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    Schindler's List
    Schindler's List
    Schindler's List
    Audiobook16 hours

    Schindler's List

    Written by Thomas Keneally

    Narrated by Humphrey Bower

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the Nazi concentration camps, this award-winning, bestselling work of Holocaust fiction, inspiration for the classic film and “masterful account of the growth of the human soul” (Los Angeles Times Book Review), returns with an all-new introduction by the author.

    An “extraordinary” (The New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director 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, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden—Schindler’s Jews—to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil. “Astounding…in this case the truth is far more powerful than anything the imagination could invent” (Newsweek).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateDec 4, 2018
    ISBN9781508250968
    Author

    Thomas Keneally

    Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published thirty-three novels since, most recently Crimes of the Father, Napoleon’s Last Island, Shame and the Captives, and the New York Times bestselling The Daughters of Mars. He is also the author of Schindler’s List, which won the Booker Prize in 1982, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of nonfiction, including his boyhood memoir Homebush Boy, The Commonwealth of Thieves, and Searching for Schindler. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney, Australia.

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    Reviews for Schindler's List

    4/5

    1,413 ratings48 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Amazing movie. Poorly written book
      I suggest skipping the slog
    • 5/5
      What an amazing account of one of the most horrible times in history. Story told in a small light portion of a very bleak time
    • 3/5
      Had to read in sections because there waere so many names to process. I enjoyed the film more.
    • 5/5
      I cried so much. At the parallels I see in our current society, at the sheer horrors perpetrated in steadily increasing steps and at how humans can find a way to justify anything. The writer has done a fantastic job in finding the humanity in every character and maybe that is the most chilling part. Even the most destructive creatures of us are complex and have real motivations. This book reminded me that "the enemy is us" but also by the same token we have the power to be a friend and ally ourselves with any person to show true compassion.
    • 5/5
      In my opinion one of the most important books ever written. Every step of the Jewish persecution by the Nazis seems to be discussed and seen through the eyes of those who were present. Schindler is of course fascinating for his flawed heroism. Definitely not an easy read because of the content but an important story!
    • 5/5
      An incredible story, beautifully written. I don't think it could have been approached in a better way. The perfect balance of factual accounts and dialogue.
    • 5/5
      Possibly the most compelling book I’ve ever read. Reader is excellent.
    • 4/5
      Good novel about the German industrialist, a playboy, who managed to save a lot of his Jewish factory workers from death in the Holocaust. It was originally called "Schindler's Ark".
    • 3/5
      Oskar Schindler was a German businessman who registered as a Nazi to benefit financially from the work being provided. During his time working with the Germans, Schindler sees how the Jews of the area are being treated and decide he must do something about it. He creates a list of essential employees and as such, they are not to be added to any transport lists. He tells his employees that as long as they work for him, they are safe. Schindler remains true to his word and he saved over 1,200 Jews from death at the hands of the Nazi regime.Ben Kingsley was the perfect narrator for this story. He has such a classic voice and his diction of the hard German words was on point. I can't imagine anyone else reading this audiobook and making such a terrible topic easy to digest.For the longest time, I thought Schindler's List was a huge, daunting tome of a book and although I wanted to read it, I was scared. When I downloaded the audiobook and saw that it was only 4 hours long I was a little confused. I realized I was basing my thoughts on the movie and the length of it. All in all, this book was well done and well researched. I am glad that I finally crossed it off my TBR.(less)
    • 4/5
      I saw the movie Schindler’s List when it came out, and found it heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time. I did not know that it was based on a book originally entitled Schindler’s Ark.

      This is the only Booker winner so far in my project (I’m up to 1982 now) that is not pure fiction. And though Keneally says in the “Author’s Note” that he will use the “texture and devices of a novel” to tell the story, I did not find that it read like a novel. Keneally frequently reminds the reader that the conversations are recreations, and tells us the source or sources for every incident. It’s really a very documentary-like retelling, and I think that is the right choice. We must continue to remind ourselves and the world that the horrors of the Holocaust really happened, and not romanticize them by letting them sound like fiction.

