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Schindler's List (平装)
by Thomas Keneally
| Category:
Biography, Fiction, Inspiration, Humanity |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Gripping, brilliant, and exceptional, Schindler's List is a timeless story about the triumph of humanity. |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 12 items |
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Alex Diaz (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Schindler's List, Thomas Keneally's 1982 non-fiction "novel" about Oskar Schindler's transformation from a hedonistic bon vivant German (actually, Sudeten German, born in what is now part of the Czech Republic) war profiteer to savior of over 1,000 Jews during World War II, is one of the most fascinating accounts about the darkest chapter of that global conflict, the Holocaust. It vividly portrays the horrors of the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish inhabitants in German-occupied Europe while at the same time proving that one person, no matter how flawed and contradictory in nature he or she is, can rise to the occasion and make a difference.
In his Author's Note, Keneally explains that he uses the oft-used technique of telling a true story in the format of a fictional account, partly because he is primarily a novelist (Confederates, Gossip From the Forest) and "because the novel's techniques seem suited for a character of such ambiguity and magnitude as Oskar." He also acknowledges the persistence of Leopold Pfefferberg, a Los Angeles leather-goods store owner and one of the "Schindlerjuden" - the handful of mostly Polish Jews saved by Schindler from the SS by Oskar's use of his charm, connections with high Nazi Party officials, and ultimately, the fortune Schindler had gone to make in Krakow after Poland's surrender in the fall of 1939.
Like Steven Spielberg's 1993 Academy Award-winning film it inspired, Schindler's List (published in Europe as Schindler's Ark) describes how Schindler takes over a factory - formerly owned by Jewish investors - and makes a fortune selling, among other things, pots and pans to the German Army. But as the war goes on and Schindler sees first-hand the horrible crimes the Third Reich is committing in the name of the "Final Solution," the well-connected charmer and ladies' man becomes more concerned about saving lives than making money. First, he has a few fortunate Jews listed with the SS as "essential war-industry workers" in his Krakow factory; later, when he discovers that SS Commandant Amon Goeth has been given orders to dispose of every inmate and slave laborer at the Plaszow Labor Camp before the advancing Soviets reach Krakow, he spends all of his wealth paying Goeth and other corrupt SS officials for the lives of nearly 1,200 of the Jewish men, women, and children who form Schindler's workforce.
While Spielberg's movie faithfully captures the novel's account of the Holocaust years, Keneally's book gives the reader more details about Oskar's life before and after the war, including a short account of his prewar activities and his postwar business failures in Europe and Argentina. However, Keneally's focus is on Schindler's inspiring transformation from shameless and charming entrepreneur to "Righteous Person," proving that decency and righteousness can triumph over even the most implacable tyranny and hatred. |
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Naomi (MSL quote), Japan
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Schindler's List, originally published as Schindler's Ark, is the true story of how Oskar Schindler, an aristocratic German industrialist, heavy drinker, briber, and womaniser, was transformed into a saviour during the horrors of World War II. His remarkable rescue of more than a thousand Jews is retold brilliantly in this honest and detailed account by Thomas Keneally.
The story is set in Poland, where Schindler struggled to protect his Jewish factory employees from the cruel and terrible claws of the extermination camps. Schindler's efforts in saving souls increased as the war worsened, and climaxed with Schindler's List, the book of life and ticket to freedom for many Jewish survivors, whose accounts are carefully retold in this book.
Although Keneally's long and descriptive sentences require patient concentration, and could become a stumbling block for some readers, once overcome, no reader could fail to be drawn into the action-packed plot. For Keneally summons terror and disgust with his gruesome profiles of the SS Gestapo, and draws smiles and smirks with his descriptions of Schindler's devious dealings with them.
In Keneally's book, metaphors and similes vividly contrast the characters and scenery, omitting no details, and succeed in taking the reader to a different time and place. Although a biography, and therefore brimming with names, dates, and numbers, Keneally manages to navigate history so that no event is left without significance.
Schindler's List is a riveting read which no one should miss out on, as not only is it an exciting story, it also gives an accurate glance into the labour camps of World War II, and takes a look at the darker side of humanity. A Booker Prize-winning novel, now also an Oscar-winning movie, Schindler's List is a must for anyone over 15. |
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Tom (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Thomas Keneally's account of the life of Oscar Schindler is an outstanding book and probably one of the best Booker winners. In many ways, it is better than the movie. I read the book after seeing the movie and was more impressed by the book as it covers the life of the person better. Most people do not understand how the book traverses the life of the person right from childhood to old age and shows his gradual change. While the movie largely covers the brutality, the book does a superb job of both the brutality and the person. The lives of some of the people were covered in greater detail and stylistically, this book was superb in its flow and account of the history of the Sudeten Germans and the gradual changes that affected all the people around them. Most importantly, Oscar Schindler is treated in great detail, including his relationship with his mother and father, which is interesting as one sees that a lot of him comes from his father. He never had any racism, he was petty, unscrupulous and unfaithful to his wife. However, he was disgusted by the brutality of the local SS and tried to avoid them. His last days are also dealt with very well and is very sad as he was not treated well in Germany after the war (he was called a "Jew kisser") but was treated benevolently in Israel. It is interesting to note that people like Amon Goeth tried to get some of the Jews to give testimony that he was kind to them. The author has written many wonderful novels before this such as "Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith" and "Gossip from the Forest.” However, this book was a masterpiece and his doom, as every book after this was compared to this and found to fall short. Well, that is really too bad and I personally am sorry for the author. The movie was good too, but this book was much better. It probably will not be liked outside the literary circles (most people do not read these days anyway), but it holds a special place among the books written in the past 30 years. |
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J. Lynch (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Schindler's List is an extremely well written novel. It truly grasps your attention and makes you feel as if you're part of the story. Adults may have an easier time reading this book rather than children younger then the age of twelve. What makes it so difficult to understand, are some of the gruesome details and the very straight forward way of writing. If you are interested in chronicles about war and history, and aren't bothered by some mind blowing facts, this is a very appealing book.
