ABSTRACT
The impact of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List reflects the contemporary fascination with the 'Holocaust'. The criticism of Schindler's List – by academics and journalists primarily – is therefore more than simply the criticism of this one film in particular. But Schindler's List is more than simply an example of the 'Americanisation' of the 'Holocaust'. In Schindler's List, Spielberg has given us the acts of Oskar Schindler and the final triumph of the State of Israel to temper scenes of harrowing brutality. Spielberg has given us an exit from the gas chambers in Oskar Schindler. He comes and rescues the women and girls on the list of life, and brings them to the safety of Brinnlitz where they are reunited with their husbands and sons. Spielberg's film is, 'a film generated by an American post-Cold War generational sensibility distanced from the Holocaust both temporally and spatially'.
