Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind The List [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

~ David M. Crowe (Author)
Key Phrases: righteous among the nations, Staré Maletín, grey house, Oskar Schindler, Schindler Jews, General Government (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post

David Crowe devoted seven years, conducted scores of interviews and did research on four continents in order to write the definitive biography of Oskar Schindler. That's the good news. The bad news is that this definitive account is buried in a massive text. Crowe would have been served by a good editor, one with a relentless red pencil.

Schindler, a man with many flaws, risked his life and his fortune to save more Jews during the Holocaust than anyone else did. While the young Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved a larger number of Jews, he had the assistance of an entire team of people and the financial support of American Jews. In contrast, Schindler had only the assistance of his wife, Emilie. Moreover, Schindler performed his heroic deeds only a short distance from Auschwitz.

Schindler's road to becoming the man who rescued almost 1,100 people was hardly predictable. Born in the Sudetenland, the area of Czechoslovakia that was home to a large German population and on which Hitler had designs, Schindler spied for the Abwehr, the German army's espionage unit. He helped pave the way for Germany's 1939 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

Shortly after Germany invaded Poland, Schindler showed up in Krakow with one intention: to make money. He bought a Jewish-owned factory for a small fraction of its original worth and then contracted with the SS for Jewish workers. A lackluster businessman, Schindler let knowledgeable Jews run the factory while he wined, dined and bribed German officials.

How did a man of questionable morals whose fortune was essentially made by stealing from Jews become one of the Holocaust's most-heralded rescuers? The path to Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem, is lined on both sides by trees planted for "Righteous Gentiles," non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust. One can easily spot Schindler's tree because hundreds of thousands of people have worn down the ground around it as they have come to pay homage to this man.

As the Germans moved from ghettoization to murder, Schindler -- revolted by this development -- was transformed from self-interested shady, entrepreneur to fierce defender of his workers. Crowe, a professor at Elon University and the author of a history of the Gypsies, meticulously documents this transformation. Schindler, the former German spy, became a courier for Jewish aid organizations. He helped these organizations supply Jews with money, food and medicine, and transmitted important information about the gassings in Auschwitz.

In contrast to the impression given by Steven Spielberg in "Schindler's List," Crowe discovered that the famous list was not compiled by Schindler but by one of his Jewish administrators, Marcel Goldberg. There is, Crowe reveals, a seamy side to this story. Aware that inclusion on the list could mean the difference between life and death, Jews bribed Goldberg to get themselves on it. In certain cases, entire families were listed, while people of lesser means were dispatched to Auschwitz and other camps.

Schindler did not create the list, but, motivated by a deep sense of compassion for these people and revulsion at the Germans' actions, he did feel responsible for keeping these people alive, particularly during the harrowing final months of the war. When his female workers were transported to Auschwitz, he fought to have them released. As the situation in Krakow deteriorated, he moved his factory to Czechoslovakia. By so doing, he saved the lives of his 1,100 workers. Using his own funds, he kept them relatively well fed and even managed to find medication for them. Emilie played a crucial role during these harrowing winter months. She personally nursed the Jews and, working with her husband, managed to procure desperately needed medical supplies. Many "Schindler Jews" (as Jews rescued by Schindler began to call themselves after the war) credit her with ensuring their survival.

Schindler's saga did not end with Germany's defeat. After the Holocaust, Yad Vashem initially refused to honor him as a Righteous Gentile. How, it wondered, could it balance his membership in the Nazi Party with his efforts to save Jews? Those Jews whose factory he had expropriated protested to Yad Vashem that he acquired the considerable sums he spent to save his workers through the Aryanization of Jewish property and the use of slave labor. They tried to take legal action against him. Other Schindler Jews objected vehemently, arguing that, but for his actions, they would not have survived.

Schindler's postwar business efforts were complete disasters. Without the support he received from a well-respected Jewish aid organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, he and Emilie would have been destitute. Many of his supporters were infuriated when he gambled away substantial sums. Others, willing to ignore his personal shortcomings, shrugged it off with "that's Oskar."

This book, despite containing fascinating information, is marred by its completely undisciplined nature. It contains scads of ancillary -- and sometimes hardly even that -- details on an array of other topics. Do we need to know all about films that were not made about Schindler? Does Crowe have to tell us that his interviews with Schindler Jews "touched [him] deeply"? Why does he feel compelled to include not just the life story of a young American GI who helped some Schindler Jews immediately after the war but also what was said about him at the time of his death? Moreover, Crowe repeatedly fails to follow a chronological thread. Early in the book, when he is discussing Schindler's expropriation of the Krakow factory, Crowe goes into a discourse on a lawsuit that was not filed until the 1960s. While this is certainly part of the story, he would have served his readers well by waiting until his discussion of postwar developments to tell it. What initially is distracting becomes, by the end of this massive tome, maddening.

Nothing in Schindler's behavior before or after the war would have led one to identify him as a hero of such tremendous proportions. At a crucial moment, he more than rose to the occasion. He surpassed it and, as a result, saved more than a thousand people. His actions are testimony to the fact that, contrary to what many Germans claimed, there was something that people could have done. Oskar Schindler did it.