      It’s the highly interesting tale of Oskar Schindler, who started out as a war profiteer, then became disgusted by the Nazi policy of Jewish extermination. There are many harrowing individual stories here, of families who watched loved ones die for the most whimsical of reasons. But one of the most harrowing has to be that of Schindler himself, when the tables are turned after the Allied victory. He must wear prison garb to sneak out of formerly German territory. He never regains his old Midas touch, and comes to depend on those who once depended on him.

      It’s a wonderful read for the repeated lesson that it is always possible to do the right thing. I have to wonder, though, if Keneally’s other work is worth reading. For example, nearly every time that Oskar Schindler speaks, he “growls.” It’s not the writing that makes this an extraordinary book; it’s the story.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating story and a respectful approach to presenting largely factual information. Wrenching, as it should be, and well worth the read.
    • 4/5
      "Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world."Oskar Schindler was an unlikely hero, a flamboyant womaniser and heavy drinker who enjoyed the good life socialising with Nazi concentration camp commanders, yet in the shadow of Auschwitz he continually risked his own life and fortune outwitting the SS to protect the lives of over a thousand Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia.Schindler's List, is a piece of non-fiction and the author tells his story by weaving testimony from survivors who remembered the German industrialist together with Schindler's own accounts detailing how the Nazi system worked at the time and the deceptions he practised on the SS officials whom he came in to contact with to circumvent it. He was arrested on more than one occasion suspected of treasonable activity, but always managed to talk his way to freedom. I find myself really torn by this book. This is a remarkable true story that would probably never have come to life without the author's (and then later Hollywood's) intervention outside of the Jewish community which would have been a real shame. However, the largely analytical tone of the book never really seemed to do justice to the man at the centre of it. Schindler was certainly a complex man, he was a playboy, with a string of female lovers, enjoying wining and dining Nazi officials who was simultaneously venerated by the Jews sheltering under his wing, who remained alive almost because of his personal charisma and charm, bribery and cronyism. Now whilst I realise that the author was endeavouring to avoid (in his own words) 'canonizing' Schindler the tone of the novel somehow distanced him from the reader rather than really animating him. He remained an enigma to the end. An unremarkable man in peace time who in six years of war-time did remarkable things. "The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbour. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender."Keneally's 'The Playmaker' is in my top 10 all time favourites and whilst this piece of work won't be going on to that particular list the man at the centre of it deserves not to be forgotten and therefore the book deserves to be widely read which earned it an extra star.
    • 3/5
      I struggled with this book. It's not the subject matter that I had issues with- Schindler's story is important, and what he did for the people he saved during the Holocaust is huge. I was not impressed with the writing, though. I was expecting a novelized history, but this seemed like a long and jumbled history paper until the last chapters, which redeemed the book for me.
    • 5/5
      I first read this in those heady days after seeing the film at the cinema. The story speaks for itself, but the tone and approach of the book differs markedly and I was a little disappointed. I think I was looking for a novelization. I was very young.Reading it again now I couldn't be more impressed with Keneally's approach. The book is full of ambiguity, a lot of it set up in the prologue where he first starts to explore the contradictions in Schindler's character. There's also ambiguity as to the nature of the book. Keneally does a tight-rope act between history and fiction. Sometimes he's almost report-like, sometimes he directly addresses the audience, giving his opinion on people and events. But then he'll segue seamlessly into fictionally described scenes with direct speech. But watch the speech marks – sometimes they're there and sometimes they're not. Sometimes he calls Schindler Herr Schindler, Herr Direktor, sometimes Schindler, sometimes Oskar. Cycling between formality and informality. But he usually calls him Schindler. He's on the fence. But which is more formal: history or fiction? Surely history with all it's research and facts, and fiction is just a game between friends. But then perhaps history is just a story we tell ourselves about the past. The Greeks made up whole speeches when they wrote their histories, but historians aren't allowed to do that now, and fiction writers, once so chatty with their readers, have tied their voices down and strive for suspended disbelief by obeying a set of ridiculous rules that everyone tacitly agrees with.All that got me thinking about the Holocaust. Formality and informality, personal and impersonal. Because here you have a vast state-operated killing machine where there are no personal names, only one name Jew. No individual trials, only group condemnation and murder. Pretty impersonal, but yet how more personal can you get, where people, on purpose, first steal everything you have, then imprison you, then murder your family in front of you and finally murder you?
    • 5/5
      An extremely interesting book. It was fascinating to learn about who Schindler was and what he did.
    • 5/5

