This is the captivating story behind Schindler's List, the Booker Prize--winning book and the Academy Award--winning Spielberg film. Keneally tells the tale of the unlikely encounter that propelled him to write about Oskar Schindler and of the impact of his extraordinary account on people around the world.

Thomas Keneally met Leopold "Poldek" Pfefferberg, the owner of a Beverly Hills luggage shop, in 1981. Poldek, a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor, had a tale he wanted the world to know. Charming, charismatic, and persistent, he convinced Keneally to relate the incredible story of "the all-drinking, all-screwing, all-black-marketeering Nazi, Oskar Schindler. But to me he was Jesus Christ."

Searching for Schindler is the engrossing chronicle of Keneally's pursuit of one of history's most fascinating and paradoxical heroes. Traveling throughout the United States, Germany, Israel, Poland, and Austria, Keneally and Poldek interviewed people who had known Schindler and uncovered their indelible memories of the Holocaust. Keneally's powerful narrative rose quickly to the top of bestseller lists. Steven Spielberg's magnificent film adaptation went on to fulfill Poldek's dream of winning "an Oscar for Oskar." (Keneally's anecdotes about Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and other cast members will delight film buffs.)

Written with candor and humor, Seaching for Schindler is an intimate look at Keneally's growth as a writer and the enormous success of his portrait of Oskar Schindler.

The Santa Ana winds blow down into the Los Angeles Basin from the north and northeast. They are torrents of air, starved for water in the deserts of Nevada and California. Racing to the sea over the Sierras, picking up heat, dust and spores as they fall, they flow through passes and canyons down into the basin of that great desert city, bringing with them a sense of displacement and filling the air with a strange, malign electricity.

It was late October of 1980, and for me the wind had a curiosity value, a little like an anecdotally useful experience of a slight earth tremor. The heat and bearing of the wind swept me along Wilshire Boulevard as I went out to shop, looking for a modestly priced briefcase in Beverly Hills, unsure that I was in a zone where such banal things were sold. Passing exorbitant Rodeo Drive on my left, one block from the hotel, I saw, stretching away south, a street that seemed to have normal shops, and family cars bearing the scuffs of suburban use. Malls had not yet subsumed the business of such centers as this, and people seemed to be busily parking and seeking out plain, useful human wares.

I had plenty of time to shop. My plane was not leaving for Sydney until the following night. In those days Australia was not a glamor destination, and only a few brave American space travelers joined us natives on the bi- or triweekly planes to the far southwest of the Pacific and my vast native continent, which many Americans still confused with Austria, and whose chief claim to international renown was the lambasting Germaine Greer gave its patriarchy in The Female Eunuch.

I had not gone far along the normal-looking street, South Beverly Drive, when opposite a Hamburger Haven I encountered a store named the Handbag Studio. Its goods looked out at me through the glass, out past banners which declared the Handbag Studio's Fall Sale. On these placards, kid skin, cowhide, pigskin, snakeskin and crocodile were mentioned, but above all, discount percentages.

I hesitated, always a nervous shopper. But the shopkeeper soon appeared beside me, having stepped out from within. He had a stocky Slavic look and resembled the great character actor Theodore Bickel--a touch of Tartar in the cheeks, a barrel chest, powerful arms, a wrestler's neck. He wore a white shirt, a conservative tie and a good jacket with an Eagle Scout pin nested in its lapel. There was a glitter of fraternal amusement in his eyes. Even then, I believe I perceived that he had dealt in markets beyond my knowing.

He said, "So it's a hundred and five degrees out here and you don't want to come into my air-conditioned store. Do you think I'll eat you?"

"I was just looking for a briefcase," I said defensively.

"I have the best, young man. Hong Kong and Italy. The best!"

With these assurances, I let myself be led into the store, which--as he had promised--was cool.

"I have a good case," I told him earnestly.

My wife and daughters had given it to me. But one of its hinges had gone, and the other hinge was tearing too. The storekeeper respected my sentimental attachment to the old one, but pointed out that such harm was unlikely to befall what he was offering me. "You just can't put everything in them. A truck? They're not a truck, you know!" And his wide-set Tartar eyes glimmered.

He introduced me to his salesman, a man named Sol. They both had the same sort of Eastern European whimsy, but you could see at once Sol's was of the melancholy rather than the exuberant strain.

As we chatted, the proprietor said, "I must compliment you, sir, on your beautiful British...

 

"Had I read Searching for Schindler before making the film, I may have made it an hour longer. I owe you so much. The world owes you more."

 

Thomas Keneally has won international acclaim for his novels Schindler's List (the basis for the movie and the winner of the Booker Prize), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates, Gossip from the Forest, The Playmaker, Woman of the Inner Sea, A River Town, Office of Innocence, and The Tyrant's Novel. His most recent works of nonfiction are A Commonwealth of Thieves, The Great Shame, and American Scoundrel. He resides in Sydney,...

 

Searching for Schindler by Thomas Keneally
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