Rabbi Hecht on ‘Schindler’s List’

In response to “When Will Jews Let It Rest?” by Rabbi Eli Hecht, Commentary, Jan. 2:

As a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, a presidential appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, and one of a handful of benefactors of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument in Pan Pacific Park, I believe I am qualified to respond to Rabbi Hecht’s column.

Clearly Rabbi Hecht does not have the slightest understanding of why Jews--and all people--must understand the horrors of the Holocaust and never, ever forget it. The resounding message of every museum and monument which has been erected in memory of the Holocaust is not, as Hecht states, that “the world is never a safe place for Jews.” The message of remembrance, rather, is that the world must do everything humanly possible to prevent man’s inhumanity to man from repeating itself.

Each day, thousands of men, women and children of all races, religions, and nationalities visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. I am extremely proud that I have been a part of its creation--not because I wear a number on my arm . . . and not because I need a memorial to the nearly 60 members of my own family who perished at the hands of the Nazis. I am proud because of the many lessons it teaches to this generation and all future generations of children about ending discrimination of all kinds.

If Rabbi Hecht cannot see the importance of these lessons of the Holocaust, then he has closed his eyes to the rest of the world, turning his back on the horrors of Cambodia, Bosnia and Somalia. He refuses to recognize the ongoing acts of the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, and the many gangs who terrorize innocent victims and create daily versions of the Holocaust in our cities.

The movie, “Schindler’s List,” and other movies like it, should be required viewing for all people. As a teacher, Rabbi Hecht should know that children cannot be taught tolerance without awareness.

As the Talmud reads (as well as the inscription on the ring presented to Oskar Schindler by the 1,200 Jews he saved), “He who saves one life, saves the world.”

NATHAN SHAPELL

Beverly Hills

* For the life of me I cannot understand why Rabbi Hecht is so upset with Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List.” In our religious schools we were taught that one who saves one life is saving the whole world. Schindler, for whatever reason, saved over a thousand Jews. For that alone he should be remembered. For all his moral shortcomings and the benefit he derived from Jewish labor, at the end he saved them.

I too was saved by a righteous Gentile. I never questioned his reason or morality. But when a Polish Catholic endangered his life and the lives of his children and grandchildren to save my life, then he should be remembered for the good he did. The last thing I recall our martyred parents, brothers and sisters asking of the ones who would survive was to tell the world what happened to them, and to remember them.

GEORGE LUBOW

Arcadia

* It was such a pleasure to read an honest observation made by Hecht. I’m 69 and every time I see a Holocaust movie I cry. What the rabbi was saying is on target. Enough of suffering! As an American I remembered the hostility. Nobody really ever helped.

JEANNE SCHULMAN

Carson

* It is true that Schindler was a member of the Nazi party, an aspiring war profiteer and bon vivant , but it is also true that somehow he discovered his humanity in the horrors of the Shoah as the rescuer of those Jews.

In response to Hecht’s contention that Schindler’s motives and actions are highly suspect, it might be easy to say that Schindler was a hero and leave it at that. But that would be dangerous. Heroes are not like other people. Heroes rise above what is expected of the rest of us and perform acts which are extraordinary. Schindler’s journey from war profiteer to rescuer did not come suddenly. It emerged from Schindler’s recognition that the Jews working for him as slave laborers were human beings. It was common humanity, that which linked Schindler to the Jews, that motivated his actions, not uncommon heroism.

Spielberg has given us a very precious gift in bringing Schindler’s story to the screen.

Schindler was not a super-hero, he was a mensch , a human being. We need menschen , real human beings, more than heroes. That is what Schindler really teaches us.

RABBI SHELTON J. DONNELL

Temple Beth Sholom, Santa Ana

* Does Rabbi Hecht propose that, as Jews, we let Passover and Purim rest along with the Holocaust? For centuries we have recounted tales of the enslavement and subsequent rescue of our people by “righteous” souls. Only an ostrich would not have noticed that along with dwelling on our past, we have celebrated life. We never used our oppression as an excuse to sink into despair.

Didn’t the rabbi ever hear of the admonition that “those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it”? Would he have attacked Picasso’s painting of the “Guernica” because it depicted the massacre of the populace of that Spanish town by Franco’s fascists? Would he decry our remembrance of the Civil War because it reminds us of the evils of slavery? The film about Schindler will act as a reminder for generations to come both about the depths that human beings can descend to and the heights they can achieve.

