Characters / Schindler's List

Schindler's List

Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler

Played By: Liam Neeson

Dubbed By: Claude Giraud (European French)

The Protagonist Title guy, an ethnic-German businessmen who (initially) exploits the war to profit from Jewish labor, until the Nazis' plans for Jews cause him to drastically shift his priorities.

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• The Alcoholic: He's presented as a very hard drinker. As in real life, he's able to use his high tolerance to alcohol to his advantage by drinking with Nazis and maintaining his composure while the Nazis get soused.
• Anti-Hero: He's not your typical hero, in spite of his accomplishments. He's an unrepentant Mr. Vice Guy and knowing war profiteer who takes advantage of slave labor. However, as he starts to comprehend the full scope of Nazi crimes, he's compelled to fight them by simple decency, ultimately sacrificing his fortune to save lives.
• The Atoner: Once a ruthless businessman, he ends up spending all his money, time and energy to save Jews from a certain death. His last lines from the movie are a perfect illustration of this.
• Arch-Enemy: Amon Goeth, the local concentration camp commander.
• Benevolent Boss: Even before he starts putting his life on the line to rescue his workers, he makes an effort to treat them decently. One notable scene later has him getting a Rabbi to stop work and prepare for the Sabbath, offering to let him use some of Schindler's wine in the ritual.
• The Charmer: He can make total strangers his close friends in next to no time, and uses his charisma to get a foothold in German industry. He later uses every bit of his power of persuasion trying to convince Goeth to become a more merciful person. Amazingly, it seems to work, but Goeth quickly abandons it.
• Character Development: At the beginning, he only saves people because he needs them for his business. By the end, he has spent his entire fortune on them, and at tremendous risk to his own life.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He's quite popular with the ladies, but he would never take advantage of an unwilling woman or a woman in a vulnerable state:
  • When Regina Perlman pleads with him to have her parents employed, the implications are clear when she says she doesn't have any money (especially since he only agrees to see her after she puts on makeup and a flattering dress). However, he doesn't take advantage of her (indeed, he throws her out to make sure knowledge of the conditions at his factory doesn't reach the SS) and then requests her parents to be brought over to the factory anyway.
  • When he is alone with Helen Hirsch, even though he finds her attractive, he talks to her as a friend, gives her a chocolate bar, and kisses her on the forehead, taking care to specify it's "not that kind of kiss".
• Consummate Liar: Throughout the movie he does a remarkable job consistently staying in the good graces of Goeth and the Nazis through a skillful combination of lies, bribery and playing up his calloused businessman reputation.
• Cruel to Be Kind: He knew that Stern was using the factory as a safe haven for "skilled" Jewish workers but when a woman came talking about it as an Open Secret and asking him to request her parents to work at the factory. He got furious at the implication, verbally abusing her and kicked her out of his office. That made him confront Stern openly, explaining in absolute terms how dangerous it would be if that knowledge got to the SS, then asked him to request for the parents of the woman.
• Establishing Character Moment: Near the beginning, a waiter offers Schindler his best German wine, which Schindler declines, preferring French wine. This establishes him apart from his fanatically nationalist Nazi peers. Moments later, he demonstrates what a womanizer he is with his flirtations with the girls at the party, beating a hopeful bigwig officer to their attention.
• False Friend: To Goeth. He pretends to be his friend only to get his Jewish workers away from Goeth's clutches.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: More like "self-centered Anti-Hero can't comprehend unabashed cruelty", but Schindler has a hard time believing Goeth would murder people for nothing but shits and giggles.
• Guile Hero: He uses bribery and convincing lies to stuff his factories with as many Jews as possible, thereby saving their lives.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the start of the movie, he's perfectly willing to bribe Nazi officials and manipulate people to make money. He slowly comes to realize that the Nazis, and especially Goeth, are monsters.
• Heroic BSoD: After finally rescuing his workers, he suddenly becomes overwhelmed with guilt that he did not save any more.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He destroys his career and bankrupts himself to save as many Jews as he can.
• Historical Beauty Update: The real Schindler was balding and somewhat pudgy. This doesn't apply to the very handsome Liam Neeson.
• Historical Hero Downgrade: While still very much a hero who saved thousands of Jews, he is introduced as a shrewd businessman Only in It for the Money and completely unaware of the Holocaust. In Real Life, Schindler had connections to the Nazi party, making him aware of the mass-murder of Jews from the start and begin saving lives almost immediately.
• Honor Before Reason: He financially ruins himself and is forced to go on the run in order to save those under his care.
• I Should Have Been Better: After his Heel–Face Turn, he financially ruins himself bribing Nazi officials in an effort to save Jews from the Holocaust. After he escapes, he forlornly notices that hocking his getaway car could've saved more lives, too, and the Nazi party pin he wore could've bribed someone for just one life.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's an unfaithful husband who drinks too much and has a bad temper. That does not stop him from being a hero.