It is about Oscar Schindler, a heavy drinker that loves women, and cares mostly about himself. Not until he realizes how horrible the Jewish people are being treated in the concentration camps, is it when he takes action. Schindler was able to save over one thousand Jews. He saved them from having the same fate as millions of other Jews. This novel is one of the best I have read in along time. Though very heart-breaking and deppressing, it truly lets you see what it was like for the Jewish people in that area of time. |
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Tony Caroselli (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Given the awards lauded upon this biographical novel, the acclaimed film it inspired and the subject matter of the story itself, I had expected SCHINDLER'S LIST to be a compelling portrait of an extraordinary man and the extraordinary times in which he lived. After the first couple chapters, however, it is also a gripping page-turner, and an involving read.
Thomas Keneally's intelligent account of the industrialist Oskar Schindler and the 1300 Jews who survived with his help is more than a morality play about one good man surrounded by incomprehensible evil. Despite Keneally's matter-of-fact journalistic style, Oskar Schindler is mythologized in the novel, as he was mythologized by the "Schindlerjuden" themselves. He is compared to King Arthur, Robin Hood, Zeus. His moral complexities and ambiguities are left intact. He is charismatic yet flawed, larger than life yet tragically human.
Perhaps it is inevitable that Oskar Schindler would take on such an aura. The Holocaust is a mythical era. The human mind cannot wrap itself around an evil so all-consuming and horrors so staggering, so they are simplified. Hitler and the Nazis become a shorthand for evil men; the Holocaust becomes a shorthand for death - thrown around as weightily yet lightly as Satan, monsters, and Hell. For one to accomplish what Schindler did would require an equally supernatural force.
Even when he is not directly involved, miracles happen: A man with whom he is associated is saved from an execution when not one, but two guns jam. Two women separated from the others on his list and exiled to a camp of certain death somehow find their way back into the group to survive the war. After the German surrender, two German shells hit his factory but cause only one woman superficial wounds.
A similar mythologizing happens to Amon Goeth, the dreaded Kommandant of the camp at Cracow and (in Keneally's words) Schindler's "dark brother" - both physically similar and prone to Schindler's excesses. In the minds of the Schindlerjuden and hence Keneally's account drawn from their testimony, Goeth becomes a god of death, oozing evil and brutality, presiding over their nightmares to this day.
To what extent the events in the novel are objective fact and to what extent they are subjective myth is therefore unclear but immaterial. In preserving the life of Oskar Schindler, Keneally has taken to heart the line from the film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." |
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M. Celaschi (MSL quote), Italy
<2007-01-04 00:00>
A book should be reviewed by itself, but considering the wide resonance the Spielberg's movie has had since its delivery, and that I happened to read the book some years later, it is hard to me to keep it apart, so I am not even trying to. The book is well written, and Keneally turns out a very skilled writer, but the main interest lays of course in the narrated events, and I am a bit puzzled about classifying the book either as fiction or biographical. The most outstanding feature I met is the different kinds of rhetoric used by the writer and by the director: the former strict, descriptive and inquiring, the latter powerful and simplifying. Keneally takes the core event as an axiom, and do not to prove it, while he examines the complex stream of events that have taken place in such a complex situation. He also admits that some events, such as the rescue of women from Auschwitz, have never found a satisfactory explanation, and that he is not able to detect when Oskar Schindler made up is mind in trying to save the Jews, then he tells what happened. A completely different view is provided by Spielberg. Moving first from a rough approximation of the events reported in the book, he reinvents the story, depicting it as the human development and moral growth of Schindler. For example, all along the book Schindler remains an unfaithful husband, whilst in the movie it seems that at the end, when back to Brunnlitz, he makes some kinds of promises to his wife Emilie, and also the ending script refers of a "failure of the wedlock": in the book, it is explicitly written that Schindler left his Emilie. In the book the different natures of Oskar Schindler are always con contemporarily present. In the movie he seems like St. Paul on the road to Damascus; in the book he "is dallying like Zeus". According to Keneally, many other Germans give help to Jews, but none of them is mentioned in the film. In a nut, I would say that Keneally tried to tell Schindler's story, and Spielberg, however giving a likelihood representation of Holocaust, have wrought out a story of his own. |
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Miezee (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
More than a century after WWII and the Holocaust, almost everyone knows the Nazis as an evil force, and those who know the legend of Oskar Schindler know him to be a larger-than-life, fighting-for-justiec, saver-of-so-many-lives kind of guy. This book helps to chop that image a little more down to size: it portrays Oskar as rather hedonistic, unfaithful to his wife(one girlfriend, an affair with his secretary, the list goes on...). But, being disturbed by his regime's ways, he actually decided to do something about it, namely, set up a haven for Jews, under the disguise of an armaments factory. And it just so happened that he was really rich, so he could pay off all the necessary bribes, and had a lot of connections, or he would have landed in a prison or concentration camp himself long ago. It tells his story from a much more human perspective.
