Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities, and the True Story Behind the List

As background reading for my Masters thesis it is a good book. As light reading for one who might have a passing interest in Schindler, the book is protracted and discursive. The edition I read was possibly the worst edited book I have ever read! The historian Sir Ian Kershaw is introduced as Kreshaw!!...........and so the errors persist. Crowe has researched his topic well, using a vast number of sources and quoting the work of others (notably Robin O'Neill - former student of Sir Martin Gilbert - who has researched Schindler too). A particularly interesting facet of this work is the cross-referencing/comparison of Schindler's life and deeds with Spielberg's film. This was most useful and interesting and dispels many of the myths that filmgoers might accept as fact. A good book - spoilt by poor editing - revealing the man behind the myth: warts and all!

This book is an incredibly detailed biography of Oskar Schindler. Because it is so detailed, sometimes it is not easy to read. On the other hand, Crowe certainly presents a far more complete picture of Schindler than does Thomas Kenneally's novel. Crowe's discussion of Schindler's prewar career is especially interesting. The novel Schindler's List seemed (at least to me) to imply that Schindler was a successful businessman before World War II. But Crowe suggests that Schindler was essentially a drunken ne'er-do-well until about 1935, when Schindler began to get a steady income by spying for the German Abwehr (military intelligence). Schindler helped recruit German agents in order to aid Germany's conquest of Czechoslovakia, and was so heavily involved with Abwehr that the Czech government imprisoned him for spying in 1938 and investigated him for war crimes after World War II. When war broke out, Schindler moved east with the German army, believing that there was easy money to be made. Paradoxically, Schindler's involvement with Abwehr made his wartime heroics possible- not just by placing him in Eastern Europe, but also because his Abwehr connections helped him avoid being harassed by the Gestapo. In addition, the Abwehr bureaucracy was generally hostile to the SS (which had its own spies and was thus a bureaucratic rival), so perhaps Schindler's Abwehr associations helped to turn him against Nazism. This book also tries to answer the question: why did Schindler work so hard to protect his Jewish workers? Crowe concludes that by the end of the war, Schindler was probably motivated primarily by moral considerations. But at the beginning of the war, Schindler had economic motives for protecting Jews as well: because Jews were essentially slaves, they were far cheaper to employ than Christian Poles. While Schindler paid Poles up to $10 per hour, he could rent Jews for less than $2 a day from the SS. Schindler's involvement with Jews was a gradual process:as late as 1942, his workforce was overwhelmingly Christian, and he had only a few Jewish employees. But even in the war's early days, one of Schindler's Jewish employees, Abraham Bankier, was indispensable because of his skills in making black market profits for Schindler. But an employer solely interested in money would have abandoned his Jewish employees once the SS began to insist on liquidating them.

Amazing, fascinating, horrifying and sad is the story of Oscar Schindler, Emilie and others, as written in David M Crowe's well researched and easily readable biography. Oscar evolved into a deeply good good man, with great skill, courage and sharp wit, who flaws were also in many ways his strong points it seems to me in achieving what he did, and was an immensely admirable person. And it is sad that brilliant nice people don't usually get what they deserve, as loss of health and tragic failures after the war were the last things he deserved. There are a lot of horrible events and people described in this book, but also acts of humanity, kindness and braveness by many in the Oscar Schindler story, those three traits in particular summing up Oscar. There are more than a few instances of the Nazi hypocracies and madness, being used against them as they are outwitted in this story. An amazing and moving story. It's true that there's a lot of detail in this book and it can be hard going to keep up with it all, but i found the subject matter of Schindler enough to more than motivate me to keep turning the pages. One of the best sections of the book was Oscar's meeting in budapest i think it was, with aid organisation representatives for jews in occupied europe. Here you get a chance to discover what Oscar's thoughts were in relation to the war, holocaust and where he was at in action amongst it all. There is a lot of other detail in the book, not so involving, but the holocaust was a huge bureaucratic operation and apart from that, there weren't too many people with the liberty to document or concentrate on individual coming and goings, in the new cut throat order of the glorious third reich. So a lot of the superfluous information not directly relating to Oscars' daily life, is both understandably from a research point of view and also is relevant because this is precisely the world that Oscar was operating in. I think the author has done a great job on bringing us a biography on a man whos life and good deeds, never really got the reward they deserved(which is why life is as it is!) and because Oscar remained relatively obscure, much of his life details just wern't important enough for anyone to record for prosperities sake. Mr Crowe is more critical of Oscar than i feel he should be, for example, he disaproves when Oscar tell's the afore mentioned agents in Budapest that they must admit, in the intellectual realm the jew is really a dangerous competitor for the nazis. Is that such a bad and unaccurate thing to say, in light of the situation? I feel Schindler's own intelligence and strength of character is not given enough credit in the book; due to the fact that he was out to exploit the situation for personal monetary gain intially(i.e. he was a opportunistic business man cashing in on the war and occupation), and because he lost his health and failed after the war finished, it is easy to put his success down to war time craziness and the sk

The historical Oskar Schindler is much more complex than the charming rogue portrayed in the "Schindler's List" of film and novel. In this definative new biography, Mr. Crowe has done impressive research in uncovering new archives and interviews to depict the Nazi spy/businessman who became a "righteous gentile" in saving Jews from certain death during World War II. Mr. Crowe is a Holocaust historian who has documented other Nazi atrocities in his 1996 work, "A History of the Gypies in Eastern Europe and Russia." The reader will be surprised to learn that Oskar Schindler had nothing to do with the creation of the life-giving lists that gave the title to the film by Steven Spielberg and the book by Thomas Keneally. Schnidler was in prison briefly when the lists were created by other persons. This does not diminished the other heroic acts that Schindler and his wife performed to save the Jews they came in contact with during the final two years of the World War II. He spent his war-profiteering fortune on bribes and supplies for those Jews in his care. It is sad that in the the madness of the Holocaust Oskar Schindler found the only success of his life. After the war, it was all downhill for the alcoholic womanizer who died in poverty in 1974. The book is very well-written and will interest those readers who desire to know what was the reality behind Schindler's List.