Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
"Schindler's List," written by Thomas Keneally, is a historical novel that narrates the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who played a pivotal role in saving the lives of over a thousand Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Set primarily in Poland during World War II, the novel highlights Schindler's transformation from a profit-driven factory owner to a compassionate protector of Jewish lives amidst the horrors of Nazi oppression. As he employs Jewish laborers in his enamelware factory, Schindler uses his connections and bribes to shield his workers from the brutal realities of concentration camps.
The narrative illustrates the atmosphere of fear and violence that characterized Nazi-occupied territories, particularly through the actions of figures like Amon Goeth, the merciless commandant of the Płaszów labor camp. Keneally's work not only chronicles Schindler's efforts to create a "list" of those he would save but also delves into the human capacity for goodness in the face of profound evil. The novel serves as a poignant reminder of the Holocaust's impact and the moral complexities of individual choices during times of widespread atrocity. Through Schindler's story, Keneally emphasizes themes of humanity, sacrifice, and the struggle for survival, making "Schindler's List" a significant contribution to Holocaust literature.
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Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
First published: 1982, as Schindler’s Ark
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Historical realism
Time of plot: 1930’s-1940’s
Locale: Kraców, Poland; Brünnlitz, Czechoslovakia
Principal characters
Oskar Schindler , a Czech manufacturerItzhak Stern , his accountantAmon Goeth , Nazi commandant of the Płaszów labor campHelen Hirsch , his maid
The Story:
Oskar Schindler, a Czech manufacturer and factory owner, is on his way to dine with Amon Goeth, Nazi commandant of the Płaszów labor camp outside Kraców, Poland, in 1943. Schindler’s car travels on the broken Jewish gravestones that pave the road to Goeth’s villa. Inside the villa, as Jewish musicians play unobtrusively, Goeth is surrounded by local police and prostitutes. Schindler encounters Goeth’s maid, Helen Hirsch, who has been severely beaten by Goeth; terrified, she confides to Schindler about Goeth’s frequent brutality and begs Schindler to find and save her younger sister.
It is now 1908, and Schindler is born in Zwittau, Austria (later part of Czechoslovakia), a small industrial town where people speak German. Schindler, whose favorite hobby is motorcycles, studies engineering and expects to take over his father’s farm-machinery company. Soon, he marries Emilie, a farmer’s daughter, but he is never faithful to her.
In the fall of 1939, Schindler moves to Kraców and meets Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant who has many valuable business insights and contacts. In November, Jews are required to register with the Nazis, and the restrictions and brutality against Jews begin. With Stern’s advice, Schindler purchases an enamelware and cookware company called Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik (Emalia) and initially employs 150 Jewish slave laborers. By the end of 1939, Schindler is often seen socializing with high-ranking Nazi officers and administrators, many of whom he bribes with rare black-market items to purchase their influence, protection, and support.
In early 1940, Kraców’s Jews are forced into an overcrowded ghetto, while their Christian neighbors harass and spit at them. Despite vicious slogans and posters promising violent punishment for those who help Jews, Schindler assures his workers that they are safe with him.
Shortly thereafter, Schindler is arrested by the Nazis on a trumped up charge of some irregularity in his bookkeeping, but because of the intervention of bribed Nazi officials, Schindler is released. Later, however, when his workers throw him a birthday party, Schindler is denounced for kissing a young female Jewish worker. He is rearrested but soon released because of intervention from ranking Nazi officials.
Schindler’s office manager, Abraham Bankier, is missing, so Schindler uses bluster and bravado to retrieve him from the cattle cars departing for the death camps; while on horseback overlooking the grisly scene, he sees the brutal liquidation of the Kraców ghetto. His terrified eyes focus on one young girl in a scarlet coat, in front of whom the Nazis are shooting and bludgeoning people to death. After witnessing the cattle cars and the death of seven thousand people, Schindler fully realizes the Nazi’s plan to exterminate all Jews.
Plunder, too, runs rampant in Poland, as Jewish jewelers are forced to appraise gold left behind in suitcases by fellow Jews on their way to death. So hard is it even for Jews to believe their imminent fate, that Schindler travels to Hungary to warn Jewish leaders there about the horrific reality of the camps.
