Holocaust

The film medium has radically changed in the course of the last few years. First, a little history. One major holocaust film is, of course, Schindler's List. Made by Steven Spielberg in 1993, this movie told the true story of Oskar Schlinder *played by Liam Neeson),a Nazi womanizer businessman who saves the lives of over 1,100 Jews by employing them in his factory. This movie is still regarded as Spielberg's most highly acclaimed film. It was powerful, beautiful and heartbreaking. Such a great movie (which is more than we can say for his latest films, I'm looking at you Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). For years Jews were portrayed as victims in movies (see Devil's Arithmetic, and others). However, recently Holocaust films have taken a different approach. Rather than portraying Jews as victims, they are showing them to be bad asses with guns like that the one with Jewish James Bond (Defiance?). Daniel Craig plays a Jewish man who manages to squeeze past Nazis and wages a small war with them. (I haven't seen the movie so I'm using Wikipedia for this part). Pretty soon, that one guy's story about falling in love with a girl who threw apples over a wall will be made into a movie. So, the question is, are Holocaust movies okay? Is it okay to make money off an extremely sensitive moment in Jewish history? My answer is, yes. The Holocaust represents an opportunity for Jews to become united and try to spread education so it doesn't happen again. So, yes, the Holocaust is a fragment of Jewish identity.