Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
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In the novel Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally, the story of the Holocaust is told from a dual point of view--that of the Jewish people who are downtrodden, rounded up and taken to camps, murdered and degraded by the Nazis, and that of the German industrialist who takes it upon himself to save a large number of Jewish people from their fate. The question raised by the book is not as much why does he do this as why does everyone else not. Some of the reasons have been given before--many of the most culpable, the Nazi bureaucrats who assisted directly in the deportation and murder of millions of people, argued that they were under orders and had no choice, and they pleaded during their trials that they had all acted under orders. The novel and the film both tell the story of a man who did not leave it to others and who saw it as a personal need to do what he could to alleviate if not change the situation. Much of the critical response to the film has centered on issues related to this central character and to why he acted as he did.Interestingly, early critical argument over the novel centered on a very different issue. The book was originally published in Australia under the title Schindler's Ark, and a discussion erupted in the pages of various literary publications over whether or not the book should be classified as fiction. Michael Hulse wrote that the historical truth of the book was beyond doubt, and the book carries an acknowledgment of a list of survivors (muc
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rge-scale dreams of resistance (Sage 33).
The issue of why Schindler did what he did concerned critics of the film as well. He is called an improbable hero by one who adds:
He certainly did not choose to be a hero, and in fact to the eye of the cynical at the end he may be a hero at all. Schindler is a supreme opportunist, and through a series of inexplicable twists in his life, he stumbles from corruption to integrity before he knows what is happening to him (Blake 20).
Terence Rafferty writes that
Schindler's goodness really is more mysterious--tougher to account for intellectually--than the Nazis' evil, because his actions seem not to have been determined by anything resembling a conscious political, religious, or social principle. . . According to Keneally, many of the people Schindler rescued still say, "I don't know why he did it" (Rafferty 129).
It is interesting how much this question concerns critics of the book and film. It is probable that they all understand on one level that what Schindler did had to be done by someone and that it is a good thing someone did do it. Yet, they still ask why he did it, why he was the one, and how he came to be that one. The fact that the question is explored so assiduously al
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Approximate Word count = 1569
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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