Well, I finally got to see the darn film. Good "movie" for all the known
reasons. However, I wanted to note one of the big historical inaccuracies
contained in it -and I apologize if this has already been brought up.
There is a scene where Schindler and Stern are carefully writing the list
of the people that are supposed to be transferred from Poland to the new
factory location in Czechoslovakia. It's a long night and at the end of it
all Schindler notes that he must have smoked more than three packs of
sigarettes during those hours. Stern sternly (excuse the pun) replies that
he is well aware of it since he must have smoked half of them.
I honestly don't think that in 1944 "passive smoking" was an hot issue.
Therefore in a film dedicated to a  reasessment of a collective historic
memory it is, to say the least, odd that Spielberg finds time to create the
context to even wink an eye to the populist concerns of the health
conscious American viewer of today.
At first glance this might be considered an irrelevant inaccuracy in a film
that is generally well documented and lovingly detailed. However it is
absurd to make believe that while Auschwitz' chimneys were blowing out a
much more death filled smoke someone like Stern was preoccupied with the
smoke that Schindler blew in his face.
Again, "Schindler's List" is a film on memory. And something like this is
surely not very good for creating a historic memory for the future
generations that will sit down to watch thirty years from now as their
memory span  will necessarily be even shorter than ours. In this case they
might even be led to think that the smoke from someone's sigarette is just
as bad as that rising from crematorium chimneys. Obsessions can be very
dangerous.
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Peter Sarram
Northwestern University
[log in to unmask]
Peace!