The Holocaust Story in Microcosm:
Gene Siskel on "Schindler's List"
A recent issue of TV Guide (Feb 22, 1997) featured a review of the film,
Schindler's List by well-known movie reviewer, Gene Siskel.
Siskel's article, entitled, Schindler's List: Cut, but no Commercials
is a fine example on a small scale, of how the mystification surrounding
the Holocaust story breeds confusion and self-delusion among adepts and
amateurs alike.
No doubt Siskel set out to merely to review Spielberg's overblown Holocaust
epic; but he wound up as emotionally unhinged and intellectually befuddled
as the wildest of the survivor fantasts and exaggerators. To wit, he saw
a "gas chamber" where, literally, there was only a shower. Siskel writes:
"Even if it doesn't totally capture the Nazi horror, many of its shocking
images do linger: Jewish heads recoiling from bullets; a Polish girl
shouting, "Good-bye, Jews!"; a Jewish child hiding in a cesspool; gas-chamber
fumes enveloping naked Jewish women." (p.16)
"Gas chamber fumes enveloping naked Jewish women?" No such scene exists
in this film! When we are confronted by the obligatory "gas chamber" scene
in the film, we see women herded into the shower room at Birkenau. Amidst
screaming and crying and melodramatic music, we see cleansing water, not
poison gas, sprinkle from the shower heads. No "gas chamber fumes" envelop
anyone in this film.
It's likely that Siskel has seen Schindler's List more than
once. He most likely saw the film in 1993 when it was a nationwide sensation.
He's had the advantage of being able to view the shower scene from his arm
chair. Siskel's amazing transformation into a holocaust survivor was apparently
accompanied with the affliction known as "Holocaust Survivor Syndrome."
Siskel's particular version of this ailment might be categorized as "Schindler's
List Survivor Syndrome."
Ukrainian-American psychiatrist Dr. O. Wolansky has explained "Holocaust
Survivor Syndrome" as follows:
"[...] the true horrors and the stress of the concentration camps were
forgotten by survivors with the passing of the years, and were supplanted
by group fantasies of martyrdom borrowed from heard or read materials
or by delusions confabulated anew." (News Release, January 25, 1993,
Polish Historical Society, Stamford, CT 06902, USA. See also, Ernst
Gauss, Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte (GzZ), Grabert, Tuebingen
1993. p. 137.)
Surely, Gene Siskel is displaying symptoms of this widely occurring affliction.
Siskel, an experienced movie reviewer, now believes that he has actually
seen something which is not there. Siskel has had the advantage of being
able to review the film Schindler's List as often as he likes.
Perhaps, our esteemed reviewer actually owns a copy which he can watch at
his leisure. Siskel also has the advantage of little time having passed
between the viewing of this 1993 film and his recent testimonial regarding
what he saw.
One can only wonder what "lingering images" would be conjured up in Siskel's
mind had he seen this film but once, over fifty years ago. This is the stuff
of which legends are made.
[This article appeared in a slightly different version in Smith's
Report, No. 41 March 1997]
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