Schindler's List - Thomas Keneally

Schindler's List is set up like a documentary, so it took me longer than I had expected to read it. I would be reading for a while and only have covered a few pages, it was frustrating. Luckily for me the reading sped up towards the end of the book.

Schindler's List is the story of how Oskar Schindler saved around 1,100 Polish Jews. It tells how he came to Poland from his home town in prospect of becoming a wealthy businessman and he saw the war as a way to do that. He opened a factory to make wartime necessities. In the beginning he employed Jewish workers because they were cheap labor. But after witnessing a horrific Aktion, round up of Jews, that lived in a ghetto of Cracow; he vowed to himself that he would do what he could to undermine the SS (Nazi) system and to save as many Jews as he could. He opened his own labor camp at his factory to protect his laborers from the cruel treatment at the other labor/concentration camps. He spent large sums of money on creating the camp and on bribing officials to allow him to make it. Towards the end of the war he had to relocate and it took longer to get it approved and then the transfer of his laborers was prolonged by SS men. They were kept at Auschwitz for a period of time until they were finally sent to Oskar. The Jews of Oskar's camp referred to themselves as Schindlerjuden, Schindler's Jews. They saw his camp as a safe haven; compared to the other camps, Oskar's was a paradise. They were still made to work, but they were not beaten or killed and they were fed much better then the other Jews. At the end of the war Oskar had to flea so that he was not treated like the other cruel camp directors. He later became bankrupt, partly because he spent incredible amounts on his effort and because what he had left was confiscated after the war, and became dependent on the Schindlerjuden. They were more than happy to help Schindler in his time of need because he had helped them to incredible lengths in theirs. Oskar saved many Jews and was loved by them for it.

This book was very difficult for me to stay with. It read very slowly; however the story was incredible, mainly because what Schindler did was an incredible thing. Though some of the occurrences it tells about are gruesome and almost unbelievable, it is really a good story to read because it is educational. It tells the stories of the luckier Jews of the Holocaust.