      It is a troubling book. I had seen the movie several times, trying to get my head wrapped around the brutality that it saw on the screen imposed with the humanity, then I read the actual book.

      And I gotta say - the movie was very kind. One of the images that sticks in my mind is the Jewish doctor whose hands cannot lift the heavy rocks. He tries to reason with the Ukranian guard but he cannot.

      It is not an easy read, but it is a necessary one. It fits with the view of Auschwitz as told in other books about this camp. And it also shows how one person, one single person, can make a difference in the lives of so many other ones. So don't give up hope - humanity still exists.

    • 4/5
      This is a moving and harrowing book which is difficult to review. Like Hilary Mantel's Cromwell books, the fictional elements here largely exist to fill gaps and impose narrative structure to a true story, which is now widely known, of Oskar Schindler and his schemes to protect a group of Jews in Nazi occupied Poland and Moravia. The book has a weight of detailed testimony whose cumulative effect is sombre, and its portrait of Schindler is nuanced and complex, and does not shrink from his less heroic qualities.
    • 5/5
      In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser and heavy drinker who enjoyed the good life, yet to them he became a saviour.Thomas Keneally's Booker Prize-winning novel recreates the story of Oskar Schindler, an Aryan who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, who continually defied and outwitted the SS, and who was transformed by the war into an angel of mercy. It is an unforgettable tale, all the more extraordinary for being true.
    • 5/5
      This is a story of a man, Direktor Oskar Schindler, a real person, a German industrialist in World War 2, it reads like nonfiction but it is historical fiction. Yes, it is about the Jews, the labor camps, the tragedy but it is more about how Schindler, a capitalist, survived the war and how his decisions saved Jews. Oscar wasn't a saint, he was a womanizer, a drinker and he excelled at making deals. Why he did what he did is never known. He used Jewish labor but his actions saved many and he never abused his labor. His actions placed him in danger, yet he never stopped until the end.I enjoyed reading the book. Most have seen the movie. I have not. I avoid violence in movies and expect that this would be hard to watch. The author is Australian. The book won the Booker Prize. The author was inspired to write this story of Schindler when he met Poldek Pfefferberg. I was struck by the honor the Jewish nation gave to Schindler in making him a Righteous Person and also trying to help him financial too. Why did and do people hate Jewish people? Through the years they have been hated, why? Is it because they are God's special people and they hate God?
    • 4/5
      Most people have come to know this book via Steven Spielberg's famous 1993 movie version, Schindler's List which won countless awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction at the Academy Awards, though I refused to see it at the cinema when it was released and have never seen it since either, even though it is often listed among the greatest films ever made. Stories about the holocaust have always been very difficult for me to deal with, no doubt largely because of the fact that I was exposed to holocaust material at an early age growing up in Israel for a few years, where the message is "Never Forget" and the holocaust images I was exposed to as a young girl were seared into my brain and indeed never forgotten. I don't think I would have ever picked up the book either, if I hadn't become a Folio Society collector; which are beautiful high quality hardcover illustrated books, and fallen in love with the drawing style of Tim Laing, who has illustrated several Folio Society editions, namely of a trio of John Le Carré books. His realistic pencil drawing style was highly inspirational to me as an artist and I was moved to communicate by email with him directly to ask him for some professional tips which he was kind enough to share with me. When I later discovered FS had published Schindler's Ark in 2009 and that it was also illustrated by Tim Laing, I simply had to have it. Then a friend from the Folio Society Devotees picked it out for me and of course I couldn't refuse her.The book tells a tale that begins with the larger than life Oskar Schindler, who at the onset of WWII and in the prime of his early thirties is an extremely successful and wealthy industrialist, as well as a well-connected Nazi party member. Schindler is described as a bon-vivant who was handsome, with a strong build, who though married, was an unrepentant womanizer and entertained at least three simultaneous love affairs. He also drank heavily with his business and government contacts—which as the war evolved were more often than not one and the same—but no matter how much alcohol he imbibed, his faculties were never impaired and he never showed signs of inebriation, a quality which was going to serve him well in his often delicate and dangerous dealings. Schindler was a German from the Czech region, and he was living in the Polish town of Kraków for his business dealings, where he had a factory, Deutsche Emaillewaren-Fabrik, commonly