• Large and in Charge: He's the head of his factory and played by 6'4 Liam Neeson who towers over every other actor with many of the workers coming up to his shoulders at most. The real Schindler was also about the same height.
• Life of the Party: In his first scene, he quickly gains the spotlight in a party, and while previously nobody in the local knew him, after some times he's a known face for everyone.
• Mr. Vice Guy: His vices, including his shameless womanizing and hard drinking, are bluntly presented. In fact, it's the very fact that Schindler was such a boozy, glad-handling skirt-chaser as well as a heroic savior that makes him so interesting.
• Nerves of Steel: Given the horrific punishments Nazis inflicted on traitors, absolutely. Especially given the number of times he lies directly to the Nazis' faces.
• Never Gets Drunk: He has an almost inhuman tolerance for alcohol, able to stay perfectly clear-headed when others are completely soused. In real life, Schindler used this to his advantage by negotiating deals when others were tipsy, giving him a considerable advantage.
• Nice to the Waiter: Well before his scheme begins, he shows he is capable of decency by happily accepting a cake from his workers, who his fellow Nazis look down upon.
• Only in It for the Money: He couldn't care less about political ideology, seeking only immense wealth. To begin with, anyway.
• Pet the Dog: Even before his Heel–Face Turn, he's very much capable of compassion. He treats every Jew he meets with respect, does business with them, and takes the time to console poor Helen Hirsch for her misfortunes.
• Pragmatic Villainy: At first, this is why he hires Jews for his factory, in essence rescuing them from the likes of Goeth. It's not for any moral reasons, but because Jewish labor is dirt cheap. Later once he actually starts trying to save them, he uses pragmatic excuses to justify his actions, such as near the end when the factory children are being put on a train to a concentration camp, he tells the officer in charge that he needs to the children's small hands to clean the inside of artillery shells.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • He claims to be supporting the Nazi party while deliberately having his Jews work unproductively in his factories, both to simply save the Jews from being gassed and to put a dent in the Nazi war machine. And he gets away with it.
  • In the last hour of the movie, he pulls 300 of his female workers out of Auschwitz with little more than a bag of diamonds and a lot of guts.
  • Once the German surrender is announced, Schindler gathered all factory workers and German army guards to explain what was going to happen. He freely admits that the guards technically have a responsibility to kill everyone there, even goading them to do so, but noting that it serves no purpose now.
• Riches to Rags: By the end of the movie, Schindler has bankrupted his entire fortune and, in real life, lived the rest of his life on financial support. Not that he cares, his only regret being that he didn't spend more money to save more people.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: He deliberately forges friendships with the regional SS commanders to get the necessary permits for his enamel factory, and to get him out of trouble if necessary. When he's arrested by several German kripo (kriminalpolizei) agents for violating the racial laws, Goeth and his boss Scherner pull some strings to see him released.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: With the rules being those of the Nazi party, he has to use his wealth to circumvent them. He pays off Goeth for every name that is put on the eponymous list, bribes Rudolf Hoss (the Auschwitz commander) with diamonds, as well as bribe any suspicious officials from the armaments board.
• Survivor Guilt: After his Heel–Face Turn, he financially ruins himself bribing Nazi officials in an effort to save Jews from the Holocaust. After he escapes, he forlornly notices that hawking his getaway car could've saved more lives, too, and the Nazi Party pin he wore could've bribed someone for just one life.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: He's left his German wife Emilie back home and has a Polish mistress in Krakow. When Schindler's wife comes to visit and finds the two together, her response towards Oskar is fairly tame (probably due to the more conservative gender roles of the period), while the one most embarrassed by all this is the mistress, who leaves in a hurry. Emilie does remind Oskar that she doesn't have to tolerate it, and they spend an evening together where he reaffirms that he still loves her.
• Sympathetic Slave Owner: He starts out as a self-interested war profiteer, undisturbed by the fact that his labourers are unpaid prisoners, but gradually morphs into this until his only motivation for buying as many Jewish "slaves" as possible is to save their lives. In the end, he saves over 1,000, but is distraught that it wasn't more and breaks down before the survivors. He is the only Nazi Party member buried in Israel, and was awarded for saving so many.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: He wrestles with his conscience for quite a while before making the leap from being an opportunistic entrepreneur to a subversive hero. This is never remarked upon until the closing minutes of the film, not even by Stern. As Roger Ebert observed, there seems to be an unspoken understanding between the two men, as though saying it aloud would mean instant death.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He delivers one to Stern upon learning he'd been put on a train bound for a concentration camp because he'd accidentally forgotten his paperwork when he left his residence.
  Itzhak Stern: Somehow I left my work card at home. I tried to explain to them that it was a mistake, but... I'm sorry. It was stupid!
  Oskar Schindler: What if I got here five minutes later? Then where would I be?

