Schindler's List Scene 12 Summary

  • Another night, another dame for Schindler. Oskar's black market master interrupts the fun with troubling news about Stern.
  • Oskar arrives at the train station and sees Jews marking their suitcases with chalk and being loaded onto cattle cars. Destination: Auschwitz.
  • The SS tell them that their luggage will be sent along later. Yeah, we believe that.
  • Stern's been mistakenly put on the list to be transported to a death camp.
  • The SS clerks supervising the whole business refuse to hand Stern over to Oskar.
  • Oskar makes some suggestive threats to the Nazi clerks, and shouts out Stern's name as the train slowly pulls away.
  • Stern is found just as the train is gaining speed. Oskar orders the train to stop.
  • Oskar's still only thinking of himself as he scolds Stern for forgetting his work papers. What if he had arrived too late, and "Then where would I be?"
  • We know where Stern would have been—Auschwitz—but no matter. It would have been bad for business.
  • The scene cuts to a warehouse. A trolley cart of suitcases enters the warehouse; the contents are emptied out and sorted.
  • Jewish workers sort through the lives of Jewish families who will no longer have a need for their belongings where they're going.
  • A bag of human teeth covered in gold fillings is emptied onto a table where a Jewish jeweler is visibly shaken by the gruesome task ahead of him.