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Chapter 4
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
Victoria Klonowska is Oskar Schindler’s attractive Polish secretary, and Schindler begins an affair with her shortly after they meet. His German mistress, Ingrid, seems to know about the affair, just as Schindler’s wife, Emilie, knows about Ingrid. Schindler makes little effort to hide what he’s doing.
Schindler asks Klonowska if she knows any good clubs in town where he could make friends. She introduces him to a jazz club, where Schindler throws a party around 1939. Among those at the party are two policemen (Herman Toffel and Dieter Reeder) and two Abwehr men (Eberhard Gebauer, who recruited Schindler, and a lieutenant named Martin Plathe).
Schindler’s distinction between business connections and real friends shows that he isn’t as shallow as he might seem during his drinking sessions where he fraternizes with Nazis—he knows the difference between those sessions and real relationships.
Themes
Toffel tells Schindler about how the SS have reserved the entire rail system for the transport of Jews. He is annoyed because he believes the army should get first use. He explains that the Jews are being sent to concentration camps.
As always, Schindler uses drinking sessions as a way to ingratiate himself with people and extract information that will be useful to him later.
Themes
Gebauer talks about the Judenrats, Jewish councils that have been set up in each community by Governor Frank. They supply labor to the camps, perhaps because they believe it will stop random press-ganging, where Jewish people are forced into labor, sometimes violently. Plathe agrees that they’re cooperating to avoid a worse outcome.
The Judenrats occupy an interesting position in occupied Poland. Though they may seem to be traitors, collaborating with their Nazi oppressors, many Jewish residents will hold them in high regard because of their role in acting as a buffer between the Nazis and the Jews.
Themes
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Gebauer suggests that the Jews will never actually see Madagascar, as many have promised. Though he is a Nazi, he dislikes how the SS do things. Schindler once saw Gebauer hand over forged papers to help a Jewish businessman flee to Hungary, perhaps for a fee. Schindler realizes that none of the men in the room with him are as against Jews as some of the other Nazis, and that he might be able to put this to good use later.
Gebauer is a morally ambiguous figure who lacks the conviction to resist Nazi oppression like Schindler does, but who is also far from a willing collaborator. Men like this will be important allies to Schindler.
Themes
