Schindler's List

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Summary: Schindlers List
Review: So, you want to know about Schindlers list. If you have alot of time on your hands, then I would choose this book. This work, for some people may be hard to follow, or to understand because it has many strange and unfamiliar names of people and places. If you have seen the movie, do not try to think of it too much as you read because it is like most books that have been made into movies, very different. this is a very good story, and teaches you how cruel man can really be.

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Summary: The Real Schindler's List
Review: Keneally's approach to recreating history in "Schindler's List" is an intelligent and responsible one: he labels his representation exactly what it is, a fiction. (Contrast this with Spielberg's pseudo-documentarian methods, which seem to want to claim some sort of absolute historical authority, in the film of the same name.) Despite a wealth of historical minutiae culled from research and interviews with surviving "Schindler Jews," Keneally is fully aware that his novel treads troubled and troubling ground; correspondingly, he is careful to alert his reader to the fact that he cannot faithfully reproduce human reality but will, rather, make every effort to get his story close.

Constructed like a well-plotted novel, "Schindler's List" sees Keneally's narrative powers at their finest. His characters are full-bodied and believable, each with their own often very private motivations for their very public actions. Keneally speculates on such motivations or contexts but does not pass judgment easily. Most importantly, there is little of the handy black-and-white demonization of the Nazis that the film mobilizes to great rhetorical effect; while Spielberg's version forces one to take the uncomplicated side of Schindler and thus believe that he or she too would have done the right thing just like Oskar, Keneally allows a much more unsettling thought to percolate, one that is probably truer to life in insisting that, were we in the Nazis' shoes, we sadly and mistakenly would likely have done exactly what they did. Keneally's Schindler stands out as a much more complex aberration of a very human (no matter how monstrous their actions) group of people.

I feel a little bad for having simply pitted book against movie as one so often does, but I have done so out of deference to the depressing likelihood that Keneally's book will forever be overshadowed by and tethered to the Spielberg ball and chain. I have read that Spielberg's film is required viewing in many high schools. Sad that Keneally's book isn't required reading. Absent the triumphalism of the film, it stands as a sobering reminder that people can do terrible things, and that not all heroes are saints.

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Summary: Inspirational, and scary (could i do it?)
Review: Keneally says that he is writing a novel here, but also that this is history. With these two partially contradictory claims, it is hard to know just how much of this book is truth and how much is fiction. Assuming mostly or all truth, this is an almost incredible story; Oskar Schindler, for almost no discernible reason, decided to preserve as many Cracovian Jews from the conquering Nazis as he could. The blurb claims he saved more than anyone else during that horrific period, which is fairly easy to believe, as one does not know of many being saved at all. Through the whole story Schindler carries the aura of invincibility and fore-knowledge which adds both credibility and colour to the characterisation. One cannot imagine an author seriously expecting to be believed when he claims to invent a man who, virtually in the shadow of Auschwitz, is able to winkle Jews away from the death-chambers; the very outrageousness of the claim speaks for it.

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Summary: We Must Never Forget What Happened
Review: This poignant book by Australian author Thomas Keneally, was originally published as Schindler's Ark and in which Spielberg based his move. Schindler is a bragging, boozing opportunist who makes a fortune in Poland during the second-world-war German occupation, buying up the businesses of dispossessed Jews. We read about his black market deals, his backslapping relationship with the authorities, his parties and his mistresses - and gradually discover that his lifestyle is a façade, that his true activity is saving thousands of Jews from the gas-chambers. A remarkable man and a testement that we should never forget the terror that the Jewish people were subjected to during world-war-two.

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Summary: forget the simplistic movie
Review: "Oskar had done nothing astounding before the war and been unexceptional since. He was fortunate, therefore, that in that short fierce era between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who summoned forth his deeper talents." -comment by Emilie Schindler to a German TV documentary crew

This, of course, is the essential mystery of Oskar Schindler. How was it that this charismatic but morally ambiguous man, a failure in every other endeavor he ever engaged in, was both willing and able to save over a thousand Jews from Nazi predation? And, if someone like him was willing and able, why were other, arguably "better", Germans unwilling or unable to do the same?

These are the questions that Thomas Keneally's raises, but, despite the use of fictional techniques to tell the story, Keneally does not seek to answer them. Instead, he lays out the facts of the story (in thrilling fashion) and leaves the reader to search for answers. The result is an immensely human and interesting portrait of an enigmatic hero--infinitely more interesting than the simplistic black and white ubermensch of Spielberg's vapid movie.

Perhaps the greatest import of the book is that resistance was possible, even in Nazi Germany. In the face of this fact, those Germans who went along with the Nazis must be judged even more harshly. This book and Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners combine to make a powerful case for the view that the Final Solution was perpetrated by the German Nation as a whole and that most Germans were willing to see it happen. More than that, they raise the question of whether it is appropriate to consider the citizenry of totalitarian states to be merely innocent victims of the regimes, or whether we need to hold every citizen responsible for even the silent capitulation that enables a reign of terror to continue.

