Schindler's List

Schindler often walks across the vacant backyard of his factory to the nearby factories for company and conversation. He visits the German Box Factory and speaks to their Treuhänders Ernst Kuhnpast and the former manager, Szymon Jereth. Schindler learns from Jereth about the cramped and terrifying experience of life inside the ghetto. Spira begins rounding up people—as many as 1,000 fellow Jews—to be shipped off in cattle cars from the ghetto.

The SS arrests Schindler at the end of 1941, likely because a non-Jewish worker in his factory reported him. Before he’s taken away for interrogation, Schindler gives Klonowska the names of his closest, most powerful contacts. Schindler is interrogated by a nameless SS bureaucrat on suspicion that he’s forging his books to steal from the Nazi regime. Schindler is treated well while in prison, and the affair clears up in a day. The SS can’t find anything wrong in his books, and Klonowska’s phone calls to Schindler’s contacts get him out of prison promptly.

Keneally introduces a parentless girl, Genia, nicknamed Redcap. She lives in the ghetto with the Dresner family. Genia was smuggled into the ghetto of Cracow for her own safety, while her parents plan to sneak in themselves and be with her one day. By this time, all the Jewish people in Cracow have been marked and registered by the government; it’s incredibly difficult for Jewish people not catalogued by the government to slip into Cracow.

On Schindler’s birthday, April 28, 1942, he kisses a Jewish girl who works at his factory and is promptly arrested. He’s taken to Montelupich, a prison run by the Gestapo and considered one of the worst prison sites under the Nazi regime. Schindler is put in a cell with the defector SS soldier Philip, who stayed on leave with his girlfriend for a few extra days and was arrested as a deserter. Schindler bribes his guards to call his contacts, while Philip rails against the SS. Schindler stays the night in Montelupich and must listen as other inmates are tortured throughout the night. After handing out more bribes and promises, he’s released.

During the summer of 1942, many ghetto residents lose hope about their future. The Blauschein (“blue mark”) is placed on the identification cards of all essential Jewish ghetto workers to mark them as people who should not be deported to the burgeoning camps outside Cracow. The beatings, terror, and looting that the SS and OD perpetuate in the ghetto increase. Henry Rosner can’t obtain the Blauschein since musicians aren’t considered essential—but a friend of Henry’s, a young chef named Richard, helps him smuggle his son, Olek, out of the ghetto.

Pfefferberg can’t obtain the Blauschein and is forced by Spira to tutor his children. Pfefferberg agrees, hoping it’ll keep him safe a little longer. Because he lacks the Blauschein, Pfefferberg is almost taken to a concentration camp, but he escapes from the people being corralled to the cattle cars and slips into a bank, where he convinces the manager, Szeppesi, to give him the mark. To do so, Pfefferberg lies and says he works at Schindler’s factory. Szepessi’s willingness to freely hand out the Blauschein lands him in Auschwitz later that year.

In June 1942, the SS begins targeting even people with Blauscheins for deportation. Many DEF workers are caught up in the deportations on June 3. Schindler must go to the train yard and retrieve his workers. There, he sees thousands of people being crammed into cattle cars for a days-long journey with no light, air, food, or insulation.

Schindler haggles, argues, and bribes his way to the train car with his workers onboard. He frees them, but the SS officers indicate that they’ll merely replace the Emalia workers with other unlucky Jewish people.

Rumors spread in the ghetto that everyone there will be sent to different camps to work or to die. Schindler and Ingrid go for a horse ride in the hills overlooking the ghetto walls. From this vantage point, they watch as an Aktion happens. People are dragged from their homes, beaten, and executed in the streets; their homes are looted. The OD beat their neighbors badly to save them from worse treatment by accompanying SS commandos. Bodies pile up in the ghetto’s central square.

Schindler watches as Redcap is escorted from her home with a large group of women and children. She lags behind the rest of the group and witnesses SS commandos brutalizing and executing a mother and her teenage son. The SS escorting Redcap don’t attempt to stop her from witnessing the scene. Horrified, Schindler realizes that the SS have no shame and no desire to hide their crimes, indicating that Redcap and the others won’t live to give testimony for what they’ve seen. Schindler resolves to do something about the horrors he has witnessed.

