Many of you have seen the 1993 movie “Schindler’s List” which was based on the book by Thomas Keneally. It tells the story of how German industrialist Oskar Schindler rescued hundreds of Jews from extermination by recruiting them out of the concentration camp to work in his factories.
The movie focuses in part on the relationship between Schindler and the Nazi camp commander, Amon Goeth. It contrasts the industrialist’s efforts to save Jews and the commandant’s treatment of the prisoners. In the film Goeth is the personification of evil. He allowed horrendous treatment of inmates and perpetrated some of the cruelty himself.
Some years after the film came out Keneally was interviewed by Michael Shermer, a journalist who was writing a magazine article. He asked what Keneally he thought was the difference between Schindler and Goeth. Surprisingly he answered, “Not much. Had there been no war, Mr. Schindler and Mr. Goeth might have been drinking buddies and business partners, morally obtuse, perhaps, but relatively harmless. What a difference a war makes, especially to the moral choices that lead to good and evil.”
Shermer went on in his article to quote Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
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Michael Shermer, “Something Evil Comes This Way,” www.skeptic.com , 3-18-04