Schindler’s List Study Guide

Born in Sydney, the Australian writer Thomas Keneally grew up in the timber and dairy town of Kempsey, New South Wales. His father flew in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II. As a teenager, Keneally entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest, but although he did become a deacon, he left before being ordained as a priest. In 1962, he published his first story, and he went on to publish over 50 books. Though Keneally is well-regarded as a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, his most famous work remains Schindler’s List, which was originally published as Schindler’s Ark in 1982 and then adapted into a critically acclaimed movie in 1993. Keneally lives with his wife in Sydney and has two daughters.

Though Schindler’s List doesn’t take place on an active battlefield, World War II is the context behind virtually all of the major events in the book. Fascism, a far-right nationalist political philosophy that began in Italy around World War I, rose to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s and is particularly associated with Adolf Hitler (the leader of Germany’s Nazi Party) and Benito Mussolini. Hitler was also a strong anti-Semite (someone who hates Jewish people) and made “racial purity” a key part of his political platform, leading to the deaths of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust.

Thomas Keneally has credited several early 20th-century modernist writers as major influences on his work. The Irish poet W.B. Yeats and the Irish writer James Joyce—particularly his sweeping novel Ulysses—are two of his favorites. (Keneally himself has Irish heritage.) Keneally was also influenced by his predecessors and contemporaries in Australian literature. He particularly gives credit to Patrick White’s novel Voss for showing him the possibilities of what an Australian writer can do. Schindler’s List is one of a multitude of books that portray Jewish people’s plight during the Holocaust. Others include The Diary of Anne Frank, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.