Because You Never Asked

     The fact that one of the most celebrated films in recent memory was being shown commercial free in prime time on network television, was a sufficient display of goodwill to make even someone like myself, whose demeaning attitude towards the motion picture industry is well documented, decide to check it out. Couple this with the fact that I have recently written somewhat disparagingly about the director of "Shindler's List", Steven Speilberg (see essay "2001"), and I felt duty bound to watch in an effort to corroborate or contradict my original thoughts on the cinema icon.

     Before going any further, I suppose it is unavoidable in writing about this to mention my physical descent from Russian-Polish Jews. Although I do not live any kind of Jewish lifestyle, nor adhere to any set of religious convictions, none of that would have mattered to the Nazis, who'd have wanted to eliminate me anyway, nor does it erase the fact that one's cultural-racial lineage is bound to leave its mark. I like to brag about Sandy Koufax over a good potato knish as much as the next Jew.

     "Shindler's List" is a powerful movie made by a talented filmmaker at the height of his artistic powers. Shooting it in black and white was a masterstroke that added to the majestic gloom and doom of it. However, in mitigation of what has just been said, any competent director wanting to make a "powerful" film need look no further than the Holocaust. What the Nazis did to the Jews and other assorted undesirable life forms does not lend itself to irony, humor, sarcasm or anything other than the brute horror of this cancerous splotch on the body of human history. If a filmmaker is not capable of making a powerful film with this kind of raw material, I suggest he or she go get a job.

     I watched "Shindler's List" for a bit more than an hour, at which point my capacity for such unimaginable suffering had reached its limit. In search of some kind of cleansing experience, I clicked off the set and walked out into the soft caress of the tropical night. I pointed my face into the brisk southeast wind and let it buffet my body. I needed to relax. The film had upset me. I felt something rubbing against my calves and looked down to find "Buffy", my neighbor's long-legged orange tabby, meandering between my legs. I bent over and tickled his ears. Good boy.

     It was during these 20 minutes spent in communion with the tropical night that the embryonic seeds of this essay began to germinate. What had upset me --- perhaps "annoyed" is a more fitting word --- was the fact that this movie had ever been made. Like so many "Mafia-gangster" movies so generically sprung from the Hollywood production line, "Shindler's List", in spite of its high quality and the use of Oscar Shindler's extraordinary life as a vehicle, cannot escape entrance into a general category of Nazi-Holocaust movies that have preceded it. Without minimizing the skill with which the film was made, I feel compelled to ask . is there anything really new here? Have we not seen all these images many times over --- the boxcars full of people, the ghettoes, the horrifying raids and gratuitous killings?

     One of the more enduring images churned out by Hollywood is the now familiar figure of the sadistic, arrogant Nazi officer, the prototypical incarnation of the word "evil". It was yet another depiction of this cinema cliché that finally put me at the end of my viewing patience. A young Jewish woman interned at one of the camps and obviously well educated as an engineer, hastily informs the "Kommandant" that the building under construction in the background will fall down unless some structural errors are corrected. The officer sarcastically denigrates her, has her shot in the head right on the spot, and then, as if life had become such a tiresome bore, orders his men to carry out her suggestions. Similar scenes abound in this film. Speilberg not only spared us none of this, he reveled in it.

     Not just as a Jew, but as a human being, I am appalled by what happened during the Nazi era in history. The fact that I escaped this savage treatment by one generation and the width of the Atlantic Ocean is something I feel eternally fortunate for. But --- and this I ask only as a Jew --- have we now crossed some ill-defined, debatable line of good reason into the realm of self pity? Are we beginning to wallow in all this? Is the idea of persecution becoming too centered, too heavily weighted in our personalities? Must we continue to dredge this stuff up with increasingly more precision and detail . and maybe with a slight degree of "schmaltz"?

     By now, and not withstanding the small number of revisionist cranks who are not taken all that seriously, the extreme lunacy that took hold of the German nation during this era is well documented and widely diffused. The flame of its remembrance, as well as that of any other such abominable acts with which the human race so rhythmically punctuates time, should never be let to go out. Certainly, my respect for the millions of people whose lives were tragically touched by these events is still intact. It is only with the greatest sensitivity that I make the following suggestion: perhaps it is time to turn this flame down a bit and put it on a back burner. If it unfortunately becomes necessary in the future, we can always turn it up again. Let's give it a chance to heal. It might facilitate a more harmonious march into the future.

     And what about the Germans, who have so deservedly earned their role as the heavies in these Nazi-Holocaust extravaganzas?

     It is often asked if present and future generations should have to bear the responsibility for the delirious insanity of their ancestors? My annual visits to the Mediterranean have given me the opportunity to deal with the Germans on a more than superficial basis (see essay "Katarina Witt"). I see no reason to doubt the recuperation of their collective sanity. The leniency of their post-war immigration policies and the institution of a more multi-ethnic society are healthy signs of repentance. I don't think today's Germans should be burdened with the guilt of their grandparents, but I say so with the following corollary: the German nation should be in the vanguard of vigilance when it comes to exposing and criticizing the kind of beastly behavior that somehow broke out of its cage in the Nazi era. I ask no more. Let's get on with it.

     I for one have had a craw full of so many separate heritages and races and ethnic groups seeking the spotlight in the burlesque of human existence, of this or that St. Patrick's-Columbus Day Parade, of so many "Cinco de Mayo-Calle Ocho" festivals, of Black History Months, Polish kielbasa and Chinese New Years. I'm fed up with the Ulster men and the IRA, with the Jews and Palestinians, the Shiites and Sunnis, the Hutus, French Canadians and Basque separatists. I'm sick of the medal count at the Olympics, the World Cup, and which country has the fastest runners, the strongest men, and the girls with the biggest tits. As technology makes the world a smaller, more familiar place, it's time we began to realize that we are all of one heritage, sprung from the ooze of the primordial muck, the atrocities of one being the atrocities of all, just as the accomplishments of one are the accomplishments of all.

     I don't need anymore Shindler's Lists.

     (Author's note: While retouching this essay in preparation for its inclusion on this web site, I ran into a film on TV called "The Pianist". Its similarity to Shindler's List was striking in its exceptional filmmaking qualities, its cinematography, its portrayal of the Holocaust . even an almost identical scene whereby a young Jewish girl is immediately shot in the head for offering an unsolicited, intelligent comment. My patience for such brutality seems to have shrunk since my experience with Shindler's List, lasting for no more than 20 minutes before I turned it off. At least in my own mind, "The Pianist" corroborated everything written in this essay.)