The film follows Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish–Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II.

Universal Pictures bought the rights to the novel, but Spielberg, unsure if he was ready to make a film about the Holocaust, tried to pass the project to several directors before deciding to direct it himself.

Göth brutalizes his Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch, and randomly shoots people from the balcony of his villa; the prisoners are in constant fear for their lives.

As the Jewish workers are transported by train to Brünnlitz, the women and girls are mistakenly redirected to Auschwitz-Birkenau; Schindler bribes Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, for their release.

Many of the surviving Schindlerjuden and the actors portraying them visit Schindler's grave and place stones on its marker (a traditional Jewish sign of respect for the dead), after which Liam Neeson lays two roses.

[22] Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson expressed interest in portraying Schindler, but Spielberg preferred to cast the relatively unknown Neeson so that the actor's star quality would not overpower the character.

[26] Fiennes was cast as Amon Göth after Spielberg viewed his performances in A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights.

"[27] Doctors Samuel J. Leistedt and Paul Linkowski of the Université libre de Bruxelles describe Göth's character in the film as a classic psychopath.

"[27] Antisemitic symbols were scrawled on billboards near shooting locations,[15] while Kingsley nearly entered a brawl with an elderly German-speaking businessman who insulted the Israeli actor Michael Schneider.

I cried all the time.Shooting Schindler's List was deeply emotional for Spielberg, as the subject matter forced him to confront elements of his childhood, such as the antisemitism he faced.

[55] Thus a second theme of redemption is introduced as Schindler, a disreputable schemer on the edges of respectability, becomes a father figure responsible for saving the lives of more than a thousand people.

Spielberg said the scene was intended to symbolize how members of the highest levels of government in the United States knew the Holocaust was occurring, yet did nothing to stop it.

"[15] Sara Horowitz, director of the Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, sees the candles as a symbol for the Jews of Europe, killed and then burned in the crematoria.

"[66] Robert Gellately notes the film in its entirety can be seen as a metaphor for the Holocaust, with early sporadic violence increasing into a crescendo of death and destruction.

[79] Spielberg used proceeds from the film to finance several related documentaries, including Anne Frank Remembered (1995), The Lost Children of Berlin (1996), and The Last Days (1998).

[80] Schindler's List received acclaim from both film critics and audiences, with Americans such as talk show host Oprah Winfrey and President Bill Clinton urging others to see it.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Schindler's List blends the abject horror of the Holocaust with Steven Spielberg's signature tender humanism to create the director's dramatic masterpiece.

He noted the performances of Neeson, Fiennes, Kingsley, and Davidtz as warranting special praise,[90] and calls the scene in the shower at Auschwitz "the most terrifying sequence ever filmed.

[92] James Verniere of the Boston Herald noted the film's restraint and lack of sensationalism, and called it a "major addition to the body of work about the Holocaust.

"[94] Mintz notes that even the film's harshest critics admire the "visual brilliance" of the fifteen-minute segment depicting the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto.

[100] History professor Omer Bartov of Brown University notes that the physically large and strongly drawn characters of Schindler and Göth overshadow the Jewish victims, who are depicted as small, scurrying, and frightened – a mere backdrop to the struggle of good versus evil.

"[17] The success of Schindler's List led filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to abandon his own Holocaust project, Aryan Papers, which would have been about a Jewish boy and his aunt who survive the war by sneaking through Poland while pretending to be Catholic.

"[114] Claude Lanzmann, the director of the nine-hour Holocaust documentary Shoah (1985), called Schindler's List a "kitschy melodrama" and a "deformation" of historical truth.

[116] Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertész, a Holocaust survivor, feels it is impossible for life in a Nazi concentration camp to be accurately portrayed by anyone who did not experience it first-hand.

While commending Spielberg for bringing the story to a wide audience, he found the film's final scene at the graveyard neglected the terrible after-effects of the experience on the survivors and implied that they came through emotionally unscathed.

"[146] In the Philippines, chief censor Henrietta Mendez ordered cuts of three scenes depicting sexual intercourse and female nudity before the film could be shown in cinemas.

This caused some controversy in Israel, as the song (which was written in 1967 by Naomi Shemer) is widely considered an informal anthem of the Israeli victory in the Six-Day War.

In Israeli prints of the film, the song was replaced with "Halikha LeKesariya" ("A Walk to Caesarea") by Hannah Szenes, a World War II resistance fighter.

[150] Tom Coburn, then an Oklahoma congressman, said that in airing the film, NBC had brought television "to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity", adding that it was an insult to "decent-minded individuals everywhere".

[125] Jerzy Kanal, chairman of the Jewish Community of Berlin, added "It is obvious that the film could have a greater impact [on society] when broadcast unimpeded by commercials.