Study Questions for Keneally's Schindler's List

Author's Note & Prologue (Due: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 DAY 2)

  1. Describe our initial encounter with the key setting and figures of the text. What impression do they create?

Chapters 1-3 (Due: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Day 2)

  1. What appears to be Schindler's attitude toward his nationality, toward his ethnicity?
    How does he seem to view the rise of Nationalism Socialism?
  2. Early on, what does Itzhak Stern think of the Jews' situation (see 45)? How does he view Schindler at first?
  3. On page 46, Keneally says that Stern has an "ancestral gift." What does that mean and what are its implications?
  4. What does Keneally say about Schindler on the top of page 52? Purpose?
  5. Why does Keneally speculate about Pfefferberg's potential killing of Schindler on page 53?

Chapters 4-7 (Due: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 Day 7)

  1. How does Keneally explain Schindler's rationale for warning Stern about the upcoming Aktion?
  2. What was Hans Frank's view of the "Jewish problem"? What various policies were considered?
  3. What do the Einsatzgruppen do at Stara Boznica?
  4. Describe the "plausible reconstruction" of the party in Chapter 5. What views and attitudes are presented, and by whom?
  5. What does Keneally say about Schindler's business dealings in Chapter 6?
  6. What was Schindler's view of Frank's 1940 "evacuation" of Cracow?
  7. Why does Keneally include the anecdote about David and Leon C.?
  8. How is the Judenrat characterized at the end of Chapter 7?

Chapters 8-12 (Due: Tuesday, October 11, 2006 Day 3)

  1. What do we learn about the history of the Jews in Cracow and Poland in Chapter 8?
  2. What is Edith Liebgold's reaction to her encounter with Schindler? How is this dramatized by Keneally?
  3. What does the story of Schindler's trip back to Zwittau (and his interactions with his wife and father) add to our impression of him?
  4. What rationale does Keneally offer for Pfefferberg's decision to join the OD?
  5. What does Keneally emphasize about the OD and Spira's Political Section?
  6. What key event and change occurs at the end of Chapter 10?
  7. Why is Schindler arrested (the first time)? Do we sense that he is ever in any real peril?
  8. Why is Schindler arrested a second time? Describe his conversation with the SS officer in prison. How does Schindler secure his release?

Chapters 13-14 (Due: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 Day 2)

  1. What appears to be happening in the ghetto by 1942?
  2. What decision do the Rosners make?
  3. Who is Herr Szepessi and what happens to him?
  4. How is Bankier's rescue from the cattle cars dramatized?
  5. At this point, do Bankier and the other Jews seem aware of the fate from which they have spared? Does Schindler?

Chapter 15-16 (Due: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 Day 7)

  1. What has become clear with the onset of the June 1942 Aktion?
  2. How is the OD's brutality explained?
  3. How does Keneally choose to represent Schindler's experience of the Aktion?
  4. What conclusions does Schindler draw on page 130?
  5. Describe the "red Genia" scene, and Schindler's perceptions of it. What resolution does he appear to reach at the end? Is this credible?
  6. What revelation is made at the beginning of Chapter 16? What does Keneally say about its impact? What conclusion does Schindler draw from what he has seen in Krakusa Street?
  7. Discuss the comparison of Schindler and Wachtmeister Bosko (also see 218).
  8. What "style of resistance" do most, such as Artur Rosenzweig, employ?

Chapters 17-20 (Due: Wednesday, November 1, 2006 Day 6)

  1. Who are Sedlacek and Springmann? How and why have they sought out Schindler? How does Schindler react?
  2. Of what are we reminded toward the end of Chapter 17?
  3. Of what does Schindler inform Kastner and Springmann on his trip to Budapest, and what impact does this have on them?
  4. Describe Amon Goeth. Does Keneally make an attempt to provide any explanation for Goeth's temperament and behavior? For the fact that nothing "could embarrass the SS" (167)?
  5. Why does Goeth conclude, according to Keneally, that Schindler will resist his efforts?
  6. What happens to Diana Reiter? What do we learn about Goeth's apparent beliefs here?
  7. Keneally suggests that the majority of Goeth's being "lay beyond the normal rational processes of humans" (171). Do you find this characterization acceptable?
  8. What is Schindler's view of Goeth?
  9. How does Stern comfort Schindler?
  10. Discuss the clearing of the ghetto in March 1943.

Chapters 21-23 (Due: Wednesday, November 8, 2006 Day 4)

  1. How does Pfefferberg escape from the ghetto?
  2. Describe some of the features of life, and death, in Plaszow.
  3. What project does Schindler undertake?
  4. What term do we come across for the first time in the story in Chapter 22?
  5. Describe conditions at Emalia (DEF).
  6. Why is Rabbi Levartov brought to Emalia, and what does Schindler's treatment of him suggest about Schindler's view of Jews?

