Customer Reviews:
 an intriguing follow-up to 'Schindler's Ark/List' November 8, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I remember Thomas Keneally telling the story of how he came across the Schindler story when 'Schindler's Ark' ('List' in the USA) was first published. Then it won the Booker Prize and eventually, though after a long delay, was filmed by Steven Spielberg. This book covers that territory, from the moment Schindler walked into a Los Angeles bags, briefcases and leather goods shop and thereby met the extraordinary 'Leopold Page', in reality Leopold (or Poldek) Pfefferberg, to the making of the film and its success. The book is partly the story of Keneally's growing involvement in the tale and the search for other Schindlerjuden, the Jews Schindler saved, partly reflections on the Holocaust, the writing of the book, the making of the film and the moral ambiguities which surfaced in various ways at various stages of the process.
If this perhaps makes it seem a little dry, it's not. It is a highly personal book - this was often not an easy process for Keneally or his family - whose two 'heroes' are Pfefferberg, a truly remarkable man, and I think Keneally himself, though he would probably squirm in denial at that conclusion. There are interesting facts and anecdotes throughout, and many, many remarkable characters emerge, most of them other survivors. The process of getting the film made is absorbing - Keneally meeting Spielberg, the rights eventually being bought, time elasping and Spielberg working on other films, Keneally being contracted to write a screenplay, a new writer and then another being found, eventually the actual making of the film onset, meeting the actors, the first screening, the adulation - not unmixed with bitter and vociferous criticism - that it received. It's not a long book, but it covers a great deal of ground in a most involving way, and towards the end it becomes very moving. I enjoyed it very much, and I recommend it highly.
I would simply add that any who are moved and drawn in by the Schindler story, as well as seeing Spielberg's film should seek out Jon Blair's TV documentary, voiced by Dirk Bogarde and available sadly at present only in VHS form, which Keneally mentions with approval and which includes chilling interview film of Majola, Amon Goeth's mistress, close to death, whom Keneally and Pfefferbeg failed to find when they visited Vienna. Her ambivalent testimony, whispered in the pained rasp of a terminal emphysemia sufferer, is well worth hearing, and there are many, many excellent and moving interviews with DEF and Brinnlitz survivors as well. I think, in its different way, it is just as good as Spielberg's film.
would love this on dvd October 30, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book was "Book of the Week" on Radio 4 3rd week in October and I heard part 1 which was fasinating and immediately caught my imagination and curiosity. I then went away and missed all other episodes until I again listened to 1/2 of the last one...I was driving along with tears running down my face - totally touched and moved by the thought of the 'story teller's' pain at the final end. Unfortunately it was not available on "Listen again" so I have come to the site to see if I could get a copy of the DVD, only to learn that this is a newish book, only published in Hardback at the moment (paperback April 09).
Of course I will have to buy it, and as I wait for the post, I do wonder if reading it in book form will touch my heart as piercingly as the spoken word.
I do appreciate the Shindler subject has been written about and filmed - and is not a new subject, however the writer, Thomas Keneally, seems to have come at this at such a different angle.
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