A new book by Elon University history professor David Crowe offers a compelling look at the life of Oskar Schindler, the man who saved more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust.
Titled “Oskar Schindler,” Crowe’s book reveals that Schindler played no role in the creation of his famed list, and that bribery and influence played a larger role than humanitarian concerns in deciding which Jews got on the list.
Crowe also examines the complex relationship that Schindler had with Amon Göth, who was executed after World War II for atrocities he committed as commandant of the Plaszow forced labor camp in Poland.
The book also looks at Schindler’s troubled relationship with his wife, Emilie, who he abandoned in Argentina in 1957. Emilie Schindler came to hate her husband and bitterly criticized filmmaker Steven Spielberg and others for their failure to recognize her role in working with Oskar Schindler during the war.
Crowe’s book has earned praise for its thorough examination of Schindler’s life.
“(Crowe’s) research is prodigious,” says Michael Berenbaum of The University of Judaism in Los Angeles. “He has read everything, spoken to everyone, examined each document and the general historical record….I have no doubt that Crowe knows more about Schindler than Schindler knew about himself and his own activities.” Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, head of the Righteous Gentile department at Yad Vashem in Israel, called the book “definitive,” while “Book List” considered it “essential in understanding one of the most extraordinary figures from the Holocaust.”
“Oskar Schindler” is the latest book for Crowe, an accomplished author and historian. He has also written “A History of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe and Russia” and “The Baltic States and the Great Powers: Foreign Relations, 1938-1940.” He is president emeritus of the Association for the Study of Nationalities at Columbia University and a member of the Education Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Crowe is also a fellow at the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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