Itzhak Stern

Itzhak Stern

Played By: Ben Kingsley

The local Jewish official who has contacts with black marketeers and the Jewish business community and administrates the factory for him while trying saving the skins of his fellow Jews.

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• Badass Bureaucrat: He's in the Judenrat and is an accountant. He's also completely devoted to bend or outsmart the rules in order to save as many people he can.
• Beneath Suspicion: He's a seemingly cowardly accountant that works for the Nazis believing he could save his skin. Actually, he's doing everything in his power to save his people.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Thanks to his business savviness and managerial skills, Stern ends up being indispensable to Goeth for administering the work camp. This is even discussed in one scene when Stern bitterly remarks that he must organize the entire dismantling of the work camp and then put himself on the last train to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
• Les Collaborateurs: Subverted, as he is introduced as a member of the Judenrat, yet he and his colleagues are shown using every connection and resource at their disposal to save as many of their fellow Jews as they can.
• Composite Character: He was real, but was used to represent nearly all of the financial and business actions of the factory which was split up among other characters.
• Deuteragonist: Schindler's List is as much of his story as it's Schindler's. Arguably, his being around is saving lives more than Schindler himself.
• Fire-Forged Friendship: After all they've been through together, he and Schindler come to see themselves as friends and finally share a drink together when Stern previously refused.
• Good is Not Nice: He treats Schindler very coldly initially, thinking of him as just another profiteer. This changes when Schindler proves he wants to save people.
• Guile Hero: He's one as much as Schindler himself, as he's prone to scheme and lie to get away with saving people or smuggling essential goods under the pretense of being just a paid accountant.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: In spite of his meek demeanor, he's very competent at what he does: both Schindler and Goeth come to appreciate his skills.
• No-Sell: He isn't very affable towards Schindler at the beginning, despite Oskar's very obvious and very awkward attempts to charm him.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He never drinks, and is even called out by Schindler for this. When Schindler learns that everyone in the Płaszów camp (including Stern) is to be sent to Auschwitz, he says he was planning to have a drink with Stern after the war. Stern decides to take him up on the offer then and there, not knowing if he will live that long.
• Plausible Deniability: Another of his specialties, to humorous effect. He feigns not doing or not knowing things happening under Schindler or Goeth's nose, while he's the main actor behind these schemes.
• Servile Snarker: His initial demeanor towards Schindler.
• The Stoic: His other defining quality aside from being a Guile Hero. He never acts out, even when threatened, trying to stay as reasonable as he can be.

Amon Goeth

Amon Goeth

Played By: Ralph Fiennes

The sadistic Nazi lieutenant who is charged with the construction and running of Płaszów concentration camp, exploiting the job to get away with every atrocity he can manage.

