This NY Times book review examines Holocaust historian David M. Crowe’s authoritative new biography of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis during World War II.
Interestingly, Mr. Crowe’s book — Oskar Schindler: The Untold Account of His Life, Wartime Activities and the True Story Behind the List (Westview Press 2004) — differs sharply with the idealized portrayal of Schindler in the Oscar-winning 1993 Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List and Thomas Keneally’s 1982 historical novel that inspired the movie.
One of the particularly interesting differences between the book and the movie is how Schindler’s Jewish workers are depicted as Schindler prepares to flee in the face of the Russian invaders. In the movie, the Jews are depicted as worn down and overwhelmed. Mr. Crowe contends that the Schindler had in fact prepared the Jews to be “an armed guerilla group. “They were armed to the teeth, ready to fight till the death.”
Check out the review.