Trotterman's Full Review: Thomas Keneally - Schindler's List
Thomas Keneally's "Schindler's List" is of course the inspiration for the breathtakingly disturbing Stephen Spielberg film of the same name. This book was actually published some time ago and sat largely unnoticed by the populous as Speilberg fought to get his film made. Thanks to the publicity generated by the Academy Award winning film, the book has been able to enjoy a rise in popularity.
Oskar Schindler was a Nazi who profited from the use of slave labor. He drank to excess and slept with a string of nameless women outside of his marriage. Those are faults more easily forgotten with the telling of this tale. Schindler was personally responsible for saving more European Jews than any other person during World War II.
Schindler was able to do this with the use of the Deutsche Email Fabrik (DEF), an enamelware factory where mess kits, pots and pans were made for use by German soldiers. The crew working Schindler's factory were Jewish prisoners whom Schindler rented from the SS.
Schindler was not the only industrialist to make use of slave labor, but he was perhaps the kindest. At other factories is was not uncommon for workers to be beaten or killed. At Schindler's factory no Jew was ever harmed.
As the war neared its end orders came from up on high to dispose of all surplus labor. Schindler's Jews were to be sent to the concentration camps to be executed. This is where Schindler does his greatest deed of all. Using the large sums of money he earned with his factory, Schindler bought every man, woman and child on his list of workers under the pretense that he would move his factory across the border into Czechoslovakia and begin construction on artillery shells and other weapons of war. In truth, he merely wanted to save the lives of his workers. The shells delivered to the army were substandard and of no use to the army.
This book is not just the tale of one man's effort to save 1,100 people. It also told the tragic tales of the liberation of Jewish ghettoes and the treatment of Jews at work camps and concentration camps. The stories of beatings, torture and death are horrific. Those images brought to life by Spielberg do not compare to some of the things Keneally describes. That such a thing could have happened less than 60 years ago is astonishing. Keneally's research leaves no stone unturned, no matter how much one wants him to stop with the story. Papers and photos from the death camps are littered throughout the book helping to complete the story.
The only fault that could be found with this book is one that neither Keneally nor anyone else could do anything about. There are an extraordinary number of names used throughout this book. The result is an occasional muddling of the book. You really have to pay attention at times or it you will find yourself lost very quickly. Otherwise this is an extraordinary work about a time in the world's history that is too tragic to be ignored.
This book is a magnificent companion to the film. You get a better idea of what some of the characters other than Schindler are all about. Leopold (Poldek) Pfefferberg gets a good bit of attention in the book. Seeing the film after reading the book gives you a better appreciation of what the people involved with this story faced everyday.
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