Schindler's List
...hing contacts for a long time and knew just the right people to ask for his paperwork. The book recounts how he met many of his friends, what he did to please his contacts, and when he got the idea to use Jews for labor. This part isn’t the most gripping of the book, but it includes many key plot elements that need to be read carefully in order to understand the rest of the book. As it moves on through his setting up the plant, the novel simultaneously describes the setting up of the Krakow Ghetto, the procedures there, and what suffering the Jews were going through. Schindler witnessed many accounts of Nazi savagery; once when he was on a horse ride with his secretary (He was also quite a ladies man-he had a wife, a Polish mistress, and an affair with his secretary, all at the same time), he saw the mother of a toddler shot and the child kicked to death. Here is where the book is a good novel. Some of the weaker stomached readers might have problems with it, but it makes people realize that Auschwitz wasn’t the only place where horrifying acts of cruelty and inhumanity took place. If a person survived an aktion (the SS came and hauled selected Jews off to Auschwitz) their chances were still good that they would be picked up in the next one, two weeks later. People were shot for being seen out after six ‘o clock. When the ghetto was liquidated, they burned the entire thing to kill off all of the people in hiding. I’d describe more, but then why read the book? As it progresses into the growth and development of Plazow, the story shifts into more of a survivor’s account of the events in a concentration camp. This is where Keneally shines-he can go from one genre to the next so smoothly that if you’re not paying full attention, you miss it. It describes the savage acts of Amon Goeth, the commandant of the camp, who took pleasure in shooting people for no reason. He often would use it as an incentive to work harder. For example, some men hauling coal were moving to slow for his l...