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Chapter 13
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Schindler’s List, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Virtue and Selflessness
Anti-Semitism and Dehumanization
Power
Duty
Bureaucracy
Summary
Analysis
Schindler begins to hear rumors of intensifying “procedures in the ghetto” from some of his sources, like Toffel and Bosch. On June 3, Abraham Bankier, Schindler’s Jewish manager, doesn’t show up at the office. Schindler later hears that he and several other Emalia workers were marched down to a depot in Prokocim.
It becomes clear again why Schindler maintains so many connections with men he disagrees with: they can provide useful information. The fact that some of Schindler’s Jewish workers have been taken to a train station doesn’t bode well, since Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust were often transported to concentration camps on cattle cars.
Themes
Schindler goes down toward Prokocim to investigate. He sees people being loaded into cattle cars and finds out that Bankier is already on one of the cars, which are headed to a labor camp near Lublin. Schindler goes around yelling Bankier’s name. A young SS man informs him that everyone in the depot is on a list, and that there’s no arguing with lists. Schindler agrees but asks to speak to a superior officer.
The SS officer’s rigid view of the list highlights how Jewish people were seen as hard data (merely items on a list) rather than human beings with rights. Schindler, however, is smart enough to realize that there are ways to manipulate a bureaucracy, especially if one can speak to the right person.
Themes
Schindler speaks to a superior SS officer. He asks for the officers name, because he wants to take the issue of the list up with Scherner and with General Schindler. At last, the officer relents, and Schindler is able to free Bankier and a dozen of his other workers from the train car. The SS officer remains smug, as if to suggest that those 13 will simply be replaced with another 13. Bankier admits that he and the other 12 have yet to pick up their Blauscheins, and Schindler asks him to take care of it at once.
Schindler has genuine connections in the higher reaches of the Nazi Party, but he also frequently bluffs or uses his charm to get out of bad situations. The smug SS officer seems to suggest that Schindler’s efforts are futile—but at least for these specific 13 men, Schindler is a hero. This recalls the Talmudic verse that Stern quoted to Schindler earlier (“he who saves a single life saves the world entire”).
Themes
