This week we watched Schindler’s List. Julie (@bookofjules) joined us for some emotional and in-depth discussion.
Show Notes:
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2 comments on “Episode 22: Schindler’s List with Julie Schwartz”
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Thanks for covering this important and devasting film. When I saw it in the theater, it was so emotionally draining that Mom and I had to recover before we could even leave the building.
Also, great recommendation for Escape from Sobibor. For personal background, I am an Irish Catholic who started studying the Holocaust at age 12 when I saw a TV movie about the capture of Eichmann. We didn’t study it in school at all (it wasn’t a subject usually covered in the late ’70s/early ’80s), so everything I learned I got from library books. When Escape from Sobibor was broadcast on tv, I made sure to watch it because I was completely unaware of the camp or what happened there. After, I bought the book and studied up on the camp.
To put things in perspective, the Operation Reinhardt camps–Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka–had a collective death toll of around 1.75 million Jews (and it was specifically Jews killed, with only a few other populations included, mostly Romani, in much smaller numbers). These three camps only had less than 150 survivors in total, with about 60-75 each from Treblinka and Sobibor since they each had a major escape attempt at the end of the camps’ existence. With no such escape at Belzec, only two people survived (and one was killed the day after giving testimony at a war crimes trial after the war). This is why you don’t get too many examples in film of large numbers of Jews revolting, because it just didn’t happen on a large scale with very few exceptions.
Sorry for the history lesson–it is such an interesting story and the film does a great job of bring it to life.
Anyway, great show! I love listening to your podcast and look forward to every episode.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment!
I will definitely be watching Escape from Sobibor at some point. I think it’s incredibly important to educate yourself about things like this and *remember* what happened.