Chapters 24-26 (Due: Tuesday, November 16, 2006 Day 9)

  1. By the summer of 1943, what has begun to arise among the population at Emalia?
  2. What lesson do we draw from the differing fates of Lamus, the Danziger brothers, and Krautwirt?
  3. What comment does Keneally make about the gallows?
  4. Comment on the comparison of Schindler and Wachtmeister Bosko.
  5. How does Schindler attempt to restrain Goeth and what impact does it have?
  6. What is the "divine irony" referred to on page 224?
  7. What does Keneally emphasize about Schindler's financial practices in Chapter 25?
  8. Who was Raimond Titsch, and what did he leave behind?
  9. Discuss Keneally's consideration of Schindler as a mythic figure on page 232.
  10. What happens to Plaszow in January 1944, and what are the implications?

Chapters 27-29 (Due: Tuesday, November 23, 2006 Day 7)

  1. What do we begin to see by the spring of 1944, and in what ways does this directly affect Plaszow?
  2. What do we learn about the former ghetto leaders?
  3. What is the Gesundheitaktion in Chapter 28?
  4. How does Schindler react to the attempted assassination of Hitler?
  5. How does Keneally comment on Schindler's attitude and behavior in the cattle-car scene?
  6. Whom does Goeth purge from the camps and how?

Chapters 30-32 (Due: Friday, December 1, 2006 Day 6)

  1. What is the Nazi's plan for Schindler's factory and the Jews of Plaszow?
    How does he react? The Jews?
  2. What parallel does Keneally refer to regarding Schindler's wager for Helen Hirsch?
  3. How does Keneally assess Schindler's motives for establishing a new factory?
  4. What are some of the obstacles he faces in setting a new factory in Brinnlitz, and how are these overcome?
  5. How was the list prepared? Who controlled it? How did one get on it?

Chapters 33-35 (Due: Friday, December 8 Day 4)

  1. How does Keneally assess the complaints of those who were left off the list?
  2. Describe the experiences of the women at Auschwitz?
  3. Why is Schindler arrested for a third time, and how does he obtain his release?
  4. How does Schindler arrange for the release of the women from Auschwitz?
  5. What happens to many of the children at Brinnlitz, and their parents?
  6. What does Schindler's wife do upon the arrival of the women from Auschwitz?
  7. How is life at Brinnlitz characterized (see, e.g., pages 337 and 340)?
  8. What "dangerous policy" are Schindler and the Jews undertaking at Brinnlitz?
    How do they get away with it?
  9. What is the irony about the way in which Schindler develops an arsenal from weapons obtained largely through Otto Rasch?

Chapters 36-38 (Due: Friday, December 15 Day 2)

  1. From what do Schindler and Sussmuth suffer?
  2. With whom is Schindler compared on page 350? Why does Keneally refer to him as a "minor god"?
  3. Why does Schindler decide that Liepold must be replaced, and how does accomplish this?
  4. Whom does Schindler now fear and why?
  5. Describe Schindler's May 8 speech.
  6. What happens to the camp, and the prisoners, at the end of the war?
  7. How does Keneally assess the execution of the kapo?
  8. What does the Russian liberator of the camp advise them on page 383?
  9. Describe Schindler's journey upon leaving Brinnlitz. How is he eventually captured?

Epilogue (Due: Monday, December 18, 2006 Day 3)

  1. What are the main features of Schindler's post-WWII life?

General Questions (Due: Monday, December 18, 2006 Day 3)

  1. How does Keneally present and characterize Oskar Schindler?
    Where and how does he explain and assess his behavior and motives?
  2. What "novelistic" devices and techniques does Keneally use (see Author's Note comments)?
    Consider plot, point of view, setting, characterization, dialogue, and so on.
  3. How does Keneally treat the progression of the Jews' experience in Poland?
  4. How is Plaszow represented in the novel? What are daily conditions like and how are they represented?
  5. How are the victims of the Nazis presented? What kinds of people do we encounter? How are they characterized?
  6. How are non-Jews presented (and consider the differences, if any, between German and non-German, between Nazi and non-Nazi)?
  7. How does Keneally treat history (the history of the Jews, and European Jews in particular, of Germany, of the 20th century, etc.)?
  8. How does Keneally represent the varying degrees of violence against the Jews, ranging from anti-Semitic abuse, to the clearing of the ghetto, to individual executions, to the processes of extermination?
  9. To what extent in the novel do we get an overall picture of the Shoah?
  10. To what extent does Keneally analyze the behavior of those working for the Nazis (including complicitous Jews, non-Jewish Poles, Nazi soldiers and guards, SS officers, and various key figures of the Nazi leadership)?
  11. Keneally's text was initially titled Schindler's Ark. What do we make of the change of the title?
  12. In the end, what do we take away from Keneally's text?