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Schindler's Ark Archive Reveals Original Schindler's List

by Tina Kells | April 6, 2009 at 10:42 am

432 views | 13 Recommendations | 4 comments

It's no secret that the movie Schindler's List was inspired by a true story as documented in the Booker Prize-winning novel Schindler's Ark, but the factual accuracy of the account has remained a source of debate. One source of debate is whether or not Oskar Schindler ever kept any real lists.

Recently re-discovered documents in Sydney, Australia, have unveiled a real-life hard copy of a list of 801 Jewish people who were saved from Nazi Holocaust concentration camps during WWII.

In 1996 the New South Wales State Library acquired a box of research material from Australian author Thomas Keneally, who wrote the novel Schindler's Ark.

13 years later the archive box of research materials was discovered to contain an actual list of names ending the debate as to whether a real Schindler's list ever existed.

The 13-page document, a yellowed and fragile carbon typescript copy of the original, was found between research notes and German newspaper clippings in one of the boxes, library co-curator Olwen Pryke said.

Pryke described the 13-page list as "one of the most powerful documents of the 20th Century" and was stunned to find it in the library's collection.

"This list was hurriedly typed on April 18, 1945, in the closing days of WWII, and it saved 801 men from the gas chambers," she said.

"It?s an incredibly moving piece of history."

She said the library had no idea the list was among six boxes of material acquired in 1996 relating to Keneally's Booker Prize-winning novel, originally published as "Schindler's Ark".

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elphesadente

at 02:02 on April 7th, 2009

To read my thoughts and see all my pictures about Auschwitz - Birkenau, please click on the link http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/446089/72331f63550f5dd9d5adde81325562fc

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Rhonda J Mangus

at 20:47 on April 7th, 2009

Sorry I missed this, Tina.

deshan10

at 02:37 on April 8th, 2009

Author of Booker Prize-winning Schindler's Ark (later turned into the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg), Mr. Keneally is one of the nicest human beings you could ever have tea with. He was a participant at the Galle Literary Festival 2009 in Sri Lanka.

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Ross Nicholson (not verified)

at 22:40 on April 11th, 2009

Hi, Steven Spielberg and I cooked up Shindler's List in a Chinese restaurant in Dallas, Texas, in 1972. The Shindler story was well known to Steven at the time. We made several adjustments. The villa was not built overlooking the camp. The trainload of people starving and thirsting to death was, according to Steve, merely an unfortunate accident due to a misunderstanding about the train schedule. The nazis didn't really have a picnic laughing at the dying Jews. They were much more brutal than that. Similarly, I got Steve to show the gravestones in the roadways instead of what the nazis did, which was so much worse--they placed them inscriptions down and covered them up. The commandant's housekeeper's actual experience in the film was much less brutal and horrifying than what really took place, because the poor woman was still living at the time. The 'actual list' found in this story is just a prop, since Steve and I made it all up. P.s. those are my dad's old cufflinks at the beginning of the show.