Nazi commandant Goeth takes control of the Płaszów labor camp. His first act is to nonchalantly order the murder of a Jewish architect who had informed him that the Płaszów buildings are unstable. Goeth rules with an iron fist, and more than four thousand Jews who try to hide from incarceration in Płaszów are publically murdered in one night.
Schindler contracts with Goeth to take about eleven hundred of the Płaszów Jews and employ them as slave laborers at his factory. Schindler feeds and treats them far better than the remaining Jews are treated at Płaszów. As Płaszów’s population reaches thirty thousand, others are able to join the relatively safe haven at Emalia. Goeth tortures and executes many of the remaining Jews, those who could not reach the safe haven of laborers now known as the Schindler Jews.
In 1944, when the Germans start losing the war, all of the murdered Jews at Płaszów are exhumed and cremated; flames, stench, and ash are everywhere. Of the 150,000 who came through Płaszów and its subsidiary camps, some eighty thousand died there. As more Jews arrive, the unhealthy ones are murdered. Fearing for their own safety, the Schindler Jews, aware of the liquidation, nervously continue to work at Emalia.
On a scalding summer day, Schindler demonstrates his humanity by insisting that cattle cars holding two thousand Jews en route to a death camp be hosed down with water to cool off the people jammed inside. As the Russians approach, Schindler decides to move his factory workers to a safer site in Brünnlitz, Czechoslovakia, where they will manufacture military shell-casings. Schindler convinces Goeth to “sell” him his Emalia workers, thus creating what is soon known as Schindler’s list and ultimately saving the lives of about eight hundred men and three hundred women.
The Schindler men are successfully transported to Brünnlitz; the women (including Goeth’s former maid, Helen Hirsch, and her sister) are mistakenly routed to Auschwitz. Weeks later, Schindler pays officials to release the women to his charge, marking the only time that a train with living passengers leaves a death camp during the Holocaust.
During the remaining months of the war, Schindler bribes and manipulates officials so that the Jews in his charge can survive; his factory produces no useable shells. At war’s end, he exhorts his factory’s German guards to return to their families peacefully and gives the remaining food and supplies to his Jewish workers.
After the war, Schindler is unsuccessful in business and is often bankrupt, but he is well cared for by his former employees. Honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, Schindler spends his remaining years traveling between Germany and Israel. He dies in 1974 at the age of sixty-six and is buried in Jerusalem.
Bibliography
Brecher, Elinor J. Schindler’s Legacy: True Stories of the List Survivors. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. An inspiring tribute to the Schindler Jews, thirty in particular, and the extraordinary accomplishments in their lives since being rescued by Oskar Schindler.
Crowe, David. Oskar Schindler: The Untold Story of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List. New York: Basic Books, 2004. This extremely thorough biography of Oskar Schindler, almost twice the length of Schindler’s List, fills in many details about Schindler’s early life, the war years, and his life after the war.
Keneally, Thomas. Searching for Schindler. New York: Doubleday, 2007. In this invaluable adjunct to his novel, Keneally describes the extraordinary process of interviewing at least fifty Schindler Jews from around the world and discusses his novel’s adaptation into one of the most lauded films of all times.
Pemper, Mietek. The Road to Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler’s List. New York: Other Press, 2005. Serving as Amon Goeth’s personal secretary and as a friend to Oskar Schindler during and after the war, Pemper is best qualified to offer a fascinating first-person account of the inner workings of the Nazi leadership and the creation of the life-giving Schindler’s list.
Sauerberg, Lars Ole. “Fact-Flirting Fiction: Historiographical Potential or Involuntary Parody?” European Journal of English Studies 3, no. 2 (August, 1999): 190-205. This journal article examines the intersection of historical fiction, fiction, and history as it manifests in the novels, including Schindler’s List, of writers such as Keneally.
Schindler, Emilie. Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. A useful first-person account, by Schindler’s wife, of day-to-day life with her husband, focusing on his great deeds but also on her own assistance in helping the Jews at Brünnlitz.