Mengele's Experiments In The Krakow

As the Soviet Union begins to invade Germany and they started to lose the war, all the evidence of the horrors that were committed had to be erased.
After Plaszow turned into a concentration camp in 1944 and the Soviet Union invaded, all traces of murder had to be erased from the camp. In this case they burned the bodies of the jews in the camps and dug up the ones that were buried and burned those as well. All the people still alive had to be relocated into concentration or extermination camps and the camp was closed. The final solution was a plan made by the Nazis to eliminate all European Jews in the most efficient way, gassing, firing squad, starvation, etc. The Krakow massacre was when the Jews in the Krakow ghetto were all relocated

to Plaszow and then soon to be killed or sent into a camp.
When Schindler finds out that Plaszow is to be evacuated he decides to gather as many jews from it and take them to Czechoslovakia with him to work in his factory. He is able to do this primarily because he is a Nazi himself but also because he pays Goeth for each Jew that he takes with him. He does this because he cares a great deal about these individuals lives as well as their happiness. He even refers to them as "my people" showing that he clearly doesn't view them as the other Nazis do. They see them as being subhuman whereas Schindler puts his own life on the line to save these people. When making the list of Jews to save Schindler isn't satisfied until he can come up with a list of as many people as he can. The list was a true act of selflessness and compassion. This is when Schindler becomes a true hero and also what the movie is named after.
After the evacuation of Plaszow many of the Jews were sent to Auschwitz along with the female workers that Schindler saved. Auschwitz was a concentration camp where many jews ended up dying. The people there would get their heads shaved then their goods would be taken from them and then they would be sent to the showers. There was no telling if you would ever make it out of those showers because sometimes they did just clean them but often times the people inside were gassed and died. Half of the female workers were sent to the showers not knowing if they would make it out alive it not or if that would be their last day and they really wouldn't get saved like they thought they were. Lucky for them they ended up just getting rinsed off as they entered the camp.

Holocaust Films Viewing Guide Entry 5

Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp responsible for the death of about 1.1 million jews located in Poland. Every 1 in 6 jews that died in the Holocaust were killed here. It wasn't only a killing center but there was also cinemas, grocery stores, and theaters. Those places were not really used for Jews but the officers that worked there. The Jews went to places like the crematories, gas chambers, showers and other places where horrific things happened.
At Auschwitz was also the place where Mengele conducted his experiments of many kinds.

He had a big interest in twins. He liked to compare their anatomies in terms of how they both reacted to stimuli and if he could sew the two together and make them function. He also did dissections, used lethal injections, and tried to change eye color. After he was done with the bodies they went to the crematories. He did make a discovery or two including that human don't necessarily need all their organ to survive. The discoveries he should at least be accepted to be used by doctors. Might as well use them so they are not totally worthless and and so all those people didn't die for nothing. To try to exterminate all the jews and make the process faster the Nazis came up with the final solution. They tried different methods involving shooting and gas buses. After realizing that those ways were insufficient they came up with a process modeled after Henry Ford's assembly line method created in 1908. This method was able to cut down the production time of a car from 12 hours plus to a little more than two hours. The Nazis used this method as a part of the final solution but in reverse. They would strip down the jews of anything that could be useful to the Germans such as hair, clothes, jewelry, and unethical medical purposes. This takes a whole and turns it into multiple people which is the opposite of the assembly

line.
The list of unthinkable things that happened in Auschwitz continues. While guards killed the innocent jews there would be orchestras playing to help them cope with their hardships of murder. I think that the music probably did help some but for others it probably made it worse. Hearing the beautiful music could help to calm the Nazis and distract them from what they are doing so they do not really have to think about it. I believe that for the others it probably made them think of the brutality of their actions since by comparison the music makes them think of peaceful and happy thoughts and then once they come back to reality they realize they are doing things of the exact opposite nature. Some of the Nazis were more used to killing on a regular basis than the others were. Some were more brainwashed and some were more skeptical. Some were more cold hearted and some were more sympathetic. Through the day to day brutality of the Nazis and the strong and persistent propaganda I think that there were probably many Nazis that could kill without a care.
After seeing so many gruesome scenes from movies and tv shows and history lessons they all start to become repetitive and therefore familiar. This takes away the shock factor. The shock is a big part of what makes us so sympathetic towards these horrors. To a degree once the feeling of shock and awe are gone then people become less sensitive to it. Just because you have seen something multiple times though doesn't mean that shock factor will go away. There are some things that people will never be able to wrap their head around and those things won't lose the sympathy they have gained. Another part of it is the ability to relate to the situation or pain. I think that in most cases people that could somehow have a relation to the event will be more sympathetic to them since they have an idea of how it feels. This also goes the other way around. Someone who can't really relate might end up becoming desensitized because they don't know how it would feel at all. There are certain things that I sympathize most for and those are things that I can relate to because i have felt a somewhat similar, less extreme pain and the ones that are more inhumane than others once again having the shock factor. Sometimes when viewing videos and pictures of the sort I don't sympathize as much with somethings because I have seen it all before too many times and it kind of loses its meaning and I forget that it actually happened to real people and that it's not just some video showed in class.

