I recently saw the film “Schindler’s List” and my fears were confirmed. This film is promoted, either officially or informally, as documenting the Holocaust. What I saw was a Hollywood obscenity.
Hollywood because the desire to entertain rules. Obscene because Steven Speilberg shamelessly used the subject of the Holocaust to evoke extremes of emotion. He chose the subject precisely for its ability to provoke. Not to teach, not as an opportunity for self-reflection, not to understand or expose, but to entertain.
We need to learn from the Holocaust that people can be well. That man can be brutishly inhumane. We need to see that we all have the potential for evil, to try to understand ourselves and the cruelty we are capable of. For we are the Nazis. When we look to the past not to learn, but to be entertained, then we are at risk of being the evil that we don’t see.