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• The Alcoholic: He does not keep his drinking in check, which only worsens his sadistic tendencies. Also while Schindler drinks but knows how to handle it, Goeth sports a prominent beer belly to the point that his medic suggests he should lose some weight and cut back on alcohol.
• Arch-Enemy: As the local concentration camp commander, he serves as this to Schindler. A strange example where Goeth doesn't even realize Schindler is his enemy, and even considers him a friend.
• Asshole Victim: His execution in September 1946, much like those in Nuremberg, did not elicit any public tears.
• Ax-Crazy: He vents his day-to-day frustrations by wantonly killing people and, if his guns happen to jam, responds like a boy trying and failing to unhook a girl's bra. This facet of his personality was, if anything, toned down from how he was in real life.
• Bad Boss: And how. As commandant of Płaszów, he shoots and kills prisoners at random from his balcony in order to scare the rest into working harder.
• Bigot with a Crush: He's annoyed to find himself attracted to his Jewish maid Helen. He's tempted to sleep with her, but stops himself and starts beating her instead.
• Big Bad: He is in charge of the concentration camp in Plaszow and regularly kills its prisoners for petty reasons. Oskar tries to prevent him from doing this by employing as many of them as possible.
• Blunt "No": No, just no at Schindler's suggestion to bet Helen in a card game. He states he won't bet her life (and possibly earn her freedom). He'd rather take her with in to Vienna (which he'd never been allowed to, and he knows it), or kill her before she could get shipped off to Auschwitz.
• Colonel Kilgore: He's something of a cross between this and Psycho for Hire. He's delighted that there is a war on, because it lets him do what he loves to do most: killing, molesting, and torturing people who are at his mercy.
• Defiant to the End: Sadly, even karma catching up with him feels hollow when he somehow looks positively bored when he's finally hanged for his crimes. And he still has time to fix his hair and give one last "Heil Hitler" before the guards kick the chair out from under him.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Anyone who fails to follow the rules, even in the smallest measurement, is dealt with severely at his hand.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He attempts to be merciful after Schindler lectures him about true leadership but fails rather miserably at it, immediately succumbing to his sadistic impulses, mostly because his cruel nature leads him to conclude that Good Is Boring.
• Evil Counterpart: To Schindler. Both men are hedonistic, but while Schindler cares for others, Goeth cares only about meeting his sadistic whims.
• Evil Is Petty: He has a penchant for killing the prisoners for the smallest reasons possible, such as doing sloppy work or missing a spot when cleaning, or for no reason at all. Also, when he's first seen being driven through the Krakow ghetto in a staff car with the top down, one of his men asks if he has any questions and he says, "Ja, why is the top down? I'm fucking freezing."
• Face Death with Dignity: During his hanging, he keeps a stoic, almost bored expression on his face, and his last words are a calm "Heil Hitler".
• Fat Bastard: He's not exactly a thin man, which is implied to be at least partly the result of his heavy drinking, both things his doctor brings up during a physical. Downplayed however as his weight only really shows in his gut, and when he's wearing layers his excess weight is no longer visible.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's this in spades towards Schindler, the latter referring the former as a "Wonderful Crook" as long as they are not a Jew. If the person IS a Jew and Goeth is acting friendly however, then that person better pray for a quick death.
• For the Evulz: He does not have any reason to do the horrible things that he does, other than the fact that he can. Goeth's truly inhuman nature was actually underplayed, because Steven Spielberg thought people would have a hard time believing someone could actually be that pointlessly sadistic.
• Friendly Enemy: He only once suspects that Schindler is double-crossing him, in spite of overwhelming evidence (and even then he misses the mark: "If I'm making one hundred, you've got to be making three. And if you admit to making three, then it's four, actually. But how?"). When Schindler is arrested at one point for kissing a Jewish woman, Goeth goes out of his way to speak on his behalf and offer a bribe to get him released.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He is prone to killing people for random infractions.
• Hate Sink: Given how this is a live action portrayal of one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, this is pretty much a given.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: The movie depicts him proudly wearing medals he never won in real life, and his importance in the political machinery of the Holocaust is overplayed.
• Historical Beauty Update: While he's noticeably overweight (at least with his shirt off), he's still more svelte than the real Goeth, who looks borderline obese in some photographs. Even discounting the weight, the real Goeth's facial features were considerably more plain then the handsome Ralph Fiennes.