The Aktion continues for two days. By the end of the raid, 7,000 people are either dead or deported. To help keep people’s hopes up, the Judenrat doesn’t tell the ghetto citizens about the concentration camps. However, a man named Bacchner escapes from a camp in Belzec, returns to the Cracow ghetto, and tells the people there about the gas chambers, Zyklon B, and the mass deaths taking place in the camps. Many people don’t believe his stories because they’re so terrible.

In October 1942, Schindler builds a hutch in his factory backyard for his night-shift employees. He’s now fully committed to using his resources and connections to keep his workers safe. The Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) begins bombing known SS cafés, theaters, and offices, restricting Schindler’s ability to move around the city. The Aktions become a daily occurrence. Keneally tells the story of the Dresner family’s attempts to hide during the Aktion. Mrs. Dresner hides her daughter, Danka, in a false wall that her neighbor built. Because Mrs. Dresner can’t fit into the wall cavity, an OD boy hides her from the SS under a stairwell.

Schindler builds a second hut for his workers after Jereth urges him to do so. It’s no longer safe for Jewish people to travel in and out of the ghetto, and DEF workers are often accosted on their way to and from work.

In the fall of 1942, a Budapest Zionist rescue organization contacts Schindler through a dentist named Sedlacek. This operation, run by a man named Samu Springmann, wants to pipe money into Cracow to aid Jewish people and the various resistance organizations. Schindler tells Sedlacek about the atrocities he has seen in Cracow. Sedlacek believes him but thinks he should travel to Budapest to give a report in person to his superiors. Schindler agrees to go and begins accepting illegal caches of money to distribute among the Jewish community of Cracow. Keneally emphasizes that Schindler never used any of this money for personal gain.

Keneally recounts the story of Mordecai Wulkan, a jeweler in the ghetto who eventually worked in Schindler’s factory. The SS forces Wulkan and other metal-based artisans to sort mountains of looted metal Jewish goods by carat and value to be sent off to SS headquarters and processed. Wulkan realizes that the SS is shameless enough to make him sort through gold teeth ripped from people’s heads—people who are likely dead by the time he sifts through their belongings. The Nazi regime’s depravity causes Wulkan to sink into a deep despair.

Schindler travels to Budapest with Sedlacek to give his report to Springmann and another collaborator named Kastner. He stays several days in Budapest as he tells his story to Springmann and Kastner. Springmann brings his testimony to the Hungarian Jewish Council, which dismisses the story because of the high opinion of German culture that most of Europe held during the time. At the behest of Springmann and Sedlacek, Schindler agrees to visit Istanbul and give his testimony to another Jewish organization.

While in Budapest, Schindler meets Dr. Schmidt, an Austrian journalist who collaborates with Zedlacek’s organization. Schindler doesn’t like Schmidt, who skims money off the top of what he passes along for the organization. Schindler, unlike Schmidt, never steals from the money he’s entrusted to give to the oppressed people of Cracow.

At the end of 1942, SS Commandant Amon Goeth is sent from Lublin to oversee the construction of a labor camp named Płaszów in Cracow. Goeth’s viciousness in the Lublin Aktions earned him his current station as the overseer in Płaszów. Płaszów is built over an old Jewish cemetery, and the headstones are used as paving stones. After surveying the beginnings of Płaszów and his villa, Goeth meets with select Treuhänders and industry giants of Cracow like Schindler and Madritsch. Goeth tries to entice them to move their operations into Płaszów: Any factory inside Płaszów won’t have to pay for enslaved Jewish labor or pay rent for their factory premises. While the others move their operations into Płaszów, Schindler refuses. Goeth thinks this is because Schindler is protecting his profit.

To highlight Goeth’s shamelessness and viciousness, Keneally recounts the execution of Diana Reiter. Płaszów was constructed by Jewish forced labor, and Diana Reiter, an architect, oversaw the pouring of cement bases for the Płaszów barracks. Reiter insists to the SS that something’s wrong and the cement must be repoured. Goeth hates Reiter’s sense of pride and the way she speaks to him as if they’re equals. He forces SS noncommissioned officer Hujar to execute her in front of the work crew. Reiter’s execution demoralizes the workers, who nonetheless continue working without complaint, while Goeth is rattled by the defiance Reiter shows until the very end.