I learned that there was a lot more to the Holocaust than the number 6 million. There was a lot of pain and suffering involved. I used to think that Hitler just decided to round up the Jews one day and systematically eliminate them. I learned there was a long (for Jews at least) prologue of instilling fear, destroying their hope, giving them horrid living conditions, and otherwise breaking them down mentally and physically. I also learned some Germans didn't sit idly by and let the Nazis do their dirtywork, but some fought it - like Schindler.
I thought the important scenes were when the Jews were separated into workers and death camp prisoners, when the girl in the red coat was carted by, and when Schindler finally broke down at the end. The first scene I mentioned is when the Jews at the labor camp are stripped, prodded into lines, made to run by "doctors" who only glance at them before deciding if they would live or die. This shows how the Nazis treated Jews worse than animals - the animals who didn't pass wouldn't be sent to concentration camps. When the girl in the red coat went past to be put on the pyre it was the first dead Jew that Schindler recognized, and it was an harmless, little girl. That shook him up pretty badly - enough to spend his life-savings saving over 1,000 Jews. And at the end of the movie, when he's saying goodbye to Stern, he finally lets it all go and cries. He just couldn't deal with the fact that he couldn't save all his workers from death, even though he did so much. The Nazi regime's evils managed to break down even it's own followers.
Schindler was just a guy who wanted to make money, and who was good at getting people on his side, but not so hot at managing. By happenstance he found a Jewish accountant for his business, and eventually he became emotionally tied to the Jews. This chain of events makes him an unlikely hero, but a hero nonetheless.
This movie was a great portrayal of WWII from the inside. Most other WWII movies deal with Allied or Axis commanders out in the field, but this turned the tables and it was very informative in that respect. It was also emotionally moving, but I wish we'd seen it all at once. If we hadn't broken it up over a week it would've been more powerful I think. The black and white was a bit boring at the start, but once the plot drew you in it worked better than color could have.
