The penultimate scene of the movie Schindler’s List shows a Russian soldier arriving on horseback to inform the roughly 1,200 Jewish prisoner laborers who worked in Oskar Schindler’s factory that they’ve been “liberated by the Soviet army” and can now leave.
The incredible Ben Kingsley, who portrays Izhak Stern in the film, asks the soldier if he’s been to Poland, and the soldier tells him he’s just come from there.
“Where do we go?” asks another Jewish laborer, to which the soldier replies:
“Don’t go East, they hate you there. You don’t want to go West, either…”
The final scene of the film shows the Jewish laborers walking in unison toward the camera, and then the film turns from black and white to color, and the actors are replaced by the “Schindler Jews” in the present day, who walk to Oskar Schindler’s grave (he is buried in Palestine in the Mount Zion Catholic Cemetery in Al Quds) and lay the ceremonious rock on his grave. The actors are accompanied by the living characters they portray and the whole scene is very moving and emotional.
I’ve watched this film no less than 20 times since it first came out in 1993 and I am reduced to an absolute mess of tears at this final scene every single time. Today was no different in terms of my tears, but there is an additional feeling I experienced that I’ve never felt quite so acutely in the past –utter helplessness and despair.
I tried to explain to a friend why I keep going back to these movies – Schindler’s List, The Pianist, The Zone of Interest, Sophie’s Choice – and why I insist on reading everything I can on Palestine and World War II and the Holocaust, especially now, and the only way I can explain it is that I somehow need to feel my feelings.
I don’t know how else to describe this. I’m not trying to be morose. I don’t want to feel more anguish. But I also feel a certain desperation in my core – I find I am stunned into numbness if that makes any sense, and I know I don’t want to be numbed. My friend finally asked if I was “…trying to feel the Palestinians’ terror maybe?” and I think that might be exactly it.
The past 6 months have been sheer horror.
We have borne witness – and continue to be subjected – to the absolute depravity of the genocide by the Zionist and murderous Israeli regime against the people of Gaza in Palestine, and we have been forced to withstand the horrors of this genocide without the mercy of being able to look away.
I remember an incident many years ago when I was in high school, of a female classmate who was gang raped by a group of soldiers in front of her boyfriend who was forced to watch at gunpoint, under the threat of being shot if he looked away. I remember how horrified I felt that he’d been given no choice but to helplessly watch while his girlfriend was so violently raped and had no power to save her.
This is what it feels like to be watching this genocide today – we are forced to watch it as it happens in front of our eyes, we are made to endure the forced paralysis and our inability to intervene, and we have to withstand the pleasure with which these monsters rejoice in every murder, in every slaughter, in every hunted and eliminated Palestinian child, father, mother, and elder. It’s the most surreal experience of my life and maybe that’s why I keep willfully revisiting the horrors of the past so I can somehow grab onto the tangible horror unfolding in real time. I don’t know how else to describe it.
This time, as I watched the film, I could only see the parallels between the Jewish experience in World War II and Gaza and Palestine today:
The Warsaw Ghetto and the forced displacement of the Jews of Warsaw into an uninhabitable 12-block area.
The forced displacement of Europe’s Jews, the ethnic cleansing of the population, and the Nakbas of 1948, 1967, 2014, and 2024.
The dehumanization of the Jews by the Nazis in the 30s and 40s, and the textbook replication of these same tactics by the Zionists today against the Palestinians.
The complete and utter disregard of world leaders today in the face of the extermination of 40,000+ Palestinians – roughly half of whom are children – while the world casually deliberates whether or not this genocide can, in fact, be defined as such.
The list – Schindler’s List itself, the compiling of 1,200 names in an effort to spare them the horrific fate of so many others, and the lists of Gazans trying to flee Gaza today. The desperation of families as they scramble to get themselves on any list that will have them – medical evacuation, dual citizenship, bribes to the tour companies that have decided to leverage the most severe human suffering and to weaponize that against a desperate population as they try to flee certain death by charging CRIMINAL fees for tourist visas.
The number of GoFundMe accounts shared on a daily basis with requests for astronomical funds - $70,000 for a family of 3, $120,000 for a family of 5 – and the cruelty of extorting this money from an already destitute population, and then just as they’re about to board the bus to take them across the border, they are informed of an arbitrary increase in the fees, raising the price by an additional $20,000, making it impossible for the family to escape. These are examples based on actual stories of people I know.
The inhumanity! We are being forced to contribute to what would normally be considered human trafficking, but because the powers that be are in on the scam, the fees are paid relatively out in the open – in cash, of course, and in US DOLLARS obviously – but still by official appointment at a named and known tour company with tickets and receipts and visas being issued (visas that would normally cost $500-$600 USD).
We are calling in favors, asking anyone who knows anyone to reach out to their contacts to make sure Family A or Family B gets on the list for this week’s evacuations. We’ve sent messages asking “Any news on XYZ? Did they get on the list?” and praying against all odds they make it out alive before the next bomb drops and eliminates entire buildings.
THE LIST? The list of those who might be saved. Does this not sound absolutely terrifying? Are we not completely horrified by what we’ve been reduced to? This is what it must have felt like to be a Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe. When I watch these movies about the Holocaust, this is the terror I feel – the fear, the rage, the injustice – the scenes of being arbitrarily selected to survive or be gassed. To flee or remain in hell. To live or die.
And while all this is happening, we can watch the glee over the destruction and mockery of our people by rabid, depraved Israeli soldiers on TikTok making fun of our despair and cosplaying our genocide.
The obsession of the IOF with women’s lingerie and the sexuality of Palestinians.
The delight with which these sexually deviant soldiers seem to revel in the fetishizing of Palestinian women.
As though religious piety and adherence to Islam somehow exclude the right of women and men to participate in healthy sexual relationships behind closed doors.
As though we somehow owe them the modesty of our bodies and souls if only to reinforce the prejudice of their own derangement.
The resentment they have for any signs of normalcy in Gazan homes. We are only permitted to grieve and wail if we do it in ways that fit the tropes and skewed narratives of their mentally ill paradigms.
Do you know how depraved you have to be to covet so rabidly and violently what you claim to despise?
Do you know how hateful you have to be to uphold the tenets of Zionism?
Do you know how sick you have to be to call yourself a proud Zionist?
I don’t wish that level of illness on anyone – not even those for whom I have only disdain and disgust. Not even them.
But what I really want to know is who will ride up on a horse into Palestine and declare that we “have been liberated and free to live”?
Will Palestine ever see the justice of liberation and reparation?
Will anyone step in and say “This is enough slaughter now. You can live in freedom and dignity”?
And if that day ever comes, how will the world pay for its sins?
At this point, is that even possible?
