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“Schindler's List”
- Abstract
Having resided in Cracow in the immediate aftermath of the events depicted in Schindler’s List (I was there during the trial of the sadistic Nazi murderer, Amon Goeth), I was greatly disappointed with Philip Gourevitch’s article, “A Dissent on Schindler’s List” [February]. That a contributing editor of the Forward (God help us!) cannot distinguish between Yiddish and Polish is difficult to believe: Oskar Schindler’s Jewish “investors” speak Polish, not Yiddish. It is equally hard to fathom that a Jewish reviewer writing in a leading Jewish journal is unaware that, upon moving, traditional Jews remove mezuzot from their doorposts when there is reason to believe that the next tenants would not be Jews. That is why, in the film, Cracow Jews leaving for the ghetto “are trying to pry the silver mezuzah from the door,” and not, as Mr. Gourevitch suggests, “because they have been stopped from grabbing [!] other valuables.”
Finally, and most offensively, Mr. Gourevitch writes: “And here are Jews as the SS invade their apartments. Are they consoling their children? No, they are making them eat jewels wadded in balls of bread.”
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