The true story of a Nazi businessman saving the lives of Polish Jews during the Holocaust was not one.

Director Steven Spielberg expected to be a commercial success.

I couldn't imagine, based on the story that we told, that an audience would tolerate just the amount of violence, you know, human against human or inhuman against

human. And I just couldn't imagine that audiences would allow themselves to go through a motion

picture recreation of the Oscar Schindler story. I was very surprised. But as you're telling

the story, you can't pull your punches because history is history. History is history. And if you're making, you know, I felt that if

I'm going to make, you know, a story that represents the survivors and represents the six million

who were murdered, I have to be as close to the reality of the people that we had interviewed that told us what it was like for them.

Yet Schindler's list became both a box office hit, earning Spielberg, his very first best director, Oscar, but also a historical touchstone.

What took so long to finally do it?

I didn't think I was ready to tell the story for a long time.

Sid Scheinberg, the head of Universal, had read a review in the New York Times review of books

on Thomas Keneally's book, Schindler's Ark, as is called in Europe and Shindler's List,

as it was titled for America.

And E.T. had just been released, and we were all very, you know,

happy about the results. And he called me on a Sunday, and he said, I want to send you a review

of a book I just read. And he had a messenger come over to my house with this review of Schindler's

list. And I read it, and I found it very compelling. But he had gone beyond the review. He went the following

week and he bought the book for me. And yet I wasn't really ready in my own life because I was

making movies about extraterrestrials and movies about, you know, Indiana Jones and sharks.

And I was into kind of mass popular entertainment concepts. and I wasn't ready to go personal like that.

And I received the book before I ever made the two personal movies that allowed me to make Schindler's list.

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