known as "Emalia", which initially produced enamelware in the form of kitchenware, but Schindler's connections in the Wehrmacht and its Armaments Inspectorate enabled him to obtain contracts to produce enamel cookware for the military. At this time, the Jewish population of Kraków was forced to move into cramped conditions in a ghetto, from which they were eventually to be deported to work camps and concentration camps. To help as many Jews as possible over the war years, Schindler hired as many Jews in his factory as he could—which often meant they were saved from being deported to concentration camps, being useful to the Germans—though usually having to resort to very expensive black market bribes and ruses, especially when a work camp was created outside Kraków and the ghetto was liquidated. Schindler then took many extraordinary steps which would prove both to the Jews and the Germans he was intent on helping the Jews. The Germans let him get away with it because of his important connections and the extravagant bribes he paid to the right people, though he did land in jail at great risk to his life more than once. The commandant of the work camp at Plazów where the ghetto residents who survived the ghetto exile were transported was called Amon Goeth. This man was a sadistic maniac who was in the habit of randomly executing his prisoners on the slightest pretext, though often without the least provocation and was all too happy to follow orders to feed his charges as little as possible. This situation caused Schindler to create a work camp on the grounds of his factory where he could insure the Jews he employed would at least have enough food to eat and have decent chances to survive the war. Then when the work camps in that region were about to be closed down following orders from Berlin and the prisoners were slated to be sent to the death camps, Schindler arranged for his factory to be moved to Brünnlitz in the Czech republic, and this is how Schindler's List of 1,200 Jews was created, naming the Jews who were to be sent over to this new factory and spared the gas chambers. This is a gripping book and is in many ways a page-turner. Oscar Schindler himself is a fascinating character, and his nemesis Amon Goeth and many of the other characters who people the story seem larger than life and make for thrilling reading. There are many passages in the book which are deeply disturbing, especially when one stops to consider that all the material in the novel is based on facts and on the countless interviews Thomas Keneally had with Schindlerjuden ("Schindler Jews") around the world, and whoever else was willing to talk to him. For those who are sensitive to graphic violence, as I am, there are many description of the abuses done to the Jews by the Nazis and the deeply antisemitic Poles. What makes the book bearable is that all through the narrative there are the tale of individuals whose acts of survival and courage enabled a large group of people to live through the madness of the holocaust. One could take the view that the horrors inflicted on the Jews during WWII continue to this day in various iterations on various ethnic groups and be discouraged by that fact, but then we could also take some small comfort from knowing that there will always some who try their best to help those in need, even in the worst circumstances. I do intend to watch the movie now I've broken the ice and have read the story. A friend told me the movie ends on a very hopeful note, and that past the mid-point, when the horrors of the Nazis have been shown, things become much brighter with the mission to save the Jews taking over. I guess I'll only find out once I see the movie myself, but he book presents another reality. While it's true enough Schindler did in fact save over one thousand Jews, the book presents the entire process as being filled with danger and anguish for all who had the most to lose, right until the end. In fact, Schindler himself did not come out of the war without suffering some loss. Escaping from the camp at Brünnlitz mere hours before the Russians were due to arrive (when he would have been shot as a German and a Nazi), a diamond (or a quantity of diamonds, according to the book) had been hidden in the upholstery of his car, but this was stripped and stolen shortly after so that Schindler was penniless from then on, and somehow was never quite able to recoup his fortune or find his direction in the years following the war, until his death in 1974. However, he always stayed in contact with his Schindlerjuden throughout the world and was supported morally and financially by the Jewish community, and made frequent travels to Israel, where he was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1963.
    • 5/5
      This powerful novel evokes strong emotion in the telling of Oskar Schindler's story. Whether or not you've seen the movie, this novel is a "must read," as it gives background information into what made Oskar, a German, decide to risk his life for over 4 yrs. and 3 arrests to protect over 1000 Jews from being placed into concentration camps.
    • 3/5
      A famous movie, I didn't want to watch it until I had read the book. Keneally isn't a brilliant writer, but Schindler's List seems well-researched. It was easy to read without being overly simple.