Rabbi Hecht has done a grievous disservice to righteous people throughout the world--whatever their religion.

BETTY R. PARDO

MURRAY S. PARDO

Laguna Hills

* Rabbi Hecht badly misses the point of “Schindler’s List.” Schindler was an imperfect hero whose motivations for rescuing hunted Jews from Nazi extermination remain unclear. Schindler’s inexplicable heroism is precisely the reason the film is so compelling. Schindler was one of a small number of rescuers--non-Jewish men and women--who risked their lives and those of their families to help save the lives of fellow human beings. The extraordinary moral courage displayed by Schindler in response to the darkness of unaccountable horror renders him a remarkable hero.

Hecht acknowledges that he doesn’t “care to know” about the “moral awakening” that drove this man “to play G-d.” Those whom Schindler saved, however, and those whom he inspired care a great deal. Hecht acknowledges that his concern is not so much with Schindler as it is with what he sees as the film’s identification of Judaism with suffering.

He couldn’t be more wrong. Hecht’s goal might be the bolstering of Jewish identity but “Schindler’s List” has an altogether different focus. Rather than criticize a film that so eloquently examines man’s capacity for evil and the noble values of an unlikely hero, Hecht should re-evaluate the moving story of a man who in many ways was a model--for Jews and non-Jews.

SELENE BRUK

Chair, Holocaust Committee

ADL, Los Angeles

* What a refreshing viewpoint expressed by Hecht concerning “Schindler’s List,” and celebrating the richness of a Jewish heritage, versus the fears of persecution!

If everyone would practice celebrating the joy of his or her uniqueness, versus fearing for it, the world would be a much more joyful place. Too much of our modern life revolves around the fear and defensiveness we teach our children to associate with their differences in ethnicity, race, sex and religion. We should be teaching them the strengths that can be gained from these things.

VICKI TALBOT

Malibu

* Faced with the certain, inescapable death by starvation, violence or Auschwitz, anyone would have preferred working for Schindler. I don’t believe anyone whose life he saved cared about the man’s personal morals. It is pretty futile to self-righteously accuse him of profiteering and adultery when he spent his personal fortune on saving lives. There is an absolute need to tell the story of suffering, especially because of the resurgence of ethnic cleansing, neo-Nazi violence and the emergence of maniacs like Zhirinovsky in Russia.

If Hecht, as a Jew, is sick and tired of victimization--I, as a German, am sick and tired of the stigma Hitler left on Germans. But I believe that those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are bound to repeat them. We can’t turn the clock back but we can try to educate and exercise tolerance.

BIRGIT NIELSEN

Los Angeles

* I do not write to praise Schindler or to bury him. But Schindler, the Nazi, saved about 1,100 men, women and children. As a Jew who lived during the Final Solution, each life saved was very significant.

There were other Nazis who profited from Jewish slave labor. Some provided additional bread rations, but during the final liquidation of the camps, they abandoned their Jewish workers to the fate of the SS, which usually meant death in a concentration camp.

So Schindler, the Nazi, a moral war profiteer, somehow decided for whatever reason to save 1,100 Jews. It was a unique act in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Rabbi Hecht states that for many Jews this is a “sacred cow,” just as the “museums of the Holocaust are considered beyond criticism.” He has missed the point. Memory of the Holocaust cannot be erased or replaced. The attack upon the memory of the survivors, GIs who liberated the concentration camps and other eyewitnesses has been coming from the extreme right and other elements who deny that the Holocaust existed.

Holocaust museums serve to preserve memory, but also to act as educational centers. Our intention is not to portray Jews as victims but to educate the next generation that racial prejudices in whichever form may eventually lead to Auschwitz.

I also reject Rabbi Hecht’s contention that he is sick and tired of this generation’s identifying Judaism with suffering. Does he suggest that we should use selective memory and provide our generation with only a richness about our noble religion? As one who in June, 1942, lost all members of his family and most of his childhood friends, I owe it to them to preserve their memory.

“Schindler’s List” is not Holocaust entertainment. It is an attempt to depict an event too horrendous to comprehend and too difficult to view, and to show us that humanity has a long way to go to become humane.

SAM GOETZ, Chairman

Martyrs Memorial and Museum

of the Holocaust, Los Angeles