Schindler's List

“[This] is the story of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil, a triumph in eminently measurable, statistical, unsubtle terms. […] It is easy to show the inevitability by which evil acquires all of what you could call the real estate of the story, even though good might finish up with a few imponderables like dignity and self-knowledge. Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to write of virtue.”

Thomas Keneally begins with meta-commentary on how writers approach history in order to situate his own attempts to tackle Schindler’s story. The author wants to defy expectations and write about his subjects as flawed, multifaceted individuals instead of larger-than-life characters steeped in lofty concepts like original sin.

“In times like these, [Schindler] said, it must be hard for the churches to go on telling people that their Heavenly Father cared about the death of even a single sparrow. He’d hate to be a priest […] in an era like this, when life did not have the value of a pack of cigarettes. Stern agreed but suggested […] that the Biblical reference Herr Schindler had made could be summed up by a Talmudic verse which said that he who saves the life of one man saves the entire world.”

Stern and Schindler first connect over philosophical conversations on religion. Schindler often brings up religion with Stern, who’s more educated on the topic. Schindler’s understanding of Christianity can’t be reconciled with the Nazis’ actions that he witnessed in Cracow. In the Bible passage that he quotes, an all-powerful, non-human entity cares about the sanctity of life, while in the Talmudic verse, how individual humans approach the sanctity of life is more important.

“[Schindler] must have hoped, also, as the Jews of Cracow did, that after its initial fury the regime would relax and let people breathe. […] After all, both Oskar and the Jews told themselves, the Germans were a civilized nation.”

The belief that the Nazis had reached the peak of their discrimination is a recurring motif throughout the novel. This repetition implies that preconceived ideas about German civility gave the Nazis an advantage, allowing them to blindside others who didn’t believe that people could commit such evil actions.