49 Fun Facts About Schindler's List

Under what title did Thomas Keneally first publish the 1982 novel that became Schindler's List?

Schindler's Ark won Britain's Booker Prize as fiction, though Keneally had built the book from the testimony of the people Schindler saved.

Who plays Oskar Schindler?

Liam Neeson won the part after Spielberg saw him on Broadway in Anna Christie. The director wanted an actor without movie-star baggage, so an interested Mel Gibson was passed over.

Who plays the SS officer Amon Göth?

Ralph Fiennes prepared by talking to survivors and reading their testimony about Göth, which he remembered as full of the physical fear people felt at the mere sight of the man.

In Schindler's List, what job does Ben Kingsley's Itzhak Stern do for Oskar Schindler?

His accountant: Schindler showed the real Stern the balance sheet of a run-down factory, took his shrewd advice to buy it, and the business made him a fortune.

What does Schindler's Kraków factory produce at the start of the film?

Enamelware: pots and pans for the German army. Schindler listed unskilled workers, even children, as expert metalworkers essential to the war effort, which kept the SS from deporting them.

In the closing scene of Schindler's List, what do the real survivors place on Oskar Schindler's grave?

Stones, a Jewish sign of respect for the dead. Spielberg flew 128 of the people Schindler saved to Jerusalem and filmed them beside the actors who played them, to show the story was true.

Schindler grew up in the Sudetenland, part of which country between the world wars?

Czechoslovakia jailed Schindler in 1938 for spying on it for German military intelligence; he walked free that October, when the Munich Agreement handed the Sudetenland to Germany.

What concentration camp does Amon Göth arrive to build and command?

Płaszów was laid out over two Jewish cemeteries on the edge of Kraków, and it filled in March 1943, when the SS emptied the city's ghetto and marched those fit for work into the camp.

What does Göth do from the balcony of his villa?

Shoots prisoners at random: the scene is history, not invention. Holocaust museums record that the real Göth often fired from the balcony of his villa at inmates working in the camp.

Who plays Göth's maid, Helen Hirsch?

Embeth Davidtz met the real Helen Hirsch, "this tiny firecracker", when the people Schindler saved gathered in Jerusalem to film the closing scene.

In Schindler's List, to which town near his birthplace does Schindler move his factory and workers in 1944?

Brünnlitz, today's Brněnec, was a textile mill the Nazis had stolen from its Jewish owners. In May 2025 the derelict site opened as the Museum of Survivors.

In Schindler's List, which camp commandant does Schindler bribe to free the women sent to Birkenau by mistake?

Rudolf Höss takes a pouch of diamonds in the film, but the real rescue was done at arm's length: Schindler sent his secretary to Auschwitz to bargain for the 300 women.

In Schindler's List, why does Schindler's munitions factory make no usable shells?

Deliberate sabotage: in the film he buys shells elsewhere to pass off as his own. The real plant turned out almost nothing usable either.

In Schindler's List, what gift do the workers give Schindler as he flees at the war's end?

A gold ring, cast from a worker's dental gold and engraved with a line from the Talmud: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire."

In Schindler's List, how does the epilogue say Amon Göth died?

Hanged as a war criminal: Göth was executed in Kraków for crimes against humanity. He had been arrested while a patient in a sanatorium at Bad Tölz in Bavaria.

Which Schindler survivor, credited on the film as Leopold Page, spent decades pushing to get the story told?

Poldek Pfefferberg got MGM to commission a script from a Casablanca writer in 1963, and the deal died. Years later he pitched a customer in his Beverly Hills leather goods shop: the novelist Thomas Keneally.

What did executive Sid Sheinberg send Spielberg that sparked Schindler's List?

A book review: Sheinberg had read it in The New York Times and sent it over. Spielberg, astonished by the tale of a Nazi who saved Jews, asked, "Is it true?"

Which blockbuster did his studio make Spielberg direct before it would back Schindler's List?

Jurassic Park followed him to Poland: two or three times a week he used a crude satellite link to California to approve its effects shots, a chore he said filled him with resentment.

Which director, a survivor of the Kraków Ghetto, turned down Spielberg's offer to direct Schindler's List?

Roman Polanski, whose mother was killed at Auschwitz, said no. In 2002 he made his own Holocaust film, The Pianist.

Which director traded Schindler's List back to Spielberg in exchange for the Cape Fear remake?

Martin Scorsese was talked into the swap with a carrot: Cape Fear was a film he could make with Robert De Niro. Spielberg had come to regret giving the story away.

Who wrote the final screenplay for Schindler's List?

Steven Zaillian stayed on through years of drafts and won the Oscar for it. Spielberg pushed him to widen a script centred on Schindler alone into a story of the people he saved.

Which studio financed Schindler's List?

Universal put up about $20 million and expected little back, since Holocaust dramas rarely earned. The film took in more than $320 million worldwide.

What did Spielberg do with his salary for Schindler's List?

He refused to take one: being paid to tell the story of the Holocaust, he said, would have been "blood money".

Which star read for Oskar Schindler but struck Spielberg as too much the movie star?

Warren Beatty took part in a script reading, but Spielberg feared his movie-star baggage: the result would be Oskar Schindler as Warren Beatty rather than the other way round.

What title has Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, given Oskar Schindler and his wife Emilie?

