Nicole Schott is not the first German figure skater to perform to the music from Schindler’s List, but she might be the last.
When Schott took to the ice in the figure skating on Thursday to vie for the gold medal, Pyeongchang’s Gangneung Ice Arena filled with John Williams’ score for Steven Spielberg’s heart-wrenching film. The movie, which is based on real events, tells the story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved the lives of more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust by hiring them to work in his factories, preventing them from being shipped to concentration camps.
While Williams’ score is rousing, the subject matter of the film makes it an odd selection for a figure skating performance, especially one by a German skater. The internet couldn’t help but notice the choice, including comedian and noted Olympics enthusiast Leslie Jones.
While the choice raised some eyebrows, as Newsweek points out, Schott was not the first figure skater or even the first German ice skater to take the ice to the score. When the film was released in 1994, both American figure skater Paul Wylie and German champion Katarina Witt performed to the score. At the Sochi Olympics in 2014, Russian skater Yulia Lipnitskaya followed suit. Perhaps Schott’s performance—and the internet reaction to it—will have skaters thinking twice about making a similar selection.
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