Contents
Steven Spielberg’s film is based on Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel “Schindler’s Ark” and tells the story of the real Oskar Schindler. Liam Neeson plays Schindler; Ben Kingsley plays the Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, a character in whom the film combines several real people; and Ralph Fiennes plays the SS officer Amon Göth. The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture. It is first and foremost a film about the Holocaust and must be seen as such. But it also shows the Primacy of Purpose: what happens when a person’s purpose changes.
The first purpose: money
Situation
In occupied Kraków, Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, takes over an enamelware factory. Stern raises the capital for him from Jewish businessmen, and Jewish workers are cheaper than Polish ones. Stern runs the administration and brings Jewish workers into the factory. Schindler cultivates his contacts with the Wehrmacht and the SS with gifts and parties.
Link to the principle
At first, all means serve a single purpose: profit. The factory, the bribery, the charm, the contacts – everything is geared to it. Stern is already using the same factory for a different purpose by classifying as many people as possible as “essential to the war effort” and so protecting them from deportation.
The turning point
Situation
Göth has the Kraków ghetto cleared. From a hilltop, Schindler watches people being murdered in the streets. He notices a little girl in a red coat, the only color in the black-and-white film. Later he sees her body on a cart. Step by step, his priorities shift.
Link to the principle
The film does not show a sudden change of heart but a slow one. Spielberg deliberately wanted to show the transformation as gradual and ambiguous. The purpose changes before Schindler himself puts it into words.
The same means, a different purpose
Situation
Schindler bribes Göth so that he can set up his own subcamp on the factory grounds. When the prisoners from the Płaszów camp are to be sent to Auschwitz, he gets permission to take his workers to an armaments factory in Brünnlitz near his hometown. With Stern, he draws up a list of about 1,100 names. When the train carrying the women is diverted to Auschwitz, he gets them out through bribery.
Link to the principle
This is the heart of it. Schindler does not invent new means. Bribery, negotiating skill, the factory and the money were already there. They simply acquire a different purpose, and that makes every action a different one. The list is a staff list and, at the same time, a list of lives saved.
A factory that produces nothing usable
Situation
In Brünnlitz, Schindler allows the workers to observe the Sabbath. For months he spends his fortune on bribes. He buys shell casings from other companies and passes them off as his own so that his factory does not have to deliver any usable ammunition. When the war ends, he is broke.
Link to the principle
From the point of view of the purpose, this is consistent. An armaments factory that produces nothing usable makes no economic sense. For the purpose of saving people, it is exactly right. If you know the purpose, you understand why a means is deliberately used “badly.”
The farewell
Situation
At the end of the war, Schindler has to flee from the Red Army. The workers present him with a ring engraved with a line from the Talmud: whoever saves one life saves the entire world. Schindler breaks down. He calculates what else he could have sold to buy the freedom of more people.
Link to the principle
In the end, Schindler measures everything against the new purpose, even his car and a lapel pin. This is the strongest scene for the principle: means have no value of their own. They have only the value the purpose gives them.
Key takeaways
Key lessons
- For every means you have, ask: What am I using it for right now?
- A new purpose often needs no new means, just a new direction.
- Measure success by the purpose, not by the usual metric.
- Check whether what you own serves your purpose or stands in its way.
- Pay attention to people like Stern who see the better purpose sooner than you do.
Summary
“Schindler’s List” tells how Oskar Schindler turns from war profiteer into rescuer. His means remain almost the same: factory, bribery, contacts, money. What changes is the purpose, and with it every decision changes, right down to an armaments factory that deliberately delivers nothing usable. The film shows the Primacy of Purpose in its most serious form: the purpose determines what a means is worth.
Sources
- Schindler’s List, U.S. 1993, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes.
- Thomas Keneally: Schindler’s Ark. London: Hodder & Stoughton 1982.
