An unending list from Schindler

By Nazly Siregar

BERKELEY, California, USA (JP): After watching the spectacular Schindler's List film, I kept puzzling at the pieces of information floating my mind.

One question which continues to bother me is: "Does the film teach something to the Germans?" I assume not.

Living in Germany for a period of time taught me a lot. Yes, there is hatred of foreigners and there are Neo-Nazis.

I am skeptical that the film can have any lasting impact there. I can imagine that the film will drive some point home to them exactly the same way it did to me and others. Sadness and fear will fill the whole theater while the film unreels.

Do you think the innocent looking kids who proclaimed themselves as Neo-Nazis will take off their uniforms after watching this film? No way. Will the foreigners there be treated any better? Fat chance.

I dislike generalizing, but this is what I have observed in Germany: They don't like Nazis, but they don't like Jews even more.

German people are unique. They are proud of being German. Their pride in their origin brings the strength and the greatest motivation in their lives. Germany is a land with one of the best ever health and social welfare plans.

You may attend their best universities and get their best education without paying a fortune. The German worker is the best trained and the highest paid in the world.

But beyond their pride there is something else in the Germans that causes reluctance and hesitation to learn something from this film. That is: Overexposure.

How many Holocaust films exposing the brutality of the Nazis have been made? It should not be surprising that many people around the world know the history of Nazi Germany better than that of their own country. You know why? Media spectacle.

We are continuously offered any kind of news on Nazis. From the truth until the trash. We are told from kindergarten that they were horrible, heartless animals. There is no history book without Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann or Klaus Barbie being featured as villains. We graduate from school with complete knowledge about Nazi Germany and its unforgettable massacre of innocents.

Six million Jews dead. The number is stupendous. But is there any official figure for the number of people killed by Pol Pot in Cambodia? How about the scores massacred under Pinochet in Chile? Try to count how many Kurdistan people remain alive today.

Finally, do we ever consider how many Native American Indians were killed by English, French and Spanish during the early years of the colonization of North and South America?

Let us move on to motives. Nazi Germany killed Jews for a number of reasons. They did not want Jews to have control over the economy and business in Europe. Jews were not white enough to be European. They needed more space for living (ebensraum) so they felt the need to destroy this ethnic group in order to provide space for their children.

Whatever the reasoning was, I see only one cause: malice.

It would be really ridiculous if I were to focus on the media overexposure as a cause of the violence and crime right now. I do believe that the increase in aggression by Neo-Nazis in present- day Germany is largely due to the increasing number of internal issues in Germany itself.

And I feel that the younger generation in Germany does not deserve to have to face and to deal with all the prejudices handed down from their elders and that from the outside world that looks at the acts of their ancestors with disgust.

They never lived in the Nazi era, they never knew Hitler and his ideology, but they have to face the embarrassment and humiliation caused by their country's past every time they watch television or film presentations or read about World War II.

From being embarrassed they become reluctant to face their past and finally dislike having to do so. Why should they be expected to learn a lesson from a crime they did not commit? Why should they remember the brutality and violence the whole world hates?

Most Germans really regret the holocaust and try to prevent a recurrence. A lot of people are still suffering from this traumatic experience. And like or dislike the way they treat outsiders, I believe this feeling is genuine.

Let me confess to you: I love Schindler's List. It will remain one of the best movies I have ever seen.

The Holocaust constitutes not only a list. It is an unending list. There are a lot of issues its memory invokes: hatred, malice, racism, inequality, unawareness and prejudice. None of these human vices has ever been handled completely and properly. And they will remain to fester in the universal consciousness of mankind, even after individuals, German and otherwise, watch and are moved by Schindler's List.

The writer is a well-traveled Indonesian student who is now studying in an American university.