I'm asking this in /r/askhistorians rather than /r/movies because this seems to crop up a lot in intellectual and academic criticism (which are in abundance) against Schindler's List, and I'd like to focus on this aspect of Schindler's List (rather than its aesthetics or filmmaking techniques etc.). I'm doing a history paper at the moment about representations of the Holocaust, which is why I'm asking this question. It obviously misrepresents the Holocaust, especially considering there is no footage or photographs of what actually happened inside the gas chambers (as opposed to the existing footage/photographs of people being shot and burned), but what are the specifically intellectual, academic, and moral criticisms against the production of such a scene, and what are they based on? I have a vague understanding of why it would be controversial, but I can't articulate why it is SO controversial and how it fits into the overarching criticisms of the film by academics.
I'm sorry if this question is rather ambiguous, but any help is much appreciated!
Artistically, it has been criticized for being emotionally manipulative. There is extensive, concrete documentation of gas chambers disguised as showers at Auschwitz. (Piper, Franciszek "Gas Chambers and Crematoria" ISBN 0-253-32684-2.) It's a well known facet of the Holocaust, even among lay audiences. The tension in the scene comes from our knowledge that this may be an abattoir.
Filmmaker Michael Haneke called the scene "dumb" for this reason.
‘I don’t want to judge the works of other colleagues in interviews. But taking “Schindler’s List” as the most famous example, there’s a scene in that film when we don’t know if there’s gas or water coming out in the showers in the camp. You can only do something like that with a naive audience like in the United States. It’s not an appropriate use of the form. Spielberg meant well – but it was dumb. It’s very difficult in German cinema because of the guilt that’s still present. It often drifts off into a sentimentality that’s not appropriate for the subject.’
Another small source of controversy stems from a claim of plagiarism. Filmmaker and Holocaust survivor Juraj Herz claims that Spielberg copied the scene shot-for-shot from his 1986 film "Zastihla mě noc." He also says he experienced a similar scene first-hand as a child. Here is a link to the interview in question. Herz says he did not pursue legal action against Spielberg because of the cost; "a hundred or two hundred dollars." I suspect this is a mistranslation on the part of the interviewee, magazine, or the director himself. One or two hundred thousand dollars is not a surprising fee for this kind of lawsuit.
I am not aware of any controversy surrounding the voracity of the scene. I'm not sure why you refer to it as "obviously misrepresent[ing] the Holocaust." There were definitely shower rooms at Auschwitz, some for delousing and some for mass executions. If there are valid scholarly criticisms of the scene's historicity, please provide links.
I'm on mobile so I can't type out in length, but here's an article referencing the inaccuracies: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/25/opinion/l-schindler-s-list-errs-on-gas-chambers-299499.html
Essentially, the main criticism of the scene is the fear of death the prisoners have when they are brought into the showers. They believe to have been brought into a gas chamber, and the audience, with their knowledge of the gas chambers, believe the same thing.
However, the scene is inaccurate due to the fact that there was no way for a prisoner to have been aware of the gas chambers prior to entering it. The mass killings were effective because the victim were brought into the gas chambers completely oblivious to their fate. In this scene, however, the collective panic leads us to believe the women had knowledge of their fate once they were brought inside the shower.