Schindler's List

Schindler's List is a 1993 biographical film directed by Steven Spielberg, telling the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust. It was based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, and starred Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as Schutzstaffel officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's accountant Itzhak Stern. The film was a box office success, and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Score.

Filming
Shooting for Schindler's List began on March 1, 1993 in Kraków (Cracow), Poland, and continued for seventy-one day. The crew shot at the real life locations, though the Plaszow camp had to be reconstructed in a pit adjacent to the original site, due to post-war changes to the original camp. The crew were also forbidden to enter Auschwitz, so they shot at a replica outside the camp. The Polish locals welcomed the filmmakers. There were some antisemitic incidents; anti-Semitic symbols scrawled on local billboards near shooting locations. An elderly woman mistook Fiennes for a Nazi and told him "the Germans were charming people. They didn't kill anybody who didn't deserve it", while Kingsley nearly entered a brawl with an elderly German-speaking businessman who insulted Israeli actor Michael Schneider. Nonetheless, Spielberg stated that at Passover, "all the German actors showed up. They put on yarmulkes and opened up Haggadas, and the Israeli actors moved right next to them and began explaining it to them. And this family of actors sat around and race and culture were just left behind."

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