiance directly to the party leader, Hitler, because of the group’s roots as a security force and protection racket in the party’s early days, when it aimed to take over the Weimar Republic. SS members were the elite upper echelons of the Nazi party because of their position next to the leader. As a result, the most vicious officials of Nazi Germany, like Amon Goeth, were all directly involved in the SS. The SS personally oversaw Germany’s Lebensraum operations and the genocide of the Jewish people and other persecuted minorities.

Formed in Czechoslovakia in 1933, the Sudeten German Party (SGP) was far-right, nationalist party that sought unity with Germany for the Sudetendeutsche. The party was created as a response to the Czechoslovakian government outlawing the burgeoning Nazi party in its borders. The SGP was in all respects a rebranded Nazi party and merged with the Nazi party after Germany annexed Czechoslovakia.

The groups of ethnically German and German-speaking peoples that became part of countries like Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, the Sudetendeutsche overwhelmingly backed the SGP in Czechoslovakia, and many of the Nazi party’s members—including Hitler and Himmler—came from this group.

German-appointed bureaucrats and business middle-men, Treuhänders (“Trustees”) managed confiscated businesses and infrastructures in Nazi-occupied Poland. Often, these people were placed in charge of Jewish-owned businesses since Jewish people weren’t allowed to engage in business under Nazi rule. Treuhänders often used their position to steal from the businesses they ran, with no accountability, because of their status as Aryans compared to the Jewish people whose businesses they controlled.

A term used by the Nazis to indicate supposedly biologically and morally superior peoples (Aryans), Übermensch are meant to rule over, enslave, and exploit lesser peoples (Untermensch). The idea of Übermensch is the foundation for Nazi ideology. While mostly interchangeable with Aryan, Übermensch specifically refers to the philosophical and political position of the Aryan heritage in Nazi ideology.

The opposite of Übermensch, Untermensch were the inferior peoples whom the Nazis believed they were destined to rule over and exploit for labor: Slavic peoples, Jewish peoples, African peoples, etc. Nazi racial ideology deemed Untermensch irrevocably inferior in mental capacity, morals, and physical beauty.