Schindler's List (Ark): The Film and the Book

TERM PROJECT- SCHINDLER'S LIST (ARK) THE FILM AND THE BOOK

An Australian writer Thomas Keneally found one of his biggest inspirations when he was shopping in a luggage store in Beverly Hills, Cal. in 1980. While Keneally was waiting for his credit card to be approved, the owner of the store Poldek Pfefferberg told Keneally of how he and his wife were among 1,200 Jews who were saved by Oskar Schindler (Eriksson, Fensch 38).

Keneally transferred Pfefferberg’s story into a book named Schindler’s Ark (published in 1982 in Britain) and won the Booker Prize. While working on his book, Keneally interviewed fifty "Schindlerjuden" in seven nations. The book was published later that year in the United States as Schindler’s List (Eriksson, Fensch 43). In his "Author's note," Keneally admits that some conversations in the book were constructed, but he insists that most of the facts in the book are true (Keneally 9).

Director Steven Spielberg was initially attracted to Schindler’s List in 1982 when Kenally’s book was published. He was interested in the book’s emphasis on the experiences of individual people, which helped to connect the reader with the overwhelming stories of the Holocaust. “I had a hunger to make Schindler’s List a few months after E.T. The Extraterrestrial opened,” Spielberg said (PBS Online). But script and other obstacles (screenwriter Kurt Luedtke, who also wrote a script for “Out of Africa”, struggled with the script for four years and gave up without finishing) postponed the film from being made until 1992. “It took me ten years to develop a kind of maturation in order to say, ‘now I’m ready to make Schindler’s List’” (Norris 134). Spielberg hoped that Schindler’s List will reignite public awareness about the Holocaust and inspire audiences to explore its legacy in modern history. “I think it’s lucky I didn’t make the movie earlier, because I think I would have made more of a ‘Color Purple’ type of movie-more of a celebration of sentiment” (Norris 135).

When Spielberg was asked why he decided to call his film Schindler’s List rather than Schindler’s Ark, he explained that the word list was important to him. “The whole film is full of recurrent lists; there are right lists and wrong lists. And every time you see a folding table and chair and an inkwell on the table in an open air place, you get the shivers. You know people are gong to be divided, and it’s going to be done with that extra bureaucratic correctness that those lists represent.” (Eriksson, Fensch 47)

The cover of Keneally’s Schindler’s List calls the book a novel. However, it is well researched, true account that employs some of the storytelling devices of fiction. Keneally calls it a “documentary novel”. (Eriksson, Fensch 43) Most of critics, and scholars argue that Schindler’s List (Ark) is somewhere on the border between historical fiction and historical document. Some critics call the story of Oskar Schindler a didactic Holocaust telling. We know that many (most) individuals, names, places, and events are real. There is an original of Schindler’s list with names of Jews who were rescued by Schindler. Keneally personally interviewed 50 Schindler’s survivors. Oskar himself was not available, having died six years before Keneally started his book. On the other hand, not every detail in the book (and even less in the film) is documented and historically proved. There is some space for fiction in the book. In fact, Keneally admits that he purposefully skipped some facts related to the topics (for example that there was a Jewish functionary named Goldberg who had access to “Schindler’s List” and who apparently took bribes to add or bump names). (Eriksson, Fensch 42).

Schindler's List - Teaching Guide

Term Pr. Intro | Schindlers' List Book and Film | T. Keneally | S. Spielberg | Critiques | Annot. Bibliog.

Term Project: Schindler's List (Ark): The Film and the Book

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This page was last updated: 10-07-2003

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