Today Is History

from Schindler's List

by Steven Zaillian

Amon Goethe: Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is historyand you are part of it. Six hundred years ago when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Kazimerz the Great, so called, told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. With nothing they came and with nothing they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. By this evening those six centuries will be a rumor. They never happened. Today is history.