Schindler's List Viewing Guide Entry 6
Towards the end of the war Schindler's heroism started to become more noticeable because he really did end up saving hundreds of jews.
While in the factories Schindler continues to save these people and try to make their lives less harsh. When trying to do this he tells a worker that was previously a Rabbi to prepare for the Sabbath. This was a kind way for Schindler to let the people have a little bit of freedom and practice what they believed since they have not been to do so freely since the war. This gives people hope that things can get better and that Schindler is truly helping them in ways beyond what any of them ever expected. This is what the flame represents that is shown in color, the hope that he gives the people through his actions. At his new factory Schindler was able to pull off running his factory without producing a single working product which was shell bullets. He was able to do this by messing with the machinery so that they were made improperly. This also helped the Jews because it did not profit the Nazis if anything it harms them.
The Germans finally surrendered. All of the workers and schindler listen to the announcement in the factory together. A silence falls over everyone in the building. Not a single word of celebration or cheering is heard. The people could be in silence for a few reasons. The first one is that they were probably in shock at this news. After all the years of being in war they probably dreamed of its end everyday. Then when their dream from years ago finally came true they probably couldn't believe it. This probably also made them a bit skeptical of the announcement because it's so hard to believe it's actually happening so they don't want to jinx it or get their hopes up. After the announcement all the Jews were allowed to be freed but even though there were many saved Schindler still believed that he should have saved more. He was very hard on himself about it and it even brought him to tears. I believe that at the time Schindler did all he could and he was one of very few that made a big difference. In a time such as WWII the people were happy with the littlest perks that they could get and getting their lives saved was and unrepayable act of true kindness. Maybe he could have saved a few more and yes those lives would have made a difference but it's one man against and whole army and there is only so much you can do. He is lucky to have been able to pull of all that he did without getting caught or killed. During this scene where he expresses his emotions about leaving and helping the Jews was very touching. I'm not one to cry during movies but this one made me want to. It also gave me chills with all the emotion packed into this one scene. Being that he was a real person that actually did these things makes it more heartbreaking in terms of emotion. The quote on his ring that he received before his ring was also very moving. Such a simple string of words was such an an powering meaning. Even though Schindler didn't save the world, he saved a thousands jews' worlds.
Schindler was a rather complex man. He did various things that would oppose each other and it makes it hard to figure him out. For fact, Schindler has a good heart when it comes to innocent people suffering. Yet he also was a womanizer and didn't treat the women he was with with respect. Everyone pitties people for different reasons and i believe that Schindler pitied those who he saw as innocent and that clearly did no harm. That would be the jewish people. They would have been killed which in all honest in more important than cheating on your wife. (That sounds terrible but it's the truth) While cheating on your wife is a horrible thing to do, she wasn't helpless like the Jews and Schindler has seen all the sides to her would know all of her faults very well. Schindler never saw anything bad or rude that the Jews did during the holocaust possibly making him more sympathetic. There's also the idea that some people just weren't made to be married. If he is caring or not about his wife he can't be forced to be in love with her forever. I believe that his marriage and the Jews are two very different things and can't really be compared to explain the other. They come from different kinds of love, being in love and being in love. If you fall in love with someone you won't necessarily always be but if you truly love someone like your family then you always will. Then there's always the idea that maybe he is just an unstable man that lost his head a little bit. After being through so much in his life and seeing so many things during the war that he could have ended up with some sort of mental condition causing some of his failures such as depression or some kind of stress disorder. No matter what Schindler failed at after the war either way he truly is a hero. Everyone has their faults, some more than others, and but Schindler saved those in need at the risk of his own life. He showed true selflessness towards the end of the movie despite what he did in the beginning. People change and Schindler did.
If i was put in the germans situation right now with the knowledge that i have as a 16 year old, i do not believe that i would have been manipulated. If I was younger or just had less education and less life experience my opinions could have easily been swayed by the Germans