For many years, scholars and artists have been exploring the Holocaust that .
happened before and during World War II, in which six million European Jews were .
killed, along with millions of gypsies, criminals, and political dissidents, by the nazis in .
an act of sustained genocide that involved techniques of terror and extermination in .
interment camps (concentration camps) like Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Sobibor. Many of .
the works created by these artists and scholars describe in various ways the way daily life .
was for the prisoners of the camps, and also the conditions that the prisoners had to .
undergo just to survive. In many portrayals, the camp survivors were those who were .
able to get ahead by being turned against others in the camp, for example working on .
work squads at the receiving point, rather than going to the crematorium. This shows the .
physical as well as the psychological toll that is being taken from the prisoners, who must .
turn against themselves in many cases to get ahead, and paints a picture of the camps as .
socially backwards places as a result. The treatment of the Holocaust has continued into .
the eighties and nineties so that society will not forget its lessons, and two representative .
films, "Escape From Sobibor" and "Schindler's List," illustrate different ways that two .
different filmmakers have of looking at the Holocaust, or, more specifically, looking at .
the prisoners interred at the camps. In "Escape From Sobibor," the message is a positive .
and uplifting one: that the human spirit has not been eliminated from the prisoners so .
that they can't stage a successful revolt against their captors, and that they can work .
together independently as prisoners to achieve freedom, though at a cost, from the .
inhumane conditions of the camp. In "Schindler's List," on the other hand, the prisoners .
are portrayed as having much less control over their own destinies, and are portrayed .
