Similarly, is also displayed in the movie
Similarly, the process of forfeiting one’s conscience is also displayed in the movie Schindler’s List through the character Amon Goeth, a Nazi soldier who is in charge of the new labor camp that is being built by Jewish slave laborers. In his first scene, when a Nazi officer is providing a tour to Amon Goeth, commotion is heard from a nearby construction site. Then a Jewish woman comes up to Goeth and explains to him that there is a problem with the construction of the barracks and it must be torn down to rebuild, otherwise it is going to sink and collapse.
However, after Goeth hears the reason and learns that she is an engineer, he orders to kill this woman on sight. “That’s somebody who knew what they were doing. That’s somebody I needed. Take it down, re-pour it, rebuild it, like she said”(Schindler’s List). After the engineer is shot, Goeth follows her suggestion and asks his subordinates to rebuild the camp. In this case, although Goeth agrees with the engineer’s idea, he still shoots her just because she is a Jew, whom in his opinion, is less human and deserves less respect. Therefore the engineer can not argue with one of Goeth’s subordinates even though he could have used her skills.
Indeed, war makes Goeth forfeit his conscience and go against his principles by killing innocent people. When the engineer tells him that the labor camp is not safe, he does not appreciate her, instead, he kills her under the charge of arguing with a Nazi officer. In the movie, not only Goeth, but also thousands of Nazi officers forfeiture their conscience after the baptism of the war.
Moreover, under the impacts of war, the principles that people once care for so much gradually fade under the devastation of bloodiness which finally make them become the slaves of the war, spreading fear and pain to all innocent people. Overall, in both Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg, the negative sides of war that fall on people are presented through the brokenness of families, loss of innocence and forfeiture of conscience. By looking back to histories, nearly every country looks at war as an indispensable weapon to gain power and to therefore win victory.
However, very few of them realize that war has much more destructive impacts than the delight it actually brings to people. Wherever and whenever there is a war, there are always innocent people getting killed, leaving the living ones in the family trapped in an interminable state of suffering. War is like a witchcraft, it can make people lose their minds and pick up weapons to kill others under its command. However, every spell has its own antidote, and so does the war. In order for people to avoid a replay of the heartbroken memories, it is important for everyone to remember the deeply grieved histories of the war and also to cherish the peace that many people sacrificed their lives to achieve.
