Any specific area of confusion or am I generally being generally inarticulate?
I ask only to direct any further responses.
The Holocaust is a very complex subject, layered with understandable emotional and political implications, it's effect will ripple down through future history for centuries to come (if humanity makes it that far) in ways that similar horrors will not.
Spielberg does what he does well better than anyone else (when he is on form).
As pieces of cinema Jaws, CE3K, Raiders, ET, are up there with the rest of the greats, any of those four films deserved to get as many nominations as The Color Purple (which is far from his best film but at least as good though different as Schindler's List) and much more in the way of awards.
The Academy has always treated popular/popularist cinema as a bit of a joke LOTR was clearly an exception to prove the rule.
The Oscars have always been more about politics (see it's that word again) than actual artistic merit.
There was a genuine sense of outrage about how The Color Purple was treated by the Academy as it was seen not only as a chance to pat Spielberg on the back for that film but as a back-door route for rewarding him for all he had done before.
To get 11 nominations and not one award was seen not only as a snub but a very pointed one and it would be a while before he would attempt to break away from the blockbuster arena again.
When he did he chose another bestseller, Schindler's Ark and while the final film does break ground for Spielberg (even if one of it most memorable sequences was lifted frame by frame from Zastiha ne noc) it have much more melodrama than the book (I don't object to the name change even if it was done for the most insanely stupid of reasons) and as a picture of that particular black mark on history it's shamefully simplistic.
It did however win Spielberg seven Oscars and yes it made money which went to a very good cause but sadly for many people it's the only view of the Holocaust they are going to see and it's ending is open to a certain political reading (intended or not) which has a rather unfortunate effect on people of the region today.
Personally I'd make viewing of the nine hours of Shoah (1985) mandatory in all schools throughout the world rather than encouraging people to watch Spielberg's film a few times.
There you get the real horror of ordinary people being forced to face up to their part in this sadly not unique moment of human evil.
No symbols, no ambiguities, no melodrama just the plain unvarnished banality of how low we can go and you can apply that to everywhere and everytime.