Content Warning: Schindler’s List depicts antisemitism, ableism, pogroms, graphic violence, extreme human suffering, substance abuse, racial bias, Nazi imagery, discussion of sexuality, racial and sexual slurs, and anti-LGBTQ+ bias.

In the summer of 1941, SS collaborators appear in the Jewish police force of the ghetto, the Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst (OD). Symche Spira, an officer of the OD, quickly rises through its ranks because of his willingness to sell out the other Jewish people of the ghetto for his family’s sake. Spira’s men begin extorting and terrorizing other Jewish folks. Outside the ghetto, Cracow is littered with antisemitic posters and propaganda. The Nazis have outlawed certain banknotes from pre-occupation Poland, which makes much of the money that Jewish people have hidden from the Nazi occupation worthless. Pfefferberg uses his position (along with forged papers) to illegally convert these funds for his communities through a bank before the currency ban takes full effect.

In June 1941, Germany invades Russia. This invasion—which kickstarts the beginning of the camps and the liquidation of Polish ghettos—eventually leads to Germany’s losing the war.