• Historical Villain Downgrade: Yes, really. As bad as he is in the movie, he was even worse in real life. The real Goeth did things like torture prisoners in his basement and sic starving dogs on them; conservative estimates of his personal body count (that is, murders he personally committed) are around 500 people. His villainy was toned down due to time constraints and because Spielberg thought audiences wouldn't have believed it. The real Goeth was so evil even other Nazis were disgusted by him and he was eventually dishonorably discharged by the SS.
• Ignored Epiphany: He almost seems to have had an epiphany following Schindler's speech to him about mercy and real power, going as far as pardoning the Jewish boy who's failed to clean his bathtub. Then he changes his mind and shoots the poor kid In the Back from his balcony.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Schindler tries to appeal to his vanity to make him understand in the Villain with Good Publicity trope, but while he attempts to be kinder to his servants, he decides it doesn't work for him.
• Karma Houdini: A downplayed example: while he is tried and executed like in Real Life, he dies a relatively quick and painless death by hanging, and just utters a monotone "Heil Hitler" before he dies.
• Kick the Dog: Amon Goeth LOVES doing this:
  • He has a Jewish engineer shot for suggesting repairs to a barracks, then orders her crew to do exactly as she said.
  • He makes a habit of sniping random prisoners from his balcony For the Evulz.
  • When one prisoner escapes from a work detail, Goeth lines up everyone from the man's barracks and kills half of them (25 in all).
  • After developing an attraction to Helen Hirsch, he blames her for it and beats her senseless.
• Lack of Empathy: To a truly monstrous degree. Goeth is completely incapable of any empathy for others, casually murdering them on a whim and for no other reason than mild amusement, and never showing even the slightest hint of remorse about his behavior. Even his own death doesn't seem to provoke any reaction besides boredom.
• Last Words: He calmly says "Heil Hitler" one last time before his hanging.
• Mr. Vice Guy: As much as Schindler, and Schindler exploits it to befriend him to fulfill his agenda.
• Never My Fault: Blames his Jewish maid Helen for his own lust towards her even though she in no way returns his feelings, and he beats her viciously as a result.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Even by Nazi standards he is incredibly bigoted, illiberal and sadistic, as he has a penchant for killing Jews and other concentration camp prisoners for the pettiest reasons imaginable.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Goeth throws tantrums like a child, does things on a whim, and likes to break his toys. Unfortunately, in this case, his toys are human beings being starved and worked to death, who he kills on the merest whim. Accent on the "merest" part.
  Goeth's Mistress: Amon, you're such a damn fucking child!
• Sadist: Goeth seems to murder people because he's a hollow-on-the-inside psychopath who enjoys the exhilaration.
• Shadow Archetype: To Schindler. The Central Theme of the movie is about the value of life; Goeth's casual and uncaring manner of killing people is contrasted with Schindler's pretending to be equally uncaring in order to wrap them up in his protection. By the end, despite saving over a thousand people, he breaks down in tears over not being able to save more. On the other hand, Goeth goes to his death unrepentant and utterly unmoved.
• The Sociopath: He casually murders people on a whim to alleviate boredom.
• Stupid Evil: A crucial element of his character is that, while a truly evil and remorseless mass murderer, he's not actually that smart; killing Jews, even the ones who helped him, for the pettiest possible reasons even when he could have benefited from keeping them alive. When one of the prisoners reports a structural flaw in the barracks they're building, Goeth has her shot because he won't let a Jew argue with him (even when she's right), and even orders the rest of the crew to rebuild part of the barracks like she said. When things don't go his way, he reacts violently, ignores simpler and more efficient solutions, and on one memorable occasion is outwitted by a child. Most crucially, he never catches on to the blatantly obvious fact that Schindler is only employing the Jews to keep them alive and sabotage the war effort, because the thought never so much as enters his mind, even for a moment, that Schindler could be protecting the Jews because he can't stand to see innocent people slaughtered. The scene where Goeth tries and fails to shoot an old Jewish man - repeatedly - was actually included for this very reason, Luger guns really were prone to jamming, and Spielberg wanted to show how lazy the Nazis (and Goeth in particular) were at taking care of their weapons.
• Villainous Crush: He has one on Helen Hirsch, his Jewish maid. This leaves him conflicted because he believes her to be inferior to him.
• Villainous Valor: Even when he is hanged, he shows nothing but ice-cold stoicism.
• Would Hurt a Child: One of his more memorable moments involves him sniping a young boy from his balcony.

Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg

Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg

Played By: Jonathan Sagall

A Jewish smuggler who is instrumental in obtaining luxury items for Schindler, both for his own use and to send to his SS contacts so he can stay in their good graces. Also a damn good Guile Hero, and the one who will eventually bring the whole story to light decades after.

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• Action Survivor: He becomes a smuggler, a conman, and goes across a damn sewer because he wants he and his wife to survive.
• Everyone Has Standards: He is offered a chance to join the OD (the Jewish police in the ghetto, who answer to the SS) and live a bit better than everyone else, but refuses because he holds in contempt those who are collaborating with the SS.
• Friend in the Black Market: Schindler's friend. He's the one who has the guts to introduce a Nazi party member (Schindler) to wealthy Jews who have the money he needs to buy the factory. Also, he provides (at the time nearly unfindable) luxury goods for Schindler to bribe Nazi officers with.
• Guile Hero: Along with Schindler and Stern. It's kinda required if you work in the black market.
• Happily Married: With Mila. They were a young and happy couple before the war. The Real Life Pfefferbergs would go on living a long life together, confirming this trope.
• Hero of Another Story: He would eventually move to America, settling in Los Angeles and opening up a successful leather goods store in Beverly Hills while trying to tell screenwriters about Oskar Schindler, to let the world know of his heroism. He then happened to run into Thomas Keneally in 1980, who needed a new suitcase while in LA on a trip from Sydney, and told him the remarkable story about Schindler, resulting in the subsequent book and film, and founding the Oskar Schindler Humanities Foundation before passing away in 2001.
• I Owe You My Life: He spends the years after his immigration to the US trying to get various people in the film industry and journalists to let the world know of Schindler's heroism, even getting Schindler a few interviews with TV stations prior to his death in 1974, and eventually running into Tom Kenneally and achieving his goal. He summed up his actions with: "Schindler gave me my life, and I tried to give him immortality".
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Has this relationship with Marcel Goldberg, who got a job as an OD officer while Poldek didn't and Goldberg liked to gloat at him.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Tall, handsome, and quite snarky indeed when he can get away with it.
• Tritagonist: He's the third character with the more focus, which is justified since the Real Life Poldek Pfefferberg was the one who told the story to Thomas Keneally (author of the source book), so a lot of the story is from his point of view.
• Villainous Rescue: He was being selected to be purged from Płaszów, but Goeth saves him because he's his mechanic.

Ludmila "Mila" Pfefferberg

Ludmila "Mila" Pfefferberg

Played By: Adi Nitzan

• Cassandra Truth: Played with. On the same night that Schindler kisses the Jewish girl and Goeth brutally beats Helen, Mila tells the rest of the women in her barracks a harrowing story that she heard from somebody who escaped an extermination camp (presumably Auschwitz), detailing what the German overseers and complicit prisoners did to new arrivals before killing them. None of the other women believe it, with Mrs. Dresner telling her to Stop it! Your bedtime stories are scaring everyone! as she protectively clutches her daughter. But they soon find to their horror that Mila was right after their train from Płaszów is rerouted to Auschwitz by mistake, although Schindler manages to save them in time.

Helen Hirsch

Helen Hirsch

Played By: Embeth Davidtz

Goeth's Jewish housekeeper (actually house slave, as she's clearly not paid). She is sadly the victim of his many tempers, along with the unhealthy attachment he has for her.

