Schindler's List quotes

View Quote Clerk: [to Schindler, about Stern] I'm sorry. You can't have him. He's on the list. If he were an essential worker, he would not be on the list...It makes no difference to us, you understand. This one, that one. It's the inconvenience to the list. It's the paperwork.

View Quote Colonel Scherner: [to Schindler] God forbid you ever get a real taste for Jewish skirt - there's no future in it. No future. They don't have a future. And that's not just good old-fashioned Jew-hating talk. It's policy now.

View Quote End titles: Amon Goeth was arrested while a patient in a sanatorium at Bad Tolz. He was hanged in Krakow for crimes against humanity...Oskar Schindler failed at his marriage and several businesses after the war...In 1958, he was declared a righteous person by the council of the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and invited to plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous. It grows there still...The Schindler Jews today....There are fewer than four thousand Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more than six thousand descendants of the Schindler Jews...In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered.

View Quote German soldier: This storm is different. This is not the Romans. This storm is the SS.

View Quote Mr. Lowenstein: The SS beat me up. They would have killed me, but I'm essential to the war effort, thanks to you...I work hard for you...I'll continue to work hard for you...God bless you sir...You're a good man...[to Stern] He saved my life...God bless him...[to Schindler] God bless you.

View Quote Old Woman: [to the Judenrat] They come into our house and tell us we don't live there anymore. It now belongs to a certain SS officer...Aren't you supposed to be able to help?

View Quote Rabbi Lewartow: [to Schindler] We've written a letter trying to explain things in case you are captured. Every worker has signed it.

View Quote SS Officer: [to Schindler, about relocating to Plaszow] Since your labor is housed onsite, it's available to you at all times. You can work them all night if you want. Your factory policies, whatever they've been in the past, they'll continue to be, they'll be respected.

View Quote Winston Churchill (on radio): Yesterday morning, at 2:41 AM, at General Eisenhower's headquarters, General Jodl signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea, and air forces in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command. The German war is therefore at an end. But let us not forget for a moment...

View Quote Adam Levy: [to the SS troops] I've searched the building. There's no one here... [to Mrs. Dresner] Come with me. I will put you in the good line.
Mrs. Dresner: You are not a boy anymore. I'll say a blessing for you.

View Quote Goeth: What I don't understand is that you've been working since I think what, about six this morning, yet such a small pile of hinges.
[Lewartow is led out to be shot, but Goeth's gun won't fire]
Lewartow: Herr Kommandant, I beg to report that my heap of hinges was so unsatisfactory because the machines were being re-calibrated this morning. I was put onto shoveling coal.
Goeth slams the gun into Lewartow's head]

View Quote Goeth: You know, I look at you. I watch you. You're not a drunk. That's, that's real control. Control is power. That's power.
Schindler: Is that why they fear us?
Goeth: We have the ****ing power to kill, that's why they fear us.
Schindler: They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man commits a crime, he should know better. We have him killed and we feel pretty good about it. Or we kill him ourselves and we feel even better. That's not power, though, that's justice. That's different than power. Power is when we have every justification to kill - and we don't.
Goeth: You think that's power.
Schindler: That's what the emperors had. A man stole something, he's brought in before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy, he knows he's going to die. And the emperor pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power. [gestures toward Goeth as a merciful emperor] Amon, the Good.
Goeth: [He smiles and laughs] I pardon you.

View Quote Goeth: You want these people?
Schindler: These people, my people, I want my people.
Goeth: Who are you, Moses? Come on, what is this? Where's the money in this, where's the scam?
Schindler: It's good business.
Goeth: Yeah, it's 'good business' in your opinion. Look, you've got to move them, the equipment, everything to Czechoslovakia, pay for all that and build another camp. It doesn't make any sense...You're not telling me something.
Schindler: It's good for me. I know them, I'm familiar with them, I don't have to train them. It's good for you. I'll compensate you...It's good for the Army. You know what I'm going to make?...Artillery shells...tank shells. They need that, everybody's happy.
Goeth: Everyone's happy except me. You're probably scamming me somehow. If I'm making a hundred, you've got to be making three. And if you admit to making three, then it's four, actually. But how?
Schindler: I just told you.
Goeth: Yeah, you did, but you didn't. Yeah, all right, don't tell me, I'll go along with it. It's just irritating I can't work it out.
Schindler: Look, all you have to do is tell me what it's worth to you. What's a person worth to you?
Goeth: No, no, no, no. What's one worth to you?

View Quote Hoss: I have a shipment coming in tomorrow. I'll cut you three hundred units from it. New ones. These are fresh. The train comes, we turn it around. It's yours.
Schindler: Yes, I understand. I want these.
Hoss: You shouldn't get stuck on names. That's right. It creates a lot of paperwork.

View Quote Mrs. Dresner: Sir, a mistake has been made. We're not supposed to be here. We work for Oskar Schindler. We're Schindler Jews.
Mengele: Who is Oskar Schindler?
Guard: He had a factory in Krakow. Enamelware.
Mengele: A potmaker.