Schindler’s List in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Mar 30, 2018 CrystalIsReading on StoryGraph rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-non-fiction, around-the-world-challenge, non-fiction, historical-fiction, memoir-bio-autobio, social-justice-issues, jewish

A stunning story, even for one who has already seen the movie made of this book. The movie is heavy enough, but the book feels harder still, full of details about death and torture and hatred in the camps. Not gory detail, but enough to haunt an imaginative reader. Schindler, even more than in the movie, stands out as a larger-than-life figure, poly-amorous before his time, reckless and daring and jovial and cunning. The author often writes with a rather indulgent tone of Schindler, but one wond A stunning story, even for one who has already seen the movie made of this book. The movie is heavy enough, but the book feels harder still, full of details about death and torture and hatred in the camps. Not gory detail, but enough to haunt an imaginative reader. Schindler, even more than in the movie, stands out as a larger-than-life figure, poly-amorous before his time, reckless and daring and jovial and cunning. The author often writes with a rather indulgent tone of Schindler, but one wonders if that tone was picked up from the interviews with the Schindlerjuden. Knowing the gratitude of having one's life saved by such a man would certainly contribute to tolerance of whatever personal weaknesses the man exhibited outside of his heroism. A pretty remarkable heroism. So the main impression one comes away with after reading this book is that even the most flawed person, in the most messed-up situation, can bring good from it, and can save a life--or many--by doing so.
The other character that stood out, in strong contrast to Schindler, was Amon Goeth. I felt a much stronger sense of him, and his absolute evil, in this story than in the movie. We aren't teased with false (and insulting) ideas of lingering emotions between Amon and Lena. The man was a sadistic monster, and while his eventual fate is well deserved, it's a shame for the sake of so many innocent lives that it took so long to arrive.
My quibbles? The writing style itself distracted me. Lots of random sentence fragments that went nowhere. I frequently read and reread sentences or whole paragraphs to understand what was going on, and what the implied but absent verb might be. I still grasped what the author was communicating, but it was distracting. Also, the fact that this book was both novel and biography could be weird at times--so full of documented facts, but then with admittedly conjectured conversations, personal emotions, and other interactions. The author is very upfront about his methodology (and his reason for writing like this--that he was a novelist writing a biography, not a historian or biographer, so he wrote how he knew.
Also a weakness of my own was that I struggled to remember and keep separate all the Eastern European and Jewish names, to remember how to pronounce the place names and keep them separate. That's not the author's fault, and I improved as the book went on. But it is a challenge to be aware of. if you think you'll struggle with the same, but want to read the book (as you should), perhaps keep an index card nearby with frequent names and brief identifying facts written on it?
I feel like I learned a lot from this book. So much of it horrifying, but also incredibly important, enriching my understanding of Poland in WWII, the experience of Jews during the Holocaust, how various industries contributed to the German war effort, and glimpses of other less frequently discussed parts of Europe during that same time period. This isn't a light read. I had to read it in portions for my own sanity most of the time. And yet it's a compelling reach. I was rarely bored, and often read more than I meant to in one sitting. I highly recommend this. ...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Debbie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

This fictionalized biography tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a war profiteer, who gradually comes to sympathize with the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust. Through his factory, he manages to save the lives of thousands of Jews.

Schindler is a complicated character who forces us to think about what really makes a man good or evil.

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