Schindler's Legacy: True Stories of the List Survivors

This book of course takes off where the movie left off. It tracks down and interviews a select group of the survivors on Shindler's famous list. Many of whom of course refused to be interviewed, others would consent to do so only anonymously, and still others only after intense prodding. All led interesting, but as one would expect, unusually tormented lives. Most were successful; were in the twilight of their lives; and somehow had managed to put the experience behind them, that is as much as that could be done - meaning most of them buried the experiences deep in their subconscious, not to be disturbed except in their dreams or under extreme stress or duress. Alex Rosen's story resonated the most with me and was the most interesting of the lot. Alex is my age, and was the youngest among the survivors, and was the one depicted in the movie as the young Jewish ghetto denizen. Age-wise I can empathize with him and imagine, vicariously, what it must have been like to go through that experience at his age. His story is interesting for several other reasons as well: First he is the one in this book who tried to make sense out of the holocaust experience as an existential, if not as a theological problem -- not at all unlike the way that Elie Wiesel and Victor Frankl did in their books, but Alex takes an entirely different approach. He believes there are knowable answers too the questions many Jews posed in the aftermath of the holocaust experience: Why me? Why the Jews? And why was it so horrible? His belief, that he can find the answers to these questions is expressed best on page 23: "If we take the premise that there is a God, then everything that happens is just, because it's His game not mine. There has to be a legitimate reason by His way of looking at it, not by mine. There has to be a legitimate explanation - that we can understand through reason - why it happened the way it happened, why all those people died and I am still alive. But I don't know those answers right now. I can't tell you. It's knowable; it's not one of the mysteries of life. It's an answer that will eventually dawn on me." Second, his story is interesting because he eventually divorced his Jewish wife and married a black one, with which together they raised three children from split families, doing so in Queens New York. His primary family, of Jewish holocaust survivors, incredibly, and incongruously, never quite forgave him for committing this violation of the America's racist (and apparently Jewish) protocol? But finally, he gives an account of his experience that adds a poignant depth and meaning that again parallels that given by Frankl in his book, one that makes an outsider almost understand what the holocaust was like. As he puts it on page 26: "When the war ended, the trauma set in, because you are now among a different species of human being. You think: "So if this is life now, what the hell was that? What the hell was that all about? It's difficult for pe

Oskar Schindler, one remarkable man who outwitted Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to save more Jews from the gas chambers than most of the heroic rescuers during WWII.Oskar Schindler was one of only a handful who surfaced from the chaos, and generations will remember him for what he did ...When asked, Schindler told that his metamorphosis during the war was sparked by the shocking immensity of the Final Solution. In his own words: "I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."Oskar Schindler died in Frankfurt on the 9th of October, 1974, at an age of 66. From 1939 to the day he died he was such in love with his Jewish people, that he wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. His friend, a Schindler-Jew, Poldek Pfefferberg asked him shortly before he died, why he wanted to be buried here. He answered :"My children are here ....."

I'm stressing this to all, that this book is one of the greatest books I've ever read. It's very intense and real. Because of the way these Holocaust survivors explain their experiences at the concentration camps, it makes you feel as if you could've been there. The way that these survivors have achieved great goals in there lives after the Holocaust, is amazing. I recommend this book for everyone to read to get a better understanding of the Holocaust. This book is truely amazing.

I was really moved by this. It was almost as riveting as another book I read recently called Hitler's Silent Victims. I recomend this book highly.