Quotes from
Schindler's List (1993)
Amon Goeth: They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews. When you work closely with them, like I do, you see this. They have this power. It's like a virus. Some of my men are infected with this virus. They should be pitied, not punished. They should receive treatment because this is as real as typhus. I see it all the time. It's a matter of money? Hmm?Amon Goeth: The truth is always the right answer.
Itzhak Stern: How many cigarettes have you smoked tonight?
Oskar Schindler: Too many.
Itzhak Stern: For every one you smoke, I smoke half.
Amon Goeth: This is very cruel, Oskar. You're giving them hope. You shouldn't do that. *That's* cruel!
Itzhak Stern: This list... is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.
Oskar Schindler: Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired, I'd be very unhappy.
Amon Goeth: Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Casimir the Great - so called - told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. With nothing they came and with nothing they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. By this evening those six centuries will be a rumor. They never happened. Today is history.
Reiter: I'm a graduate of Civil Engineering from the University of Milan.
Amon Goeth: Ah, an educated Jew... like Karl Marx himself. Unterscharfuehrer!
Hujar: Jawohl?
Amon Goeth: Shoot her.
Reiter: Herr Kommandant! I'm only trying to do my job!
Amon Goeth: Ja, I'm doing mine.
Oskar Schindler: Look, All you have to do is tell me what it's worth to you. What's a person worth to you?
Amon Goeth: No, no, no, No. What's one worth to you!
Amon Goeth: I would like so much to reach out to you and touch you in your loneliness. What would it be like, I wonder? What would be wrong with that? I realize that you are not a person in the strictest sense of the word, but, um, maybe you're right about that too. Maybe what's wrong, it's not us, it's this... I mean, when they compare you to vermin, to rodents and to lice. I just, uh, you make a good point. You make a very good point. Is this the face of a rat? Are these the eyes of a rat? "Hath not a Jew eyes?" I feel for you Helen.
[leaning forward to kiss her]
Amon Goeth: No, I don't think so. You Jewish bitch, you nearly talked me into it, didn't you?
Oskar Schindler: I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just... I could have got more.
Itzhak Stern: Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.
Oskar Schindler: If I'd made more money... I threw away so much money. You have no idea. If I'd just...
Itzhak Stern: There will be generations because of what you did.
Oskar Schindler: I didn't do enough!
Itzhak Stern: You did so much.
[Schindler looks at his car]
Oskar Schindler: This car. Goeth would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people.
[removing Nazi pin from lapel]
Oskar Schindler: This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this.
[sobbing]
Oskar Schindler: I could have gotten one more person... and I didn't! And I... I didn't!
Itzhak Stern: Let me understand. They put up all the money. I do all the work. What, if you don't mind my asking, would you do?
Oskar Schindler: I'd make sure it's known the company's in business. I'd see that it had a certain panache. That's what I'm good at. Not the work, not the work... the presentation.
Amon Goeth: You want these people?
Oskar Schindler: These people. My people. I want my people.
Amon Goeth: Who are you? Moses?
[Touching his reflection in a mirror]
Amon Goeth: I pardon you.
Oskar Schindler: Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.
Amon Goeth: You think that's power?
Oskar Schindler: That's what the Emperor said. A man steals something, he's brought in before the Emperor, he throws himself down on the ground. He begs for his life, he knows he's going to die. And the Emperor... pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Amon Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Oskar Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power.
Amon Goeth: One of you is a very lucky girl. There is an opening for a job away from all this back-breaking work, in my new villa. Umm, which of you has domestic experience? Ja, on second thought, I don't really want someone else's maid. All those annoying habits I'd have to undo.
Oskar Schindler: I've talked to a friend of mine who's a commander in Auschwitz. He will see that you receive special treatment as soon as you get there.
Itzhak Stern: The orders from Berlin talk about "special treatment." I hope that's not what you mean.
Oskar Schindler: OK, preferential treatment! Do we have to create a new language?
Itzhak Stern: [a tear in his eye] Yes, I think we do.
Oskar Schindler: [after the liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto] I go into work the other day. Nobody's there. Nobody tells me about this, I have to find out. I have to go in... everybody's gone.
Amon Goeth: No... no. They're not gone. They're here.
Oskar Schindler: They're MINE!
[Oskar Schindler has been arrested for kissing a Jewish girl]
Julian Scherner: We give you a Jewish girl at five marks a day, Oskar. You should kiss us, not them. God forbid you ever get a real taste for Jewish skirt, there's no future in it. They don't have a future. That's not just good old fashioned Jew hating talk. It's policy now.
Itzhak Stern: By law I have to tell you, sir, I'm a Jew.
