Schindler's List

Schindler's List Summary | Prologue Summary

The novel opens in the autumn of 1943 in Poland, as Herr Oskar Schindler is described. He is a tall, classy, chain-smoking man, who dresses well, possesses an air of dignity and playful decadence. He is a womanizer, who carries on affairs with mistresses, leaving his dutiful wife in Moravia. The author notes that we cannot look at the story of Oskar Schindler simply through his character description, for it contains so much more than the façade of an indulgent movie star. "But it will not be possible to see the story of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil, a triumph in eminently measurable, statistical, unsubtle terms. When you work from the other end of the beast - when you chronicle the predictable and measurable success evil generally achieves - it is easy to be wise, wry, piercing, to avoid bathos. It is easy to show the inevitability by which evil acquires all of what you could call the real estate of the story, even though good might finish up with a few imponderables like dignity and self-knowledge. Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue" (Keneally 14). Everyone looks to Schindler with confidence and respect.

As the prologue begins, Schindler is on his way to meet Commandant Amon Goeth, the SS Director of the forced-labor camp of Plaszow. Schindler, a frequent diner at the camps, is always dressed well to feast, bringing gifts of liquor and cognac on a regular basis. Nonetheless, under the guise of friendship, he truly does not like the overweight Goeth and looks to his evenings of dining with a loathsome fury. Schindler enters Plaszow, taking in the surroundings. On this occasion, he brings a gold-plated cigarette case, as Goeth will accept nothing less than gold-plated items. Goeth claims to be a poet of sorts, so he uses metaphoric irony with all his daily activities and even with his design of the camp. For instance, the pavement is made from Jewish headstones, as the campgrounds used to be a Jewish cemetery.

Upon his entrance, Schindler notices the barracks, which hold 20,000 Jewish prisoners. We meet a prisoner named Poldek Pfefferberg, a middle-aged man who used to be a high school teacher in Podgorze. A young boy named Lisiek, Goeth's nineteen-year-old orderly, is on his way to Goeth's villa, worried about the bathtub. He fears that there is a ring of dirt in it that Goeth will find in the morning. Lisiek had been a student of Pfefferberg before the war. We also meet Helen Hirsch, Goeth's mistreated maid, another previous student of Pfefferberg. Upon his entrance to the villa, Schindler sees Henry and Leo Rosner playing the violin and accordion respectively.

Next, we meet the regular group of SS men who dine at Goeth's villa in Plaszow. The first group Schindler notices includes the SS head soldiers named Julian Scherner and Rolf Czurda. These men are older than Goeth, bald, and bordering on obesity. The oldest man in the company is Herr Franz Bosch, the economic advisor to Julian Scherner and a veteran of the First World War. Schindler hates Bosch and the two police chiefs, tolerating them only for personal reasons. Julius Madritsch, the owner of a uniform factory within the camp, and his manager Raimund Titsch, are the only people with whom Schindler shares some similar feelings about the war. The two men justify their actions by claiming that they are keeping these men alive by giving them work, while the latter even risked imprisonment by smuggling them food. The SS do like Oskar Schindler, despite the fact that they view him as slightly less sophisticated than themselves. Still, Schindler possesses an uncanny charisma that makes him beloved amongst women and respected by his fellow German man. The men bring four over-coiffed women - essentially high-class, overpriced German whores - to dinner.

The early dinner conversation lags a bit, until Bosch approaches Schindler about his enamelware factory, Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik (DEF). Schindler despises Bosch's manipulation of his work and realizes it happens when they normally meet. Since his business is booming, Bosch wants Schindler to donate some of his pots and pans to the war cause. Schindler obliges, claiming that his secretary will take care of all the paperwork. Bosch quickly comments on her good looks, and wonders how Schindler manages to have such a woman on the side of his wife. He comments that Schindler must have a good handle and control on Emilie, his wife. Schindler is angered by this comment, thinking that Bosch knows nothing of his life, his marriage or the similar circumstances of marriage he followed in the vein of his own father.

An attractive Polish maid named Lena then serves the men soup. Schindler knows that she is Jewish, but does not wear the yellow armband and traditional Jewish prisoner uniform. Everyone notices the bruises at her jaw line. The men joke about his treatment of her, which only worsens when he is reminded of her Jewishness. The evening continues as all the men fall into drunkenness. It is revealed that Schindler is not a soldier, had never succumbed to the Reich. Everyone laughs about Schindler, imagining him in uniform.

Later that evening, Amon finds Liesek in the villa and slaps him viciously because of the rings on the bathtub. Pfefferberg witnesses this attack, fearing the worst. He finds out later that Liesek was shot dead.

Schindler visits Lena, the maid, in her kitchen quarters, as all the men enjoy their women. Her name is actually Helen Hirsch, and she lives in fear of her life. Schindler advises her that Goeth will never kill her, for he enjoys her too much. She is beaten consistently, but never raped, as Goeth could not actually enjoy a Jewish woman in that respect. However, she realizes that she lives in miserable survival, eating better than all other prisoners and unfortunately escaping death. Schindler gives her a kiss on the forehead, a sign of respect and admiration for such a woman. After their discussion, Helen gives Schindler four thousand zlote, her occupational salary, so that he can use it to buy her sister for his factory. Schindler obliges and tells her he will try to bring her to his factory, which all the Jews know as "Schindler's Emalia," a place where he gives Jews a chance to live.

As the prologue ends, the story begins of this telling of the legend of Oskar Schindler. The novel will open as the story of how Schindler's DEF factory began and how he built a business of saving over one thousand Jewish prisoners from the Nazi regime.