`Schindler's List' Provokes Questions From German Teens

BERLIN - As a recent special showing of the movie "Schindler's List" drew to a close, the audience of high-school students had this question:

Why had no one ever told before about Oskar Schindler and his efforts to save the Jews from the Nazi Holocaust?

"My parents and grandparents always told me there was nothing you could do about the Jews, but this movie shows that something could be done," said a bewildered Axel Kortschak, 19, as he tugged at his shoulder-length blond hair. "Why have I never heard of Schindler until now?"

As the Steven Spielberg movie about Schindler, a German industrialist, and the Jewish workers he sheltered prompts renewed self-examination in Germany, it is the country's teenagers who are asking some of the most painful and probing questions.

For them, the second generation to be born since World War II, the war and its associated horrors are a dull, required part of their education. But "Schindler's List" has sparked many of them into questioning that education and its content for the first time.

Some teens asked why they must learn so much about the German past when they are not responsible for it. Others wonder why they were never taught about Schindler or other unsung German heroes of an otherwise black era of history.

But many interviewed after the showing said they now question what they have been taught: that the reason so few Germans intervened to stop the Holocaust is because the vast majority of Germany knew nothing about it.

"I have an aunt who still thinks Hitler is a great guy but says she is shocked about what happened to the Jews," said Anna Kuester, 17. "After seeing such a movie, I'm not sure I can believe her."

Not surprisingly, the film has touched off debate about how teenagers are taught about the Holocaust - and whether films like Spielberg's should in some way be a required part of the curriculum.

German schoolchildren dedicate a lot of classroom time to learning about the rise of fascism, Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. Students from both eastern and western Germany typically study the World War II era twice, once in about the equivalent of fifth grade and again in high school.

"It's amazing how much time is devoted to this period," said George Kamp, an American who teaches at the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin, for German and international students. "In the U.S., I don't think kids get more than 10 minutes of it."

Many German schools also supplement the required curriculum with field trips to concentration camps, exhibitions and Holocaust memorials. The subject also is in the news, particularly in light of renewed rightist violence.

But the quality of teaching about the Holocaust can vary widely. Because education is regulated on the state, not the national level - ironically, a move taken in response to Germany's fascist past - the 12 federal states have different curricula, although they must meet some federal criteria.

"About 75 percent do it well," said Andreas Nachama, director of Topography of Terror, a permanent Holocaust exhibit in Berlin. "But if you have such a bad history, you can never do it well enough."

Many in Germany argue that the Spielberg film, playing in sold-out theaters, brings the past into the present in a medium that teenagers can understand and should be made part of the school curriculum.

The film clearly struck a nerve for teens. When a brutal SS commandant tells his young housemaid, Helen, he won't seduce her because "you are not a proper human being," many in the audience gasped. When Schindler laments whether he should have sold additional possessions in order to save "one more" person, handkerchiefs came out across the cinema.

Such responses are one reason why Ignatz Bubis, the head of the Jewish community in Germany, advocates the film as a valuable teaching device.

" `Schindler's List' should be shown to students, but not without teachers and students discussing it," Bubis said.

Not all of the students who saw the film believe they should learn more about the Holocaust.

Some, although stressing the Holocaust was a horrible period in German history, said they are tired of being constantly reminded of the Nazi past.

"Yes, I think we should learn from history, but enough is enough," said Stefan Noske, 20.

"What should I be guilty of? Not even my parents were old enough to be guilty.

"Look, when I lived in Australia, I was called a Nazi. I didn't do anything. There were so many other people did bad things, not just the Germans - what about them?"

Classmate Frank Malek, 20, echoed this view.

"Yes, I'm ashamed, I don't want it to happen again," he said, referring to the Holocaust. But he added it was time for Hollywood to look elsewhere for a hot movie. "Spielberg is trying to make money out of this situation in Germany, just as so many others do."