During a time of war, the worst is always brought out in people. The movie Schindler’s List tells the story of an entrepreneur and womanizer, Oscar Schindler. When the Nazi party took over Germany, Schindler took advantage of the situation and began schoomsing up to the Nazi authorities. This helped him to become a very powerful and wealthy man. Schindler is known to be a hero throughout World War II, but yet he was such a self-centered business man and a member of the Nazi party. Many may wonder, how can Nazi be considered a hero?
Being an entrepreneur, Schindler used the war to his gain by exploiting cheap Jewish labor. In the beginning of the movie, he showed to only care about himself and his business. After saving Stern, his accountant, from a train headed to a concentration camp, Oscar said “What would have happened to me if I was five minutes late? ” He did not even look at Stern, and was concerned only with the effect it would have had on his business. The Jews were also not a concern of Schindler’s, while he heard one of his workers get shot, he said he wanted to receive compensation for the lost worker.
Not only was he selfish in the sense of business and money, but also in his marriage. He did not remain faithful to his wife, and had an excessive amount of mistress’s. Schindler started to change when he heard from Stern that Gort had shot and killed 25 men in a row, and also when the women came and begged for him to give her parents jobs. Another event that changed Schindler’s perspective was seeing the girl in the red dress. He began to change from being selfish to selfless. Instead of spending all of his money on himself he started to buy Jews that were going to be sent to Auschwitz, to work in his factory.
Schindler also tried to persuade Gort into being more ‘powerful’ by pardoning the Jews instead of killing them. At the end of the movie, Schindler regretted wasting all of his money on himself, when he could have instead bought more Jews to save. Schindler went into World War II as a selfish entrepreneur, and left as a hero. He saved hundreds of Jews from being murdered by the Nazi’s, and in return the Jews rewarded him with a ring that said “whoever saves one life saves the world entire”. Although he changed in the business sense, his marriage was never fixed.