Schindler's List also attempts to delve into the psyches of various people in various positions, from the noble people who sacrificed themselves to the civilians who mocked and hated the Jews. It also zeroes in on specific incidents that are not so important in the big scheme of things, but are crucial in the life of an individual.
Schindler's list also does a good job of exploring the face of evil, and how "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Schindler's List, the novel by Thomas Keneally, is a well researched but fictionally written book about the Holocaust. It tells the story of Oskar Schindler, who is a German businessman that enjoys a good cocktail party. Oskar has a wife, Emilie, but he cheats on her and doesn't treat her well. He takes over a factory previously owned by Jews. Schindler then begins to use imprisoned Jews to work in the factory. They were cheaper than normal laborers, so he used them as a way to make a larger profit. The cruelty of the Nazis progressed, and people in the ghettos began to say, "An hour of life is still life." It is amazing that nobody showed any resistance to this Nazi torture. Even a drinking buddy of Schindler's, Amon Goeth, brutally killed many people. Goeth even killed a young child that hugged his legs, pleading for life. Oskar began to get a soft spot for Jews, thinking that they should be respected as human beings. Some of the Jews he saw in the camps and ghettos were old prewar friends of his. He spent a lot of money in the black market to get extra food for them. At one point, Schindler was jailed, accused of being a "Jew Kisser." He was let out with a fine and a strong warning. He also received a letter that basically told him he better exterminate Jews or else. To pass SS inspections, he used bribes, like bottles of vodka and cognac. He opened up a second camp (mostly at his expense), which produced nothing. He did it just to save more Jews. They all wanted to get on Schindler's List. No Jews were murdered in Schindler's camps. Schindler's Jews were very thankful for him. It is true that one individual can make a difference, Schindler proves it by saving the lives of so many innocent people who, if it weren't for him, would have died.
I enjoyed this book. It was packed with some interesting and unbelievable Holocaust facts. This book told an amazing story of life, love, and courage. The only down to it is that it is very long and some parts can get very boring. There are also some German names that can get confusing, but they do not take away from the story. I would recommend this book to anyone that has the time to read it. |
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Jeff Edwards (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Like many, I didn't even know about Oskar Schindler's amazing story until I saw the movie. I am also a voracious reader and when I find a novel of a movie I enjoyed I usually grab it and compare the differences. While Spielberg is to be commended on his incredible talent at filmmaking, there was much of this story that wasn't brought to the screen, and maybe couldn't have been, I'm not sure. This was such a powerful story that it needed to be told. Normally when we think of how truly evil our world has been, we have to travel much farther back than just the 2nd World War, but not in this case.
Oskar Schindler, risking his life and the lives of those he loved, made what he felt was the morally right choice by saving a few Jews while the Nazi's used his business to further the War effort for Germany. Rarely can we find someone who so selflessly risked their life in such a way to save a number of people his own government had marked for extinction. Oskar recognized what the Nazi's refused to acknowledge, that ALL human life is precious, regardless of race or color of skin. How much farther would we all be if everyone held fast to what Oskar risked his life to hold true? |
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Anna Markova (MSL quote), UK
<2007-01-04 00:00>
Schindler's List is an extremely well written novel. It truly grasps your attention and makes you feel as if you're part of the story. Adults may have an easier time reading this book rather than children younger then the age of twelve. What makes it so difficult to understand, are some of the gruesome details and the very straight-forward way of writing. If you are interested in chronicles about war and history, and aren't bothered by some mind blowing facts, this is a very appealing book.
It is about Oscar Schindler, a heavy drinker that loves women, and cares mostly about himself. Not until he realizes how horrible the Jewish people are being treated in the concentration camps, is it when he takes action. Schindler was able to save over one thousand Jews. He saved them from having the same fate as millions of other Jews. Conroy's Sophie's Choice came to mind more than once while reading this.
This novel is one of the best i have read in along time. Though very heart-breaking and depressing, it truly lets you see what it was like for the Jewish people in that area of time. If you enjoy great literature, an off-beat story, insight into the human soul, fun, and even darkness and shocking family secrets, I would also recommend another book: Life of Pi by Yann Martel. |
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