Schindler Oskar - Schindlers Ark

SCHINDLERS ARK

by Thomas Keneally

Copyright 1982

by Serpentine Publishing Co. Pty Ltd.

All rights reserved.

BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

The acclaimed No. 1 bestseller, now a

film by Steven Spielberg

A stunning novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and prison camp Direktor Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II.

In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally uses the actual testimony of the SchindlerjudenSchindlers Jews to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil. A masterful account of the growth of the human soul.

--Los Angeles Times Book Review An extraordinary tale ... no summary can adequately convey the stratagems and reverses and sudden twists of fortune.... A notable achievement.

--The New York Review of

Books

THOMAS KENEALLY, novelist, playwright, and

producer, is the author of numerous critically

acclaimed novels, including The Chant of

Jimmie Blacksmith, The Playmaker,

A Family Madness, and Woman of the

Inner Sea.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE PLACE AT WHITTON

THE FEAR

BRING LARKS AND HEROES

THREE CHEERS FOR THE PARACLETE

THE SURVIVOR

A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER

THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH

BLOOD RED, SISTER ROSE

GOSSIP FROM THE FOREST

SEASON IN PURGATORY

A VICTIM OF THE AURORA

PASSENGER

CONFEDERATES

A FAMILY MADNESS

THE PLAYMAKER

TO ASMARA

FLYING HERO CLASS

THE PLACE WHERE SOULS ARE BORN

WOMAN OF THE INNER SEA

CHILDRENS BOOKS

NED KELLY AND THE CITY OF BEES THOMAS KENEALLY was born in 1935 and was educated in Sydney, Australia. In addition to Schindlers List, which won the Booker Prize and the L.a. Times Book Award for fiction, his books include To Asmara, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, and Flying Hero Class, which was shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. He presently teaches in the graduate writing program at the University of California at Irvine, where he holds a Distinguished Professorship. He is also Chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, which seeks to end Australias constitutional connections with Great Britain.

TO THE MEMORY OF

OSKAR SCHINDLER,

AND TO LEOPOLD PFEFFERBERG,

WHO BY ZEAL AND PERSISTENCE

CAUSED THIS BOOK

TO BE WRITTEN

SCHINDLERS LIST

AUTHORS NOTE

In 1980 I visited a luggage store in

Beverly Hills, California, and inquired the

prices of briefcases. The store belonged

to Leopold Pfefferberg, a Schindler

survivor. It was beneath Pfefferbergs shelves of

imported Italian leather goods that I first heard

of Oskar Schindler, the German bon

vivant, speculator, charmer, and sign of

contradiction, and of his salvage of a cross section of a condemned race during those years now known by the generic name Holocaust.

This account of Oskars astonishing history is based in the first place on interviews with 50 Schindler survivors from seven nations

Australia, Israel, West Germany, Austria, the United States, Argentina, and Brazil. It is enriched by a visit, in the company of Leopold Pfefferberg, to locations that prominently figure in the book: Cracow, Oskars adopted city; P@lasz@ow, the scene of Amon Goeths foul labor camp; Lipowa Street, Zablocie, where Oskars factory still stands; Auschwitz-Birkenau, from which Oskar extracted his women prisoners. But the narration depends also on documentary and other information

supplied by those few wartime associates of Oskars who can still be reached, as well as by the large body of his postwar friends. Many of the plentiful testimonies regarding Oskar deposited by Schindler Jews at Yad Vashem, The Martyrs and Heroes

Remembrance Authority, further enriched the record, as did written testimonies from private sources and a body of Schindler papers and letters, some supplied by Yad Vashem, some by Oskars friends.

To use the texture and devices of a novel to tell a true story is a course that has frequently been followed in modern writing. It is the one I chose to follow hereboth because the novelists craft is the only one I can lay claim to, and because the novels techniques seem suited for a character of such ambiguity and magnitude as Oskar. I have attempted, however, to avoid all fiction, since fiction would debase the record, and to distinguish between reality and the myths which are likely to attach themselves to a man of Oskars stature. It has sometimes been necessary to make reasonable constructs of conversations of which Oskar and others have left only the briefest record. But most exchanges and conversations, and all events, are based on the detailed recollections of the Schindlerjuden (schindler Jews), of Schindler himself, and of other witnesses to Oskars acts of outrageous rescue.

I would like to thank first three Schindler survivorsLeopold Pfefferberg, Justice Moshe Bejski of the Israeli Supreme Court, and Mieczyslaw Pemperwho not only passed on their memories of Oskar to the author and gave him certain documents which have contributed to the accuracy of the narrative, but also read the early draft of the book and suggested corrections.

Many others, whether Schindler survivors or Oskars postwar associates, gave interviews and generously contributed information through letters and documents. These include Frau Emilie Schindler, Mrs. Ludmila Pfefferberg, Dr. Sophia Stern, Mrs. Helen Horowitz, Dr. Jonas Dresner, Mr. and Mrs. Henry and Mariana Rosner, Leopold Rosner, Dr. Alex Rosner, Dr. Idek Schindel, Dr. Danuta Schindel, Mrs. Regina Horowitz, Mrs. Bronislawa Karakulska, Mr. Richard Horowitz, Mr. Shmuel Springmann, the late Mr. Jakob Sternberg, Mr. Jerzy Sternberg, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Fagen, Mr. Henry Kinstlinger, Mrs. Rebecca Bau, Mr. Edward Heuberger, Mr. and Mrs. M. Hirschfeld, Mr. and Mrs. Irving Glovin, and many others. In my home city, Mr. and Mrs. E. Korn not only gave of their memories of Oskar but were a constant support. At Yad Vashem, Dr. Josef Kermisz, Dr. Shmuel Krakowski, Vera Prausnitz, Chana Abells, and Hadassah Modlinger provided generous access to the testimonies of Schindler survivors and to video and photographic material.

Lastly, I would like to honor the efforts which the late Mr. Martin Gosch expended on bringing the name of Oskar Schindler to the worlds notice, and to signify my thanks to his widow, Mrs. Lucille Gaynes, for her cooperation with this project. Through the assistance of all these people, Oskar Schindlers astonishing history appears for the first time in extended form.

TOM KENEALLY

PROLOGUE

Autumn, 1943

In Polands deepest autumn, a tall young man in an expensive overcoat, double-breasted dinner jacket beneath it andin the lapel of the dinner jacketa large ornamental goldon-black-enamel Hakenkreuz (swastika) emerged from a fashionable apartment building in Straszewskiego Street, on the edge of the ancient center of Cracow, and saw his chauffeur waiting with fuming breath by the open door of an enormous and, even in this blackened world, lustrous Adler limousine. Watch the pavement, Herr Schindler, said the chauffeur. Its as icy as a widows heart. In observing this small winter scene, we are on safe ground. The tall young man would to the end of his days wear doublebreasted suits, wouldbeing something of an engineeralways be gratified by large dazzling vehicles, wouldthough a German and at this point in history a German of some influence always be the sort of man with whom a Polish chauffeur could safely crack a lame, comradely joke.

But it will not be possible to see the whole story under such easy character headings. For this is the story of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil, a triumph in eminently measurable, statistical, unsubtle terms. When you work from the other end of the beast