Powerful and moving, Schindler’s Ark* details Oskar Schindler’s almost mythic rescue of over a thousand Polish Jews during the holocaust. An entrepreneur and war-profiteer, Schindler’s ‘befriending’ of Plaszów's commandant Amon Goeth allowed him to first build his business, and then manoeuvre it into a haven for Jews against the Nazi death machine. Schindler maintained a business-crippling system of bribes, wining and dining Goeth and his ilk, with the help of only a few sympathetic supporters, took in Jews both skilled and unskilled, feeding them through the black market and promising to see them through the war and ‘five minutes after’… and accomplished this literally death-defying coup under the nose of the SS, despite a number of arrests.

Keneally’s biography is of Schindler and Goeth, and the people whose stories most closely intersected with theirs. He lends it no melodrama or sentimentality, letting the story, the humanity, and the background information of German military history build for the reader a sense of astonishment, horror, gratitude and triumph.

*Filmed and published outside the UK as Schindler’s List ( )

Excellent novel. Much better than the film. Incredible to think that Shindler was little known before Spielberg brough him to the world's notice. Someone should make a biopic of Raoul Wallenberg now.

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved thousands of Jewish people from death in World War II Poland. His story is well known, thanks to the film adaptation of this book. The book is a realistic, factual, stark portrayal of real human drama. Keneally portrays Oskar as a compassionate savior, but not a saint. He was a womanizer and a heavy drinker. After witnessing violence in a Polish ghetto, he was moved to establish a camp on the premises of his factory, with better conditions for his workers. Still, his workers were not immune to the random acts of violence and murder. During the last year or so of the war, through deft negotiation and subterfuge, he managed to transport thousands of Jews to safety, ensuring their liberation when the war came to an end.

Even though I've read several books about the holocaust, I've been able to distance myself from the reality -- not denying these events occurred, but not facing the brutality, either. This book was different. I'm sure my mind was not as graphic as the film, and I unconsciously protected myself from the worst of it, but I still had to take frequent breaks. There were so many individual, heartbreaking stories; I found myself wondering how it could be classified as fiction. The author's note reads, "To use the texture and devices of a novel to tell a true story is a course which has frequently been followed in modern writing. It is the one I have chosen to follow here; both because the craft of the novelist is the only craft to which I can lay claim, and because the novel's techniques seem suited for a character of such ambiguity and magnitude as Oskar. I have attempted to avoid all fiction, though, since fiction would debase the record, and to distinguish between the reality and myths which are likely to attach themselves to a man of Oskar's stature. Sometimes it has been necessary to attempt to reconstruct 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 Oskar's acts of outrageous rescue. " Seems like nonfiction to me ...

I suspect this book won the Booker Prize more on the basis of Schindler's story; the writing itself was not as fine as I'd hoped. And Keneally was rather repetitive regarding Schindler's appetite for women and alcohol. Was he portraying him as "merely human," or admiring him? I found it tiresome, so a book I would normally have rated 4 stars ended up with only 3. ( )

I read this simply because I’d seen the movie and was impressed by the story and wanted to find out more. The book while written as a novel, was constructed from recollections and records of real events…only private conversations were reconstructed by the author. In saying this though, it was presented in a factual and largely chronological way, and not really dramatised. The story was dramatic in itself, but there wasn’t anything to make you sympathise particularly with Oskar Schindler, the hero of this tale. So I found it a little more challenging to read than I’d expected. Also there were a lot of German military and SS rank names written in German throughout the book which were a virtual mouthful, and along with Polish place names and so on, it took a bit of concentration.

The story itself though….amazing. I don’t think I will ever understand how these events really happened, and how such beliefs (towards the Jews) were ever able to take hold, and at a time not so very long ago.
Recommended. ( )

Having seen the movie many times, I couldn't wait to get the book and read it. To my pleasant suprise, the book was phenomenal. While the movie does not hold perfectly true to the book (what do you want, it is a "based on the book" movie), the book explains deeper things that were eluded to in the movie. For example, Circumstance A occurs in the movie. As a movie watcher, you just take Circumstance A at face value as simply being part of the story. Well, the book expains completely what Circumstance A actually is. This made reading the book that much more pleasurable as it served as more of a companion to the movie than a carbon copy of the movie. The book also explains Schindler's emotional feelings better than what is portrayed in the movie. Recommended reading for anyone who has seen this movie and appreciated it. ( )