The war on Zionism is becoming a war on Jewish history.

When the legitimacy of Israel is denied, the legitimacy of Jewish history is next.

photo: Hugo Breyer/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Debbie Lechtman, a Jewish writer, educator, and content creator.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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I first saw the movie “Schindler’s List” at 16 years old, while sitting on a repurposed tour bus en route from Krakow to Auschwitz.

Surrounding me were some 20-something-odd Jewish teenagers from North America. The atmosphere felt significantly heavier than it had at any of our prior stops. Though we still found ourselves preoccupied with the usual teenage melodrama, I remember watching with bated breath as the vehicle rolled across the Polish countryside, acutely aware that, at any moment now, we’d be pulling up into that godforsaken place where our loved ones had gone up in smoke.

Only a couple of years prior, the same Jewish youth organization had stopped traversing this route via train, following some concerning security incidents. The times had changed, the Nazi occupation only a distant memory, but a Jew in Poland is still a Jew in Poland.

I’ve long since reconsidered my feelings toward the place that “Schindler’s List” has in Holocaust cinema. I fear its director, Steven Spielberg, may have inadvertently ignited the obsession with Holocaust savior movies, a surefire ticket to an Oscar nomination, affording viewers the impression that there were exponentially more Righteous Among the Nations than there actually were.

But nevertheless, I still regard “Schindler’s List” as one of the best films of all-time, and even then, as a kid on that rickety bus, twisting my neck to catch a peek at the mounted TV screen, I was entirely captivated. Of course I was. The haunting musical score, the little girl in the red coat, the harrowing shower scene — all of this remains deeply imprinted into my Jewish psyche.

Most impactful of all, though, was the ending. I don’t know that it was intentional — I’m sure it probably was — but our itinerary mirrored Schindler’s, in a way: from the ghetto to the death camps and, then, sweet salvation in the Land of Israel. Today I am certain the Jewish American anti-Zionist activist Simone Zimmerman and her ilk would call it Zionist propaganda. But back in 2006, after so many weeks of eating pre-packaged kosher meals that would make an airplane lunch seem gourmet, I was very much looking forward to our first breakfast in Jerusalem, where the food would finally stop tasting like plastic.

Spoiler alert: The Schindler Jews survive. Cut to the final scene: the survivors — I mean, the real survivors, not the actors playing the survivors — place stones on Oskar Schindler’s grave, as is customary in the Jewish tradition, in Jerusalem, where he is buried.

In the American version of the film, Naomi Schemer’s “Jerusalem of Gold” plays in the background, something that wouldn’t particularly make sense to an Israeli audience, as the piece is largely associated with Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, over two decades after the end of the Holocaust. For this reason, the Israeli edition plays Hannah Szenes’s “A Walk to Caesarea,” better known by its opening line, “Eli, Eli,” meaning “My God, My God.”

We watched the Israeli version. I’m not sure why. I’m glad, because I like it much better.

Several days ago, a Twitter user going by the name of “Div” wrote, “Everyone knows the ending of Schindler’s List is explicitly Zionist, right?” As it should be! I thought, although I don’t think Div sees it that way.

Hear me out, though. Not only is Oskar Schindler really buried in Israel, but after the Holocaust, Zionist fervor among Jewish survivors was near-unanimous, with 97 percent of Jewish Displaced Persons citing British Mandate Palestine as their preferred destination (when asked for a second choice, thousands wrote “crematorium.”) This prevailing sentiment is reflected in the 1945 Harrison Report, which noted that:

“For reasons that are obvious and need not be labored, most Jews want to leave Germany and Austria as soon as possible … They want to be evacuated to Palestine now, just as other national groups are being repatriated to their homes … With respect to possible places of resettlement for those who may be stateless or who do not wish to return to their homes, Palestine is definitely and pre-eminently the first choice.”

To that end, Jews in displaced persons camps demonstrated frequently and passionately for their right to immigrate to British Mandate Palestine, putting up signs such as “Eretz Israel for the People of Israel!” and “We demand to open the gates of Palestine!”

Understood within that context, it’s evident the ending of “Schindler’s List” is not Zionist propaganda. It is simply accurate to the very story that it is telling.

The idea that Jewish-adjacent television and film from the 1990s must be discarded on account of alleged subliminal pro-Zionist messages has been circulating social media for awhile, especially in the wake of October 7th.

One viral Instagram reel accuses the TV show “Friends” of covertly promoting Zionist propaganda because the word “Israel” is mentioned twice over the course of 10 seasons. Another more recent TikTok reel compiles scenes of so-called Zionist propaganda in the TV show “Gilmore Girls,” ranging from a passing mention of Krav Maga to a class discussion regarding the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Oh, the horror. The message is clear: This whole time, the Zionists have been the evil puppeteers behind the curtain, manipulating us all through the media.

Sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?

But, is it possible, that maybe, just maybe, Israel is but one country in the large family of nations, with all of its attributes, shortcomings, and defects? Is it possible that it’s not the enormous library of historical media that is inherently nefarious, inherently wrong, but that anti-Zionists are retroactively reevaluating beloved shows and movies with Soviet-tinted glasses?

Seeing this discussion unfold over the past two and a half years, I keep coming back to the same alarming pattern: the disturbing ease with which anti-Zionists have been indulged in distorting, inventing, and denying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (despite the overabundance of primary evidence that easily rebukes their narrative) has given more and more antisemites free license to distort, invent, and deny the history of the Jewish People altogether.

In other words, it starts with the conflict, but it doesn’t end with the conflict. Today it’s the very memory of the Holocaust that is at stake; tomorrow, who knows what it will be next.

There is, of course, a chance that I could be wrong. Maybe only the anti-Zionists have broken out of the matrix.

Wait, is “The Matrix” Zionist, too?

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