books:

	Schindler's List Thomas Keneally Simon & Schuster, 1994 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 103 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction

Schindler's List is a remarkable work of fiction based on the true story of German industrialist and war profiteer, Oskar Schindler, who, confronted with the horror of the extermination camps, gambled his life and fortune to rescue 1,300 Jews from the gas chambers.

Working with the actual testimony of Schindler's Jews, Thomas Keneally artfully depicts the courage and shrewdness of an unlikely savior, a man who is a flawed mixture of hedonism and decency and who, in the presence of unutterable evil, transcends the limits of his own humanity.

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"He who saves a single life saves the whole world."

Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning, fictionalized biography of Oskar Schindler memorializes a member of the Nazi party who endangered his own life for four years, working privately to save Jews from the death camps. A playboy who loved fine wines and foods, he was also a smooth-talking manipulator (and briber) of Nazi officials, as well as a clever entrepreneur, already on his way to stunning financial success by the early days of World War II. Nowhere in Schindler's background are there any hints that he would one day become the savior of eleven hundred Jewish men and women.

While the excellent film of this novel concentrates on the dangers Schindler and "his Jews" faced daily throughout the war, Keneally, well known for his depictions of characters acting under stress, concentrates on the character of Oskar Schindler himself, beginning with his childhood and teen years. As he explores Schindler's transformation from war profiteer and "passive" Nazi to a man willing to use his fortune to ensure the salvation of his factory workers, Keneally reveals a man of enormous courage and derring-do, a man who thrives by living on the edge.

Presenting episodes from the lives of some of the "Schindlerjuden," Keneally highlights their humanity, creating moments of high drama. Characters such as Leopold Pfefferberg and factory manager Itzhak Stern move in and out of the narrative, illustrating graphically the extent to which their lives depend upon Oskar Schindler, while the constant intrusion of sadistic SS commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler's life shows the fragility of their security. Other stories, of people who just missed being saved by Schindler, highlight the arbitrariness of fate--chance--in their (and our) lives.

Throughout the novel, Keneally stresses the importance of bearing witness and testifying to the atrocities. In one of the novel's most moving passages, Schindler and his lover ride horses to a ridge where they can view the expulsion of the Jews from the Krakow ghetto, watching, horrified, as old or crippled laggards are murdered in front of Jewish children. "They permitted witnesses because they believed the witnesses, all, would perish, too." Later, Schindler works with a Zionist rescue organization, secretly going to Budapest to testify about the hidden death camps.

Schindler's heroism, his goodness within a country committed to the extermination of other humans, his recognition that witnesses are essential, and his ability to use the system in order to hasten its end bring this story of one man's fight against the Holocaust to life. But it is Keneally's incorporation of Schindler's faults and excesses which gives texture and depth to this portrait and make Schindler a character with whom the reader can identify. Keneally's meticulous research and his portrait of Schindler after the war, beloved by Jews but at loose ends personally and professionally, make this novel an unforgettable study of character and time. Mary Whipple

Schindler's Legacy: True Stories of the List Survivors
Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activites, and the True Story Behind the List
Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)

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Vivid, detailed and important. One of my most favorite book... ever...

This book is both enjoyable and enlightening. It details how a German industrialist Oskar Schindler managed to save the lives of 1,200 Schindlerjudens (Schindler's Jews) during the Holocaust by sheltering them first in his enamelware factory in Zablocie, Cracow and later in his (supposedly) anti-tank shell factory in Brinnlitz, Monrovia.

I watched the movie before I read the book. While the movie succeeds beautifully in portraying the human suffering and the thin ray of hope Oskar managed to instill in his prisoners/workers, the book includes a lot more little details that readers could appreciate. For example, while this is definitely a depressing book, I find the little dark comedies of life and witticisms quite enjoyable. For example, after the war, when there was disbelief surrounding the story of Oskar's improbable rescue of the Jews, he was challenged by some journalists and was confronted with the fact that he personally knew many of the high-ranking SS officials in the Cracow region and beyond. Oskar's coolly replied: "At that stage in history, it was rather difficult to discuss the fate of Jews with the Chief Rabbi or Jerusalem."

I you enjoyed the movie, the book won't disappoint. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, I suggest you do both.

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Even More Compelling & Incredible Than The Movie

After seeing the film of SCHINDLER'S LIST, I had the feeling that it covered so much, included and recreated so much that it wasn't necessary to read the book.

Last month, I visited Jerusalem and toured the Holocaust Museum (a profoundly disturbing experience I would recommend to everyone). I also found Oskar Schindler's grave just outside the Old City walls and saw the small stones atop the gravemarker. (There's a sidewalk next to it now where the survivors filed past in the grass at the end of the film).

Now I wanted to read the book and I realized how wrong I'd been to ignore it. I finished it last night and can tell everyone: there is so much more to the story!

You will be even more blown away by Herr Direktor's wily recklessness in saving his Jews. As played in the film, Schindler makes the gradual realization of the horrors around him, breaking down at the end when the scale of the inferno hits him. In the book, Schindler knows what's happening to the Jews and he despises the SS Officers from the very beginning. Schindler constantly questions his workers about everything going on. He knew. And he did everything he could to save as many as he could from the very start of the madness.

Actually, SCHINDLER'S LIST should've been a mini-series like BAND OF BROTHERS. There was certainly enough material and you'll find that material in the book. As written, it's also very easy to see in visual terms.

Definitely read this. Like the film, I was brought to tears in the final chapters. An astonishing true story.

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Phenomenal!

This book is horrendous, terrible, amazing, sympathetic, and heroic all at the same time. How humans can do this to each other is beyound me, and thankfully beyound most of us in this world. Simply breathtaking at times. Makes me really appreciate the freedoms we all share. Just read it, you won't be disappointed!


an amazing record

The book is amazing for its wealth of information and doggedness to tell the story of not only Oskar Schindler but of what life was like for the people interned in the factories and death camps. In the author's note, Keneally tells that he chose to write the story as a novel but used documentary evidence and extensive interviews for most of the exchanges and conversations and all of the events detailed in the book and made reasonable constructs of conversations where only the briefest record exists. As a novel, the storytelling is lacking--it doesn't flow well or have a strong narrative--but as a record of a truth, it is astounding.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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