      Throughout the book, I was confused by Oskar Schindler, the man. What were his motivations? Did he draw a moral line in the sand, refusing to pass a certain point of complicity? Was he mainly a businessman who tried to use the war to his advantage? Or was he perhaps just hung over half the time and drunk the other half, and therefore never in a truly clear state of mind?

      At the end of the book, his wife is quoted as having said in a documentary that Schindler didn't do anything remarkable before the war, and he didn't do anything remarkable afterwards either. I think this says it best. That particular situation, the people in it, and the way he reacted to the events and the individuals are the reason for everything. In the end, Schindler was nothing more or less than himself.
    • 5/5
      A thoroughly wonderful compelling tale of a rich selfish man turned selfless when he was made witness to horrible human atrocities. His moral outrage compelled him to do something very few would dare do; very few have ever had the strength to fight something for so worthy a cause, so boldly in the face of mortal danger, at no benefit to themselves. Schindler was one a diamond in the rough, truly a remarkable human being.
    • 5/5
      Difficult to read with all the German names, but so worth the struggle.
    • 5/5
      It took me a long time to read this one. Heartbreaking and triumphant. It's sad that Schindler spent the remainder of his days living on the goodwill of his friends. It felt like the war almost broke him in some way. It's entirely possible, though, that's by its end he no longer cared about money.
    • 4/5
      I picked up this book after finishing a Daniel Silva mystery about hunting down Nazi war criminals. The Silva book was great but the descriptions of the heinous acts of the war criminals made me seek out a book that described a WWII hero. Schindler's List definitely describes some great heroic deeds. Unfortunately it does not hold back on describing some awful sadistic acts. The book was interesting - I would like to see the movie, but now I REALLY need something upbeat.
    • 1/5
      I feel like I'm violating an unspoken law, one akin to the actual law against display of the swastika in Germany, by saying this is a bad book. But to be silent about a flawed book because of its subject is worse. I can't believe this badly composed piece won the Booker Prize.

      The prose is clumsy. It is littered with unnecessary fragments that chop up the flow without adding the punch or serving any of the purposes a fragment can. Worse, the narrative itself is choppy. I sympathize with the task Thomas Keneally set himself: he wanted to tell a story that should be told, a real story with a factual basis. To respect the facts, he couldn't invent conversations or manipulate the timeline. Yet because the source material is incomplete, he and the witnesses intrude upon the story to say that this is one way it could have happened, or here are three eyewitnesses' versions plus a more likely scenario from a nonwitness who nonetheless knew was was going on. Different people remember different periods, and so characters drop in and then drop out without introduction or conclusion. Even the pre-movie reader knows the gist from the jacket; what the book fails to deliver is thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; also interest. It does deliver mawkishness (though not, in Keneally's defense, anything like Liam Neeson's final speech).

