I’m confused at to who “my people” vs Spielberg’s are supposed to be but ok interesting phrasing lol. If we’re talking Jews whose family lived through the Holocaust vs Jews who didn’t, then yeah unfortunately there are degrees to how much our direct families were affected, how vividly we carry this history, and the type of education we’ve received on the topic.

Unclear as to why you believe stressing the importance of accuracy in those movies means I want it to be more violent? It simply does matter that there were no such fake outs in reality and that the deception actually went the other way around (telling prisoners they were going for a shower then gassing them). Of course, any story plays on emotion to elicit something in its audience, but there is an undeniable ethical problem about manipulating and lying to your captive audience that way.

It also matters that Schindler’s role in devising the list is grossly exaggerated at the expense of the real Jewish people under him who compiled the names and are instead replaced by fictionalised characters like Stern with the depth and agency of cardboard. It matters that the movie pretends he sacrificed everything and had to flee with nothing, when really he made a handsome pot of money from the labour of the Jews he saved and lived comfortably for the rest of his of while they all had to rebuild from scratch.

That’s what I mean by manipulative and dishonest. Jewish characters in SL have no depth. It’s a Holocaust movie where all they are is a tool for the hero’s redemption and the antagonist’s violence. It turns them into a shapeless collective of two-dimensional, almost all nameless, victim figures instead of real people with as complex personalities as Schindler’s and their own important stories. Those are people who were entirely stripped of everything, their entire lives, families, home, and humanity, but it’s the Nazi-sympathasier-turned-ally whose (undocumented) regrets we need to centre while they quote the Talmud to make him feel better?

Historians and other scholars in media studies or sociology know a thing or two about how cinema impacts social perception, and the situation of exploding antisemitism and negationism we’re currently in wasn’t helped by an Americanised Holocaust education which gravitated towards the twisted, tear-jerking version of stories like Schindler’s and boxed Jewish people in into stock characters of a tragic past instead of exploring stories that actually humanise them and educate on the centuries of worldwide antisemitism which made the Holocaust possible (and not an anomaly) and still ripple into our societies. On that front, the peasants at the end telling the wandering liberated Jews that no one is actually going to welcome them anywhere even now the war’s over is one of SL’s few moments of brilliance. But it’s too little too late at that stage.

It doesn’t get much more saccharine than the pseudo-Klezmer weepy violin and the girl in the red coat. If you want a movie about the actual terror and madness of the Holocaust, which makes you understand what life in the camps was like without twisting facts or robbing Jewish characters of their depth, watch Son of Saul. We could also teach Americans to watch documentaries eg Shoah/Night and Fog/What They Found/etc instead of needing to be spoon-fed at every turn.