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• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: She retains her good looks even after years of daily abuse from Goeth. Averted in the novel, where she is constantly covered in bruises and has gone deaf on one ear from the beatings.
• Blessed with Suck: She is spared from living in the horrible conditions of Płaszów when she's hired as Goeth's maid, but has to live with a violent, psychotic jerk for a master. Even worse, since he took a shine to her Schindler points out that he won't kill her, but since he's forbidden to act on it, he reacts by being even more cruel to the poor girl. There's a reason Itzhak Stern described Helen Hirsch as the “most unfortunate of all the inmates of the kids camp.”
• Composite Character: There were two women, both named Helen, working in Goeth's household. Their stories were merged.
  • Also with Rebecca Bau. In the novel it's Rebecca who occasionally does a manicure to Goeth, while in the film it's Helen.
• French Maid Outfit: She wears one, since she's forced to serve in Goeth's villa under the pretense of being a real employee instead of a battered slave. Goeth doesn't even let her wear the star on her arm, so most of the guests don't know he lives with a Jewish woman.
• Head-Turning Beauty: She's quite striking (it goes along with being played by Embeth Davidtz) so both notorious womanizers Goeth and Schindler ogle her in different occasions.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Goeth caught her in a bathing robe that shows she's naked underneath. This is also the unfortunate moment he acts on his attraction while she stands there terrified.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: Schindler wins her freedom by beating Goeth at cards.
• Mercy Kill: Almost on the receiving end of one. Goeth considers killing her instead of sending her to Auschwitz by the time that Płaszów is being dismantled. Fortunately for her, Schindler manages to manipulate him into betting her life on a game of blackjack.
• Morality Pet: She almost was one to Goeth, who generally appreciates her. It's the closest thing to caring that he has for someone else, but not enough to cause any significant influence or Character Development.
• Near-Rape Experience: Goeth develops a creepy infatuation for her, and makes an abortive attempt to force himself on her while she's standing motionless and frightened in a wet shirt, never saying a word. He stops himself, but not on any moral grounds; he accuses her of "seducing him" because he considers her an inferior, and beats her senseless instead.
• The Quiet One: She speaks little, and with good reasons, as anything she may say or do can be an excuse for her master to beat her senseless.
• Pet the Dog: She's often on the receiving end of this.
  • Goeth usually takes the time to thank her when she's serving him.
  • Schindler seemingly goes into the basement to flirt with her, but actually gives her a chocolate bar and listens to her misfortunes.
  • She's the last person Schindler adds to his list of workers to be saved from Auschwitz.

Emilie Schindler

Emilie Schindler

Played By: Caroline Goodall

Oskar Schindler's long-suffering, almost maternal wife.

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• Amicable Exes: Hers and Oskar's marriage didn't last after the war but ended amicably. During the film they are estranged until Oskar promises her that she will be the only one.
• The Caretaker: In the book, she nursed back to health - with everything she could find in the black market - several of the women who were erroneously deported to Auschwitz and rescued by Schindler, earning their gratitude and respect.
• Dull Surprise: She barely flinches when confronted with Oskar's mistress. The most embarrassed of the pair is the poor girl, who leaves in a rush. Emilie stands quietly in the room until the girl packs her things and leaves.
• Hero of Another Story: According to later reports, Emilie almost single-handedly saved over a hundred Jewish women and children misrouted to Auschwitz and abandoned on a train near Schindler's factory.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: The book notes that she reminded Oskar of his mother, whom he adored. His mother was also constantly cheated on by his father, which is the same fate of their marriage.
• My Girl Back Home: She's waiting for Oskar in their hometown, while he's away conquering his fortune.
• Parenting the Husband: She has the same patience with Oskar that she'd have with a 12-year-old, and sometimes she speaks to him accordingly. According to the book, Oskar married her because she reminded him of his mother (and his parents' marriage was exactly like theirs).
• Pretty in Mink: She wears an elegant fur coat on her night out with Oskar.
• The Promise: She states that she'll stay in Krakow with Oskar if he can promise that no one will ever mistake her for one of his mistresses. He doesn't, and she soon leaves on a train for home. Eventually Oskar does promise her so, but in Real Life their marriage didn't last anyway.
• Proper Lady: Beautiful, kind, compassionate, with impeccable manners even when face to face with her husband's mistress.
• Silk Hiding Steel: The lady is refined, compassionate, and supports her husband's decision of buying the freedom of his Jewish workers, even if it means they will end up broke. She also will not tolerate being humiliated; she'd rather live separate from her husband.

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