Oskar Schindler: Well, I'm a German, so there we are.
Itzhak Stern: It's Hebrew, it's from the Talmud. It says, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."
[To Stern, upon closing the factory deal]
Oskar Schindler: My father was fond of saying you need three things in life - a good doctor, a forgiving priest, and a clever accountant. The first two, I've never had much use for.
[Addressing his workers at the end of the war]
Oskar Schindler: The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war is over. Tomorrow you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases... you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern, and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment. I am a member of the Nazi Party. I'm a munitions manufacturer. I'm a profiteer of slave labor. I am... a criminal. At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted. I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight, after which time - and I hope you'll forgive me - I have to flee.
[He addresses the factory's SS guards]
Oskar Schindler: I know you have received orders from our commandant, which he has received from his superiors, to dispose of the population of this camp. Now would be the time to do it. Here they are; they're all here. This is your opportunity. Or, you could leave, and return to your families as men instead of murderers.
[The guards gradually exit; he addresses the workers again]
Oskar Schindler: In memory of the countless victims among your people, I ask us to observe three minutes of silence.
[Goethe admires Schindler's his suit]
Amon Goeth: It has a nice sheen to it. What is it, silk?
Oskar Schindler: Of course! I'd say I'd get you one but the man who made it's probably dead.
Oskar Schindler: They won't soon forget the name "Oskar Schindler" around here. "Oskar Schindler," they'll say, "everybody remembers him. He did something extraordinary. He did what no one else did. He came with nothing, a suitcase, and built a bankrupt company into a major manufactory. And left with a steamer trunk, two steamer trunks, of money. All the riches of the world."
Amon Goeth: Scherner told me something else about you.
Oskar Schindler: Yeah, what's that?
Amon Goeth: That you know the meaning of the word 'gratitude.' That it's not some vague thing with you like it is with others. You want to stay where you are. You've got things going on the side, things are good. You don't want anybody telling you what to do. I can understand all that. You know, I know you... What you want is your own sub-camp. Do you have any idea what's involved? The paperwork alone? Forget you've got to build the fucking thing, getting the fucking permits is enough to drive you crazy. Then the engineers show up. They stand around, they argue about drainage, foundations, codes, exact specifications, parallel fences four kilometers long, six thousand kilograms of electrified fences... I'm telling you, you'll want to shoot somebody. I've been through it, you know, I know.
Oskar Schindler: Well, you know, you've been through it. You could make things easier for me. I'd be grateful.
Oskar Schindler: What are you doing? These are mine. These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're skilled ammunition workers. They're essential. Essential girls!
[shows the guard Danka Dresners hand]
Oskar Schindler: Their fingers polish the inside of shell metal casings. How else am I to polish the inside of a 45 millimeter shell casing? You tell me. You tell me!
Stern: There will be generations because of what you've done.
[watching the incineration of Jews' bodies outside Krakow]
Amon Goeth: Can you believe this? As if I don't have enough to do, they come up with this? I have to find every rag buried up here and burn it. The party's over, Oskar. They're closing us down, sending everybody to Auschwitz.
Oskar Schindler: When?
Amon Goeth: I don't know. As soon as I can arrange the shipments, maybe thirty, forty days. That ought to be fun.
[the morning after Schindler leaves Brinnlitz, a Russian office finds the workers]
Russian officer: You have been liberated by the Soviet army!
Itzhak Stern: Have you been in Poland?
Russian officer: I just came from Poland.
Itzhak Stern: Are there any Jews left?
Michael Lemper: Where should we go?
Russian officer: Don't go east, that's for sure. They hate you there. I wouldn't go west either, if I were you.
Chaim Nowak: We could use some food.
Russian officer: Isn't that a town over there?
[Stern brings a report to Schindler at lunchtime]
Oskar Schindler: I could try to read this, or I could eat my lunch while it's stil hot. We're doing well?
Itzhak Stern: Yes.
Oskar Schindler: Better this month than last?
Itzhak Stern: Yes.
Oskar Schindler: Any reason to think next month will be worse?
Itzhak Stern: The war could end.
[after Schindler pulls him off a train bound for the work camps]
Itzhak Stern: Somehow I left my work card at home. I tried to explain to them that it was a mistake, but... I'm sorry. It was stupid!
Oskar Schindler: What if I got here five minutes later? Then where would I be?
Mr. Lowenstein: I am an essential worker.
First S.S. Guard: Essential worker!
Mr. Lowenstein: Yes! I work for Oskar Schindler.
First S.S. Guard: Essential worker for Oskar Schindler.
Mr. Lowenstein: Yes!
Second S.S. Guard: A one-armed Jew. Twice as useless.
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