Schindler's Ark

By Thomas Keneally

Based on true events, this is the fictionalized account of Oskar Schindler, a German who did not turn his back on the Holocaust but who, through his and others efforts, managed to shepherd some 1100 Jews through those deadly years to safety.
Oskar Schindler would not be anyone's idea of a saint, given as he was to chasing women and boozing. But apparently, under that hedonistic exterior, was a deeply compassionate heart. A heart that was moved to help, in his own way, the Jews of the Cracow ghetto as they faced their unspeakable cruel enemy, racism. Racism that allowed millions of people to profit from the destruction of millions of their fellow humans. Even today, in many parts of Europe, the feeling towards the Jewish people is one is mistrust and hatred. Even today, these people would most likely rejoice to see Jews destroyed, just as their fathers did in the 1940s.
Oskar Schindler went to Cracow to make money. He took over a factory that made metal dishes and supplied the German army with mess kits. Later he added some munitions to his production line, mainly to guarantee the survival of his factory and thus the survival of his Jewish workers.
One day Oskar was out horse riding in the hills around the Cracow Jewish ghetto when he witnessed an act of cruelty and violence, Jews pulled from their homes and shot in the street. This was his awakening to the truth of the Nazi regime. Almost immediately he hit upon a plan to spare as many Jews as possible from the Holocaust. Seeing the writing on the wall and learning about the reality of the death camps like Auschwitz, Schindler had his own camp built for his workers. From the outside, it looked like any concentration camp, with barracks, and fencing and guard towers with Nazi guards armed with guns. But inside the camp, his workers had more food, cleaner and healthier conditions and, since Schindler did not allow the Nazis to enter camp whenever they wanted, his Jews enjoyed freedom from the casual executions that were the order of the day in the other camps.
As the war ran on and the tide turned against Germany, in Cracow, with the Russians drawing ever nearer, it was decided that vital industries must be moved closer to Germany. And so came about the Schindler's list for which the dramatization of this book into a movie was named. For Oskar Schindler submitted a list to the Germans of his workers that he vitally needed for his new factory to be opened in Brinnlitz. The list was a tissue of lies, since it contained not only workers, but their wives and children, which Schindler swore to the authorities were absolutely vital to his factory's continued manufacture of munitions for the war effort. Unfortunately, Schindler was not in charge of transferring his people from Poland to Brinnlitz in what is now the Czech Republic. His Jews had to be turned over to the SS and the Nazis and they spent some time in Auschwitz before finally arriving in their new location in Brinnlitz. Many of the women languished for months is Auschwitz before Oskar was able to convince the authorities to send them to him. By the time they got to Oskar, many were just days away from dying of disease and starvation.
As in Cracow, Oskar set up a miniature concentration camp for his workers as before. The machines to manufacture armaments were also set up, but this time with a slight maladjustment so that they were never able to produce any munitions that met specifications. In this manner, Schindler was able to stall the authorities, provide a safe harbor for thousands of Jews and keep them safe until the Germans were soon forced to surrender and not build another munition for the Germans.
How did Oskar manage to pull it off? Mainly through bribery. Officials were willing to look the other way, to bury their heads in the sand for money, jewels, liquor, foodstuffs. Oskar spent hundred of thousands in dollars bribing people, buying black market food and medications and liquor to be used, not only for the Jews he was striving so mightily to protect, but as bribes to the corrupt officials that made up the German command.
In the end, Oskar saved thousands of Jews who would have surely died otherwise. In gratitude, the Jewish people brought him to Israel decades later where he was given a hero's welcome. Since Oskar spent his fortune saving them and since he was never able to recoup those loses, the survivors lobbied the West German government for a pension for Schindler in recognition of his heroic efforts on their behalf. He was awarded a monthly pension of $200 and given the Papal Knighthood of St. Sylvester by the Archbishop of Limburg.
Even though he was a hero to millions of Jews, to the Germans he was regarded as a traitor. When the German newspapers carried stories of Oskar's wartime efforts to save Jews from the death camps, Oskar's fellow Germans reacted angrily. In Frankfurt, he was pelted with stones. He was reviled and told he should have been burned with the Jews...

This is a worthy book about a hero who refused to go along with the herd and stand meekly by while millions of people were hunted down and murdered simply because they were Jews, simply because they were a little different, simply because they were not of the same religion as the rest. Oskar Schindler was no doubt a magnificent human being, despite his flaws and weaknesses. He was the perfect man to do what needed to be done. And he wasn't the only one. Here and there, throughout the whole area, human beings struggled to protect and save their fellow humans, the Jews, from the unspeakable Nazi "final solution." Read it and learn the truth about man's inhumanity and about man's humanity.

New Words

Quotidian: Daily; occurring or recurring every day; common, ordinary, trivial. "Not to stretch belief so early, the story begins with a quotidian act of kindness, a kiss, a soft voice, a sugared bar."

Bosky: Having abundant bushes, shrubs or trees. "Czechoslovakia was such a bosky, unravished little dumpling of a republic that the German-speakers took their minority stature with some grace, even if the Depression and some minor governmental follies would later put a certain strain on the relationship."

Internecine: Mutually destructive; most often applied to warfare; Characterized by struggle within a group, usually applied to an ethnic or familial relationship. "But it cannot have been too internecine a household."

Orotund: Bombastic: ostentatiously lofty in style. "At Christmas 1939 Oskar found them simply a relief from the orotund official line."

Herbata: Polish word for tea. "Stern and Levartov would, if given the leisure, have sat together for hours over a glass of herbata, letting it grow cold while they talked about the influence of Zoroaster on Judaism, or the other way round, or the concept of the natural world in Taoism."

Toper: Drinker: a person who drinks alcoholic beverages (especially to excess). "'He was,' says Oskar with a customary toper's primness, 'a notorious drunkard.'"