Introduction

Towards the end of their conversation Oskar said, ‘In times like these, it must be difficult for a priest to tell people that their Father in Heaven cares about the death of every little bird. I’d hate to be a priest today when a human life doesn’t have the value of a packet of cigarettes.’

‘You are right, Herr Schindler,’ said Stern. ‘The story you are referring to from the Bible can be summarized by a line from the Talmud which says that he who saves the life of one man, saves the entire world.’

As a happy child growing up in a middle-class German family between the wars, Oskar Schindler would never have imagined that this line from the Talmud would guide him through the darkest days of the Second World War. He was not an intellectual man and did not have the patience to sit quietly and analyze situations. In fact, he was an ordinary businessman with ambitions to make a lot of money. After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Schindler saw his opportunity and started an enamelware company in the city of Krakow. He employed Jewish workers because they were cheaper than Polish workers. But gradually, as he observed how the SS treated the Jews, he understood that making money was less important than saving innocent lives. Putting his life at risk every day, he used his impressive charm and energy to fight his own war against the Nazi system and to save the lives of as many Jews as possible.

Schindler’s List is an accurate, frightening history of what happened to real people in German-occupied territories between 1939 and 1945. It is, however, also a story of hope: a true story of how goodness can grow even in the most unlikely circumstances and become a positive example of heroism and courage for us all.

The story of Schindler’s List is set mainly in Krakow, where the Nazis created one of five big Jewish ghettos during their occupation of Poland. Jewish people were divided into two groups: ‘able workers’ who could be usefully employed to help the Germans in their war efforts, and those who would be killed immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Belzec and other concentration camps. The story follows the history of the Jewish ghetto, from its creation in March 1941 until the final ‘removal’ of the Jews two years later. Over a two-day period in March 1943, under the command of Commandant Amon Goeth, 8,000 Jews were transferred to the labour camp at Plaszow, and 2,000 more Jews were killed in the streets of the ghetto. The rest were sent to die in Auschwitz.

Thomas Keneally was born in New South Wales, Australia, in 1935. After training to be a priest, then working as a schoolteacher and university lecturer, he became a writer. Many of his novels use historical material, but are modern in their psychology and style. The book first titled Schindler’s Ark (1982) is his most famous novel and was the result of a meeting with Poldek Pfefferberg, a survivor of the Krakow ghetto and Plaszow labour camp. Keneally had visited Pfefferberg’s shop two years earlier, in 1980. When Pfefferberg learnt that Keneally was a writer, he showed him his collection of files on the life of Oskar Schindler. Schindler’s Ark won the most important literary prize in Britain, the Booker Prize, and is the basis of Steven Spielberg’s film, Schindler’s List. As a result of the film’s worldwide success, Keneally s book is now published under the same title.