Righteous Among the Nations honours non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews. Emilie earned it too: in the war's last winter she took in a trainload of Jewish prisoners sealed in frozen wagons and nursed the survivors.

How was the ghetto liquidation in Schindler's List filmed?

Handheld cameras: Spielberg left his cranes at home and worked without storyboards, stripping away what he called his safety net of fancy shots.

For Schindler's List, why were Birkenau's barracks rebuilt just outside the real camp's gate?

The World Jewish Congress objected to a drama being staged inside the death camp, so Spielberg offered a compromise: keep the real gatehouse in shot and build his barracks just outside it.

Which comedian phoned Spielberg every week during the Schindler's List shoot to cheer him up?

Robin Williams knew how hard the shoot was, so once a week he rang Spielberg in Poland and performed a stand-up routine down the phone.

In its colour opening scene, what is a Jewish family doing as Schindler's List begins?

Lighting Sabbath candles: as the last flame gutters the colour fades out and its smoke becomes the steam of a train. Colour returns to a candle flame only when Schindler's workers keep the Sabbath again.

Which cinematographer won his first Oscar for Schindler's List?

Janusz Kamiński caught Spielberg's eye with a television film called Wildflower. Schindler's List was their first feature together, and he has shot every Spielberg film since.

How was one girl's coat kept red in the black-and-white Schindler's List?

Shot in colour, drained by hand: every frame of those scenes was rotoscoped to strip out all colour but the coat. The cinematographer called it an old version of CGI.

In Schindler's List, what did Spielberg say the girl in the red coat stood for?

Allied leaders who did nothing: Spielberg called the coat a red flag waved at Roosevelt, Churchill and Eisenhower, who knew of the death camps. It was, he said, as obvious as a little girl in red.

What did Spielberg ask the girl in the red coat to do before seeing Schindler's List?

Turn 18, he told Oliwia Dąbrowska, who was three on set. She watched at eleven and was horrified; seeing it again as an adult, she was proud of her part.

In Schindler's List, why does Schindler first staff his factory with Jewish workers instead of Poles?

They cost him less: the daily fee for each Jewish worker went to the SS and the workers themselves got nothing. The real Schindler began the same way, then turned to shielding them whatever the cost.

Which violinist plays the solos on John Williams's score for Schindler's List?

Itzhak Perlman's violin carries the theme, which has had a long afterlife on ice: top figure skaters from Katarina Witt to Johnny Weir have built programmes around it.

In Schindler's List, who sings the Yiddish song heard as the Kraków ghetto is emptied?

A children's choir sings Oyfn Pripetshik, an old Yiddish song about a teacher drilling small children in their alphabet, while the ghetto's families are driven from their homes.

Who beat Schindler's List's star to the Oscar?

Tom Hanks won Best Actor for Philadelphia. Schindler's List collected seven Oscars that night, Best Picture and Best Director among them, but none for its cast.

Which city hosted the world premiere of Schindler's List in November 1993?

Washington, D.C.: President Clinton saw the film there and the next morning implored everyone to go and see it.

Which US network aired Schindler's List in 1997 without commercial breaks, the first broadcast to carry a TV-M rating?

NBC estimated that 65 million people watched at least part of it. An Oklahoma congressman who attacked the nudity and violence came under fire from fellow Republicans.

Which country banned Schindler's List as propaganda, its prime minister insisting on the right to ban any movie?

Malaysia's censors called the film propaganda for one race. The ban was later lifted, but only for a censored version, and the film never played there.

In the Philippines, what did Spielberg do when censors ordered cuts to Schindler's List?

He refused to show it cut, and the opening was put off until President Fidel Ramos overruled the censors and let it play uncut to anyone over 15.

Which Israeli song from 1967 plays as the freed workers walk across the hills at the end of Schindler's List?

Jerusalem of Gold was written by Naomi Shemer in 1967, just before the Six-Day War turned it into a second national anthem. The film plays it over a scene set in 1945.

Which organization did Spielberg set up after Schindler's List to film the testimony of Holocaust survivors?

The Shoah Visual History Foundation began filming in 1994 and gathered more than 50,000 testimonies. Since 2006 the archive has been housed at the University of Southern California.

Which director shelved his own Holocaust film, Aryan Papers, because of Schindler's List?

Stanley Kubrick had already cast his leads. He reportedly said the Holocaust was about six million people who get killed, and Schindler's List about 600 who don't.

Where does the AFI rank Schindler's List on its 2007 list of 100 greatest American films?

8th. Billy Wilder, who had asked to direct it himself in memory of the family he lost, told Spielberg afterwards that they couldn't have gotten a better man.

What did Spielberg reply when John Williams said Schindler's List needed a better composer?

"I know, but they're all dead," said Spielberg. Williams, left speechless by an early screening, wrote the score anyway and won an Oscar for it.

What did the city of Kraków buy in 2007 because of interest generated by the film?

The museum that opened there in 2010 covers the German occupation of the city from 1939 to 1945.

What did the studio want so Schindler's List would sell on video?

Colour film, urged the studio's chairman, so that the cassettes could be sold in colour. Spielberg refused: colour, he feared, would beautify the horror.

Which actor turned down the part in Schindler's List that went to Ben Kingsley?

Dustin Hoffman had already turned down Spielberg's Close Encounters. The two finally worked together on Hook, two years before Schindler's List.