When Victims Rule (pdf)

THE HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE (PT. 2)
tion of “Schindler’s Jews” in Nazi Germany – and Jews in general – leads somewhere:
the rationale for the modern Israeli state.
Spielberg’s subtle political intention is evidenced at the end of his movie in
his own interpretive addenda to Kineally’s Schindler story. When the Jews are
released from internment in the film by the Russian army, they query amongst
themselves where they should go. A Russian officer – himself a Jew – reminds
them that they are not welcome in the West, or East, but might try a nearby
town. The Jews, en masse, homeless and hungry, strangers in every country,
reviled everywhere, are pictured in the distance moving across a field in search
of a new home. Spielberg then cuts immediately to similar shot of a group of
Jews in the distance, in color now, distinct from the black and white movie.
The “wandering” Jews in the farmer’s field in the fictive movie are now transposed
to modern times in a short “documentary,” one that chronicles a group
of “real” Jews who have lived to this day thanks to Schindler’s compassion and
humanity. Schindler’s grave is in a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem and Spielberg
has gathered a number of concentration camp survivors and their children
to pay homage to the Righteous Gentile at his grave. “In the background,”
writes Michael Goldberg, “we hear the strains of Yerushalayim Shel Zahav –
‘Jerusalem of Gold.’ Written in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, the
song celebrating Israel’s historic recovery of the ancient city, has become a virtual
anthem.” [GOLDBERG p.]
In the last few minutes of the film, Spielberg has thus abandoned the Keneally
version of things (from which the movie director snaked an entirely personal
path anyway) and transformed the Schindler story into a piece of Israeli
propaganda. Non-Jewish audiences are lured by the shocking horror of the Nazi
story, then find solace that one of their own, a Gentile, had the moral courage
to stand up for what is right and protect the Jews under his governance. With
his coda in Israel, Spielberg deftly infers in the viewer the necessity for setting
up the state of Israel as protection against violent anti-Semitism, which is the
cornerstone of the Zionist belief system, and, indeed, modern Jewish identity.
“Spielberg,” observes Goldberg, “... here seems heavy-handed, bent on wresting
one particular emotion response from us: unallayed support for the state of
Israel.” [GOLDBERG, p.] “Schindler’s List,” says Steven G. Kellman, “is Zionist
affirmation, a lustrous assertion that Israel is the only alternative to persecution
if not eradication of Jews.” [KELLMAN, p. 10]
Underscoring the ideological manipulations and machinations at base in
the film, the version of Schindler’s List that was released in Israel has a different
song for its concluding scene. While “Jerusalem of Gold” finds a soft spot in the
heart of diaspora Jews in their myths of Israel, in Israel itself this song’s connotational
range is more expansive, even controversial, symbolizing “first the
euphoria of the Israeli victory of 1967 and then the bitter fruits of conquest,
occupation, and repression of others by the young Jewish state.” [BARTOV,
p. 45] The new song in the Israeli version of the movie (Eli, Eli) “shift[s] the
politics of the film’s ending from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Israeli-sponsored
‘heroic’ aspect of the Holocaust.” [BARTOV, p. 59]
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