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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
Schindler becomes increasingly aware of how his workers are suffering in the ghetto. Nazis are directing men like Spira (in the OD) to put together longer and longer lists, getting rid of children and the elderly in particular. Families are being turned out of their apartments. People with Blauscheins are forcibly separated from their family members. Executions are happening in the streets.
The occupying Nazis in Poland show that they won’t keep any of the promises they make to the Jewish residents in the long run. Even documents that supposedly protect Jewish workers, like the Blauschein, are ultimately irrelevant if the Nazis decide otherwise.
Themes
As Schindler and Ingrid are riding horses down an avenue, they see a line of women and children being led by a guard. At the back of the line is a toddler with a red hat and coat (Genia). Ingrid says it must be a girl. The guards continue to lead the line of women and children while SS teams with dogs work both sides of the street. Schindler can’t believe the brutality that’s going on so close to the small girl in red. Schindler realizes that the Nazis allow witnesses to their brutality because they plan on getting rid of the witnesses eventually too.
This scene is a turning point where Schindler witnesses the Nazis’ brutality firsthand. The childlike nature of Genia in red makes the brutality around her stand out even more, as the color represents both her innocence (since she’s wearing red simply because she loves the color) and the bloody violence happening around her. Though Schindler has been dissatisfied with the Nazis for a long time, seeing them commit such atrocities in front of young children makes him realize that the Nazis aspire to absolute power and will kill anyone who gets in the way of their Final Solution (mass extermination of Jewish people).
Themes
A pharmacy run by Tadeus Pankiewicz is in a part of town called Plac Zgody (Peace Square). The square become a place where Nazis round up Jewish people. At one point, children are lined up there on Krakusa Street, with Genia among them. By moving confidently and not attracting attention, however, the three-year-old girl manages to get away to safety.
The fact that a three-year-old child escapes the Nazis (temporarily) while others couldn’t show the important role luck and circumstance play in who survives the Holocaust.
Themes
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After seeing the city on his horse, Schindler realizes the full extent of the Nazi’s brutality. He resolves to do everything he can to defeat their system.
The horrors Schindler witnessed in the ghetto solidify his resolve to save as many Jewish people as he can. Although he has been characterized as an ordinary and largely self-interested man thus far in the novel, from this point forward he will devote himself to others.
Themes
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