So my partner was reading over my shoulder on an R/T thread and exclaimed in analogy...

[laconicsax]

Did Oskar Schindler work to save the Jews because he was a Nazi, or in spite of it?

[Heddi]

1. Hmmmm

He did it initially for money, right? It's been a while since I saw the movie, but if I recall, he did it for cheap labour, and then later did it for humanitarian reasons, hence the ending where he was weeping and saying how many people he could have saved if he sold his pin, or his car, or what-not.

On a side note, I saw that movie in high school, about a week after my class went to DC and we went to the Holocaust museum. Totally moving. I was most moved by the hall of shoes and other personal items. Just mounds and mounds and mountains of shoes and suitcases and glasses. Then seeing the movie, and the piles of shoes and glasses and suitcases...it was very moving.

That was a hard museum to go to, but I think it is imperative that every person in the world see that. It really made it "real"...not a black and white historical thing that you know happened but have no personal connection to. Seeing it in person, smelling the way the shoes and suitcases and glasses smelled...that old atticy smell. The way the box-car felt. The card with an inmates name and history on it to read and ponder over as you walked through..it made it very real.

[Warpy]

2. He was a bad man by all accounts

who became disgusted enough by the Holocaust to turn himself into one of its great heroes.

He became a hero in spite of his own character and in spite of being a good Nazi.

[onager]

3. Quite a few Jews were saved by atheists and Communists.

Unfortunately, they don't have the same P.R. machine as the Xians.

And of course, in many countries the good Xian majority eagerly tortured and killed Jews once the Nazis or their puppet governments got into power. (The Baltic States, Croatia, etc.) But that's one of those icky and inconvenient truths best not mentioned.