I recently listened to Tom Keneally on the Stories Behind the Story Podcast, and he was speaking about Schindler’s Ark, which I haven’t read! Of Tom Keneally’s books, I’ve read The Daughters of Mars and Three Famines.
With some shame, I admit that I hadn’t even watched the Schindler’s List movie, which is also award-winning, like the book. The movie was released in the 90s, when I was in high school, and I wasn’t watching much TV or watching movies then.
After hearing Tom talk about the book, I watched the movie straight away.
Then I’ve been in the process of diving deeper into Schindler, having just finished listening to the Searching for Schindler audio book.
It really has been touching, particularly in light of my having read the Tattooist of Auschwitz earlier this year, and having read The Boy In Striped Pyjamas a couple of years ago. Both of these novels were really personal too, but reading Searching for Schindler has made many of the characters in Keneally’s book real people.
I know that the atrocities of WWII are real, and that it happened to real people, but I’m so far removed by history and geography, even with a husband in the Army, that it took this deep dive into Schindler for me to wake up a bit.
It’s within the living memory of many people. The trauma and horrors that they have survived with are unbelievable to me, and yet many of the survivors seem to have thrived.
My mind also boggles at the hatred of minorities, and anti-semitism, although Searching for Schindler does unpack this a bit. Intellectually, I can try to understand some reasons, but I cannot understand the deep hatred for no reason other than a religious difference.
Anyway, all this is still very raw for me, and I’m still processing watching the movie and listening to Searching for Schindler. I haven’t even read the whole book, Schindler’s Ark yet, but it is now on my list for the coming year!