      I understand why he couldn't write a history: the fact-checking would have been impossible. Maybe a memoir, whose format allows vagueness, subjectivity, and invention, would have served. But this book, as written, is a bad novel.
    • 3/5
      Oskar Schindler was more than a rescuer of Jews; he was a subversive force. He was able to get SS officers to look the other way, able to avoid manufacturing anything of value to the German war effort, able to show other people that there might be a way to at least save some people. It would be hard to overstate what he managed to do. He may have "only" saved a small number of people, but that was more than he could have been reasonably expected to do. He put himself on the line for them in a very real way.At the same time, the book is so insistent on not sanctifying Schindler that it feels like the author tries very hard to point out Schindler's failings. He was a womanizer, he drank too much, he mostly ignored his wife, he lived as big as his station in life would allow. It's great to acknowledge that he wasn't perfect, but his failings were also part of what made his entire enterprise work. Plying people with food and drink, having long conversations with them even when he abhorred them, letting some heinous things continue - all were part of why he was able to do anything at all. If he'd gone around trying to save everyone, or stopping a camp commandant from beating his maid, the illusion that he was on the Germans' side even slightly (and appearing so slightly is all he could manage) would have disappeared, and his chances to do any good along with it.It's an interesting story, and an important one. My rating is lower than the book probably deserves, but I wasn't as affected by the story as I expected to be. I think that having toured Dachau two years ago changed my ability to be moved by words written about the Holocaust. Everything pales in comparison to standing there.Recommended for: anyone and everyoneQuote: "It was fortunate for Abraham that Oskar did not ask himself why it was Bankier's name he called, that he did not pause and consider that Bankier's had only equal value to all the other names loaded aboard the Ostbahn rolling stock. An existentialist might have been defeated by the numbers at Prokocim, stunned by the equal appeal of all names and voices. But Schindler was a philosophic innocent. He knew who he knew. He knew the name of Bankier."
    • 5/5
      I consider Spielberg's film based on this novel one of the most moving and powerful films I'd ever seen. Surely, I thought, that film would diminish the impact of the book. It's true that certainly many of the most powerful scenes in that film can be recognized in the book--the little girl in the red coat, the woman engineer shot by Amon Goeth, the rescue of the women from Auschwitz. But there's a lot more to the book than those scenes, a lot that never made it into the film. Keneally's book is in that uneasy territory between fiction and non-fiction called "creative non-fiction." As he writes in his Author's Note: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 here - both because the novelist's craft is the only one I can lay claim to, and because the novel's 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 Oskar's 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 Oskar's acts of outrageous rescue.So yes, the book reads like a novel, and many of its conversations and thoughts are invented--but it is more closely based on fact than the film. Ultimately the Schindler that emerges is even braver and more audacious than Spielberg depicted... but it's a much more complicated tale. And there are other "Schindlers." In the film Schindler in vain tries to convince a fellow industrialist to go in with his scheme to transport his Jewish workers to Moravia. The film implied the man acted--or didn't act--out of cowardice or indifference or even greed. Keneally thought it was probably because the man involved--Julius Madritson--probably thought Schindler unreliable and the scheme unworkable. (Madritson saved many Jews himself and was honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.) An even more poignant figure in the book that never made it into the film was a SS Sergeant, Oswald Bosko, who together with Madritson saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Kraków ghetto, only to be executed by the Gestapo. There are a lot of differences like that between the book and the film. Spielberg's film is perhaps the more emotionally moving experience, although some of the book's impact on me might have been blunted by my watching the film first (and several times at that.) But this more complex, well-written, fast-reading novelized history is, I think, even richer in its panoply of people from the darkest demon black to well, never angelic white.... Oskar was hard-drinking, reckless with money, a womanizer--but absolutely admirable and inspiring nevertheless--a true-to-life Scarlet Pimpernel who saved over a thousand lives.
    • 4/5
      A beautiful book. I prefer the movie, but the inside stuff that got left on the cutting room floor was rather fascinating. I think they could have tacked on another three hours to the movie and it still would have been fascinating, there was so many interesting anecdotes.