Schindler's List

Steven Spielberg's masterwork deals with the Holocaust, but the Holocaust on a personal level -- how one man's morality and humanity changes in the face of unmitigated horror. As the film's tagline aptly sums it up: "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world." The film begins in Krakow, Poland in 1939. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an imposing, well-dressed bon-vivant is seen buying drinks and caviar for Nazi officers, who permit him to open up a clay-pot factory, enlisting cheap labor provided by Jewish refugees. Schindler asks Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a Jewish accountant, to help him obtain backing for the factory.

By 1941, the Jewish community has been herded into the Ghetto, and the elders agree to back Schindler, reasoning that having a job might guarantee the Jews a reprieve from death in the concentration camps. But, by 1943, the Ghetto is being liquidated, and the remaining residents are brought to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp. The commandant, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) is a cold-blooded Nazi sadist, who at the same time is attracted to Jewish inmate Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz), whom he makes his maid. When the time came for his unpaid Jewish workers to be sent to their deaths, Schindler was able to rescue over a thousand of them by placing them on his special list of "essential" workers and by befriending Goeth and using his friendship to campaign for their reprieve.