Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Schindler’s List, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Virtue and Selflessness
Anti-Semitism and Dehumanization
Power
Duty
Bureaucracy
Summary
Analysis
Prisoners begin competing to get their own space in Emalia. Dolek Horowitz is a purchasing officer in the camp who believes he has no chance himself but who hopes his wife and two children can be kept safe. He does, however, have the favor of Bosch, who is a drinking buddy of Goeth. Dolek’s son Richard goes out asking questions and finds out that Płaszów won’t be safe even for a privileged child like Richard. So, Dolek takes his case to Bosch, begging him to talk to Schindler. Somewhat to his surprise (since his wife and children have no experience working in enamelware), his request is fulfilled.
Though Schindler’s enamelware factory was indeed a productive business at one point, here Schindler is increasingly using the business as a cover to protect Jewish prisoners. In this way, Schindler is sacrificing his own self-interest (and putting himself at risk of severe punishment) in order to help others.
Themes
Compared to Płaszów, the Emalia camp is peaceful, with no permanent guards. The rotating groups of SS and Ukrainians on guard like the assignment because they get better food there than anywhere else. They aren’t allowed inside the camp itself, because Schindler makes angry calls to Scherner if that happens—but this suits the guards fine, because they don’t mind having an easy assignment.
One of the Nazi’s most effective tools of repression is surveillance, and Schindler wisely avoids oversight by the guards by preventing guards from coming into the camp itself.
Themes
Though Schindler’s workers put in long shifts, often 12 hours (in order to fulfill his war contracts), they are much better fed than the other camp prisoners, and none die of hunger, beatings, or overwork. Long after the war, Emalia’s residents will remember it as a paradise.
Even the comparative safety of Schindler’s Emalia involves hard work, showing just how limited the options are for Jewish people in WWII Poland. In addition, the fact that the prisoners view Emalia as paradise simply because they weren’t starved, beaten, or overworked emphasizes how brutal other concentration camps were by comparison.
Themes
A dark-complexioned Jewish girl named Regina Perlman is living in Cracow with forged papers that say she is South American. Her parents, however, are in Płaszów, and she sneaks food and supplies in to them when she can. She hears about Schindler and decides she must get her parents into Emalia.
The fact that Regina is able to hide in plain sight with forged papers highlights just how arbitrary the Nazis’ ideas about race are. They stereotype Jewish people as looking a certain way, which ends up hurting their cause, as it allows people like Regina to slip through the cracks.
Themes
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Regina Perlman goes to the camp disguised and meets Schindler. She is very beautiful, which Schindler and his secretary Klonowska (with whom Schindler is still having an affair) both notice, although Klonowska is used Schindler’s habits and doesn’t expect him to be loyal to her. Anxiously, Regina admits to Schindler that her Aryan papers are fake and that her parents are in the camp. Schindler, however, disappoints her by saying there’s nothing he can do—he only takes skilled workers. It’s only later that she realizes Schindler may have suspected her of being an agent trying to entrap him. Surprisingly, however, within a month her parents are part of a new group of 30 workers sent to Emalia.
Schindler’s behavior is unusually cold, which suggests that perhaps Regina is right about Schindler suspecting that she’s a plant. Because Schindler was dead long before Keneally wrote the Schindler’s List, however, Schindler’s thoughts are sometimes a mystery.
Themes
A campaign starts in Płaszów to get Rabbi Menasha Levartov (who is posing as a metalworker) sent over to Emalia. Stern in particular had been one of his admirers. He tells Schindler about how, because of Levartov’s presence on camp, he had become a target of an attempted murder by Goeth.
Though the Jewish people in concentration camps are oppressed and silenced, they still have some power to come together around specific issues—in this case, the fate of Rabbi Levartov.
Themes
With more than 30,000 people in his camp, Goeth makes it a priority to get rid of the early prisoners to make way for new ones, often rounding up people into two lines and marching one line away to the firing squads. At one point, Goeth asks Stern for 25 skilled metalworkers. Stern includes Levartov in the list of the skilled, which Goeth takes notice of. Still, Goeth is distracted when a boy in the unskilled line claims he is in fact a skilled worker—for speaking out, Goeth shoots him in the head.
Goeth once again demonstrates that he has no patience for anything less than total obedience (and sometimes even that isn’t enough). This scene builds tension, because Levartov is clearly lying about his skill and is in danger of being caught.
Themes
A few days later, Goeth goes up to Levartov in the metalworks and asks for Levartov to demonstrate the process of making hinges. Levartov makes one in under a minute, then another. Goeth points out that at this rate, Levartov should have a much larger pile. He walks Levartov outside, taking out the same pistol he used to kill the boy earlier. But as he tries to shoot, Goeth’s pistol jams. Goeth curses, then pulls out a different pistol.
The jamming of Goeth’s pistol is one of many improbable events that ends up saving lives during the Holocaust. This one again emphasizes how fragile Jewish prisoners’ fates are, as their survival is largely determined by random chance.
Themes
As Goeth is preparing to shoot, Levartov pleads that he was only behind on making hinges because his machine was being recalibrated and he was shoveling coal instead. Goeth hits him and simply abandons him, but both know that the matter isn’t resolved. Stern tells the whole matter to Schindler, who teases him: “Why the long story? There’s always room at Emalia for someone who can turn out a hinge in less than a minute.” Levartov and his wife arrive at Emalia in the summer of 1943. Schindler permits the rabbi to hold religious ceremonies, slipping him wine to use for them.
Even Goeth seems to see something significant in the jamming of his pistol. Despite all his vile qualities, Goeth often maintains a sense of sportsmanship, and in this case, he seems to recognize that he lost a sort of game. Schindler’s decision to let Levartov hold religious ceremonies may seem small, but it plays an important role in helping the Jewish prisoners to resist the Nazis’ dehumanizing treatment.
Themes
