History would not normally be concerned with such a man as Oskar Schindler, a mere minor player in the sybaritic night life of a small Polish city during an unspeakable war. But history is not an exact science, and Oskar Schindler is remembered, as few men have ever been, in the testimony of 1,300 Jewish workers who escaped Poland's cities of death because Schindler, against every probability, became a possessed man, ready to risk everything in a daring, almost flaunted mission of rescue.
The versatile Australian novelist, Thomas Keneally, tells the true story of Schindler's rescue effort in this remarkable book ["Schindler's List"] which has the immediacy and the almost unbearable detail of a thousand eyewitnesses who forgot nothing. The story is not only Schindler's. It is the story of Cracow's dying ghetto and the forced labor camp outside of town, at Plaszow. It is the story of Amon Goeth, Plaszow's commandant and Schindler's dark twin. (pp. 1, 38)
