Keneally (A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of
Australia, 2006, etc.) chronicles the conception, birth and rich
afterlife of his most celebrated work.The Australian author is a
genial, unaffected companion in this leisurely voyage around
Schindler's List (1982), which began with a broken briefcase in
California. Stopping in a leather-goods store in 1980, Keneally met
proprietor Leopold Pfefferberg, who always insisted the author call
him Poldek. Learning that his customer was a writer, Poldek told
Keneally about Oskar Schindler, who had saved both him and his wife
during the Holocaust. He insisted that this story would win
Keneally the Nobel Prize and any filmmaker an Oscar. (So far, he
has proved half-right.) The author reveals that he was initially
reluctant to take on the project, being a non-Jew and a
non-European who knew only the basics about World War II, but notes
that Poldek insisted these were virtues. Soon, Keneally was caught
up in the story, interviewing Holocaust survivors and traveling to
Poland to see the remains of the Warsaw ghetto, the camps at
Auschwitz and myriad relevant sites. He was intrigued by the moral
ambiguity embodied by Schindler, who saved many Jews but also
profited from the labor of enslaved people and had, to put it
mildly, a relaxed sexual code. Keneally chronicles the publication
of the book, which indeed became the bestseller Poldek fiercely
believed it would be. In prose so clear it glistens, he describes
working on early drafts of the screenplay with Steven Spielberg
(who eventually, gently, fired him) and the production of the film,
much of which he observed. President Clinton attended the 1993
premiere, and the movie won seven Academy Awards. Keneally's
narrative ends sadly, with the deaths of his father and Poldek.An
essential companion to the original novel. (Kirkus Reviews)
The extraordinary tale of Oskar Schindler, the Aryan who saved
hundreds of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, is now legendary, but as
Tom Keneally reveals in this absorbing memoir, luck and the dogged
persistence of one of 'Schindler's Jews' were vital in bringing it
to the world's attention through his Booker Prize-winning novel,
SCHINDLER'S ARK and the subsequent film, SCHINDLER'S LIST.
Entertaining, inspiring and filled with anecdotes about the many
people involved, from the survivors Keneally interviewed to Steven
Spielberg and Liam Neeson, Searching for Schindler gives a
revealing insight into a writer's mind and the creation of a modern
classic. It also traces what happened in the decades after the war
to Schindler, his wife, and the people they rescued - including
Leopold Pfefferberg, who made it his mission to repay his priceless
debt to Schindler. Above all, it sheds renewed light on a
fascinatingly flawed man, and an instance of exceptional humanity
amid the greatest inhumanity mankind has known.
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