I know that Spielberg has made a big deal out of making his movie available to schools and young people; it would be much better to give them copies of this book. That a man like Oskar Schindler necessarily seems so remarkable to us, should be troubling to every person of conscience. This book forces us to look within and ask ourselves whether we too would have done the right thing. The answer is not as starkly clear as Hollywood would have us think.

GRADE: A

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Summary: Good for those who watched the film and want to know more
Review: Okay. I watched the film, and it is clearly superior, for obvious reasons, to the book. Keneally is a good writer- but I was a bit bemused by the back jacket photograph of him wearing a big grin and a cowboy hat, given the nature of the book.

You learn a few things about Oskar Schindler here, which help you appreciate the film.

First, he had been a race car driver as a young man...

2. Schindler was a member of Admiral Canaris' Abwehr, the German Secret Service: the Nazi counterpart to the CIA. So, his "powerful friends" weren't just shmoozed SS officers; the German Secret Service also was looking out for him. Unlike the thugs of the Gestapo and the atheistic racists of the SS, the Abwehr was typically composed of level-headed, educated, well-connected gentlemen. And it was no friend of either the Gestapo or the SS. So Schindler's protection was doubly redundant. (And there was his friend General Schindler- no relative - but imagine the namedropping!)

3. He apparently decided early on to assist his workers, making trips secretly to Hungary and Turkey to make foreign powers aware.

4. He was arrested by the Gestapo three times, and each time it was more of a close call. The film shows the 2nd arrest, but the book indicates the incarcerated soldier sharing Schindler's cell was an SS man. In the film I believe he's wearing an Army uniform. And the off-color joke was real, (as was the little girl in the red jacket).

5. After the war, Oskar lived in South America, but eventually abandoned his wife there, (living off the charity of the former Schindler Jews, who took great pains to care for him). I wondered why the film's conclusion made the rather hard pronouncement that he "failed" at his marriage. Abandonment would certainly qualify.

6. Schindler suffered ostracism in Germany after the war once his heroism became known, but eventually was recognized and awarded civil commendations. And...he was always haunted by the feeling that he "could have done more".

I would hope he can rest in peace...

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Summary: Powerful Propaganda
Review: I just thought that it had a big effect on a lot of people. It seemed like powerful anti-German propaganda designed to make people really hate Germans.

A lot of people take it as a true story but it is a fictional story that weaves an illusion before our eyes. Sure Shindler existed but more than half of that stuff is not true. That Steven Spielberg is a tricky illusionist.

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Summary: Sad story about real courage
Review: Oskar Schindler was a drinker, a gambler, an adulterer, a war profiteer, a Nazi sympathiser - and a hero. During what is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of human history, in a time where a person would sell off their own grandmother to the Gestapo, his selflessness enabled the lives of 1500 Jews to be saved, and indirectly, he saved many more lives - the children, grandchildren, and greatchildren of "his" Jews are alive today because their ancestors were fortunate enough to have their names on his list.

You can't help but contrast him to the likes of Adolf Eichmann, who protested during his trial that he had no choice but to do what he did, he was a soldier who was "only following orders." Schindler too, had a choice, and his choice and its consequences are lovingly chronicled in Kenneally's book.

That he had the courage to make this choice is a point that should never be forgotten. And neither should Oskar Schindler.

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Summary: Not easy, but worthy
Review: It appears as though everyone loves the book and therefore I may be writing an unpopular review. However, though I think it is a valuable use of your time to digest Keneally's effort, I was a little surprised at its style and content. Now, I don't normally read fiction, so I probably don't have an adequate basis for judging good fiction, but when I saw it was a novel I figured it would be a pretty easy read.

I was surprised to find Keaneally's novel read a lot more like a biography--filled with facts, but not much of a plot. Most of the book is written in the narrative and there is very little dialogue. Though the facts are interesting and have valuable historical content, they do not read, at least for me, like a novel.

Also, the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book is laden with German terms and words, which are in themselves educational and undoubtfully helpful for anyone who wishes to deny their ethnocentricity. However, I found the terms to be obtrusive to the flow of my read and found myself straining a little as the book got underway.

If you had the choice of reading the book or watching the movie, I would definitely recommend the book....the effort is worth your time. However, don't expect a light read. The book will flesh out the atrocity with greater detail and paint a picture of Schindler which is not quite matched by the movie. Hollywood seems to lack the objective approach. However, if you're not too interested in details, you don't mind a romanticized Schindler, and you have a hundred other books on your reading list, then see the movie and you'll probably still understand, at least in part, the essence of the Holocaust and the man with the list.

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Summary: Schindler: A Sinful Man doing a Sinless thing
Review: Schindler was a very a sinful man. He cheated on his wife. Well if you've seen the movie you know the rest. However he did something that seemed to make-up for his flaws. He saved over a thousand Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

The book gives you the inside look that you don't see in the movie.

This book makes you feel that you're watching all the events happening.

I won't make this a long review like my predecessors.

Just read it and enjoy.