Reviewed by Deborah E. Lipstadt
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Schindler is known best for the portrayal of him in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List, which was, of course, based on Thomas Keneally's novel of the same name. Schindler was a German who risked his life and his fortune to save 1,100 Jews and provide hundreds of other Jews who worked for him with a quality of life that enabled many of them to survive the Holocaust. In researching this definitive biography over a seven-year period, Crowe interviewed and corresponded with many of Schindler's Jews; discovered a vast collection of his private papers and letters; found the Czech secret police and Gestapo files on Schindler documenting his involvement as an operative in Nazi Germany's military counterespionage organization, Abwehr, before and during World War II; and studied the war crimes file on Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp. Crowe posits that Schindler had nothing to do with the creation of his famous transport lists (one for 700 men and one for 300 women) and then devotes a long chapter on its true origin. Crowe sees that Schindler's transformation from a greedy factory owner into one of the most remarkable righteous gentiles in the Holocaust took place slowly. "I think that he was, at heart, a fairly decent human being despite his womanizing and heavy drinking," Crowe concludes, and that over time, the growing violence and death that enveloped Krakow's Jews disgusted him and prompted him to do whatever he could to protect his Jewish workers from the SS. With 32 black-and-white photographs, this biography is essential in understanding one of the most extraordinary figures from the Holocaust. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 800 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; illustrated edition edition (October 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081333375X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813333755
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #575,409 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Schindler's List, November 24, 2004

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The historical Oskar Schindler is much more complex than the charming rogue portrayed in the "Schindler's List" of film and novel. In this definative new biography, Mr. Crowe has done impressive research in uncovering new archives and interviews to depict the Nazi spy/businessman who became a "righteous gentile" in saving Jews from certain death during World War II. Mr. Crowe is a Holocaust historian who has documented other Nazi atrocities in his 1996 work, "A History of the Gypies in Eastern Europe and Russia."

The reader will be surprised to learn that Oskar Schindler had nothing to do with the creation of the life-giving lists that gave the title to the film by Steven Spielberg and the book by Thomas Keneally. Schnidler was in prison briefly when the lists were created by other persons. This does not diminished the other heroic acts that Schindler and his wife performed to save the Jews they came in contact with during the final two years of the World War II. He spent his war-profiteering fortune on bribes and supplies for those Jews in his care.

It is sad that in the the madness of the Holocaust Oskar Schindler found the only success of his life. After the war, it was all downhill for the alcoholic womanizer who died in poverty in 1974. The book is very well-written and will interest those readers who desire to know what was the reality behind Schindler's List.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Moving True Story, December 5, 2004

By	Nick "movie, book and music guy" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

Amazing, fascinating, horrifying and sad is the story of Oscar Schindler, Emilie and others, as written in David M Crowe's well researched and easily readable biography. Oscar evolved into a deeply good good man, with great skill, courage and sharp wit, who flaws were also in many ways his strong points it seems to me in achieving what he did, and was an immensely admirable person. And it is sad that brilliant nice people don't usually get what they deserve, as loss of health and tragic failures after the war were the last things he deserved.
There are a lot of horrible events and people described in this book, but also acts of humanity, kindness and braveness by many in the Oscar Schindler story, those three traits in particular summing up Oscar. There are more than a few instances of the Nazi hypocracies and madness, being used against them as they are outwitted in this story. An amazing and moving story.
It's true that there's a lot of detail in this book and it can be hard going to keep up with it all, but i found the subject matter of Schindler enough to more than motivate me to keep turning the pages. One of the best sections of the book was Oscar's meeting in budapest i think it was, with aid organisation representatives for jews in occupied europe. Here you get a chance to discover what Oscar's thoughts were in relation to the war, holocaust and where he was at in action amongst it all. There is a lot of other detail in the book, not so involving, but the holocaust was a huge bureaucratic operation and apart from that, there weren't too many people with the liberty to document or concentrate on individual coming and goings, in the new cut throat order of the glorious third reich. So a lot of the superfluous information not directly relating to Oscars' daily life, is both understandably from a research point of view and also is relevant because this is precisely the world that Oscar was operating in.
I think the author has done a great job on bringing us a biography on a man whos life and good deeds, never really got the reward they deserved(which is why life is as it is!) and because Oscar remained relatively obscure, much of his life details just wern't important enough for anyone to record for prosperities sake. Mr Crowe is more critical of Oscar than i feel he should be, for example, he disaproves when Oscar tell's the afore mentioned agents in Budapest that they must admit, in the intellectual realm the jew is really a dangerous competitor for the nazis. Is that such a bad and unaccurate thing to say, in light of the situation?
I feel Schindler's own intelligence and strength of character is not given enough credit in the book; due to the fact that he was out to exploit the situation for personal monetary gain intially(i.e. he was a opportunistic business man cashing in on the war and occupation), and because he lost his health and failed after the war finished, it is easy to put his success down to war time craziness and the skill of the men running his factories. He was not a moral man in the conventional sense, he liked women, drinking and living in the moment but i think it was his free-spiritedness, that when given the power, compelled him to use it in a humanitarian way rather than worry about his own security, which is the accepted way to do things. Ultimately Oscar Schindler lived from his heart, he understood this, u get this from the book, and why the book is a great effort in bringing us his life story, to me the author's judgement on Oscar is not as good as it should be, due in part i suppose to the clinical unromantic objectivity that is expected of a researcher.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great research BUT..., May 9, 2005

By	SusieQ (New York) - See all my reviews

What horrible writing. Never (well almost never) have I read a biography with such a facinating subject, with such in-depth research, more boringly presented.

The writing is terrible. The subject, a man of many layers living in arguably the most morally testing time of the 20th century, just lays there on the page, fact after fact, and never comes alive. Getting through this book was some chore, and that's from someone who really WANTED to read this book. I have to agree with the professional reviewer who used the word, "maddening" to describe the writing here. Really, the author's editor should be taken off the job, but the author is certainly no great shakes as a writer and deserves his lumps also. Not recommended, except to those who really want to plow through a pile of chaff to get to the wheat.