Six million is a huge number, hard to comprehend, difficult to picture in one’s mind. Six million is the estimated number of Jews killed in the Holocaust that was planned and executed by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party in the first half of the twentieth century. Add to that number the several millions of Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled or mentally ill persons also massacred by the Nazis, and the final death toll of the Holocaust is closer to ten million.

For Steven Spielberg, arguably the most famous and successful movie director of our time, the Holocaust is not so much about numbers as it is about individuals. A Jew himself, Spielberg recalls how the Holocaust has always been a part of his life: “When I was very young, I remember my mother telling me about a friend of hers in Germany, a pianist who played a symphony that wasn’t permitted, and the Germans came up on stage and broke every finger on her hands. I grew up with stories of Nazis breaking the fingers of Jews…In a strange way my life has always come back to images surrounding the Holocaust. The Holocaust had been a part of my life, just based on what my parents would say at the dinner table. We lost cousins, aunts, uncles.”

In the early 1980s, when Spielberg was first approached to make a film based on Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark (published in the U.S. as Schindler’s List), he declined, thinking he was not at a point in his life where he could deal with the difficult subject matter in a way that was meaningful enough. Ironically, Keneally had also hesitated before tackling the Schindler story. On his way home to Australia from a book signing in Beverly Hills in 1980, Keneally entered a shop looking for a new briefcase. The shop owner was a man named Poldek Pfefferberg, a Jewish man who, along with his wife, had survived the Holocaust because Oskar Schindler had employed them in his factory–and, thus, had put their names on his famous list. For years, Pfefferberg had petitioned any writers or film-makers whom he encountered to take up Schindler’s story. After seeing Pfefferberg’s extensive files on Schindler, Keneally agreed to write the book. It took nearly a decade after the book’s publication for Pfefferberg to finally convince Spielberg to bring Schindler’s story to the big screen. Schindler’s List (1993; Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment) was released the same year the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The following year, Spielberg founded the USC Shoah Foundation, an organization “dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides a compelling voice for education and action.” To date, the foundation has collected over 55,000 audio-visual testimonies conducted in 65 countries and 43 languages.

The first black-and-white movie to win Best Picture since 1960’s The Apartment, Schindler’s List went on to win 7 Oscars for its 12 nominations: Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Music (Original Score) for John Williams, Writing (Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published), Directing for Steven Spielberg, and Best Picture. It failed to win for Sound (which it lost to Spielberg’s other 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park), Costume Design, Makeup, Actor in a Supporting Role for Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth, and Actor in a Leading Role for Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler.

Not intended to please audiences as much as to display past reality to a present culture that needs to remember the staggering cost of empowered hatred, Schindler’s List remains one of the most moving motion pictures ever created. And it will never cease to be relevant. In an interview he gave last year in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the film’s release, Spielberg told NBC News’ Lester Holt, “I think there’s even more at stake than there was back then [in 1993]…When collective hate organizes and gets industrialized, then genocide follows…We have to take it more seriously today than I think we have had to take it in a generation.” In other words, the message of Schindler’s List–that people must stand up to evil; resist injustice; and risk their own fortunes, comfort, and lives to save those who cannot save themselves–is something we should never tire of hearing and something we should never stop striving to live up to. It is no surprise, then, that Steven Spielberg considers Schindler’s List to be his greatest achievement: “I don’t think I’ll ever do anything as important,” he said. “So this, for me, is something that I will always be proudest of.”

For more thoughts on Schindler’s List and its significance, please check out this weekend’s post!