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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Schindler’s List, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Virtue and Selflessness
Anti-Semitism and Dehumanization
Power
Duty
Bureaucracy
Summary
Analysis
Leopold (Poldek) Pfefferberg is another Jew from Cracow who meets with Schindler that fall. He is a wounded former Polish Army officer. After being captured, he used false documents to escape back to his home in Cracow. He lives uneasily in friends’ apartments while the German crackdown becomes more oppressive. Eventually, he starts making plans to escape Poland on skis, perhaps for Hungary or Romania.
In the Author’s Note to Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally notes that the real-life Pfefferberg is one of the main sources who encouraged Keneally to tell Schindler’s story in the first place. For this reason, it isn’t surprising that Pfefferberg shows up as a major character in the story—he would have had a lot of firsthand knowledge to pass on to Keneally.
Themes
One cold night in November, Pfefferberg comes close to killing Schindler. He sees Schindler in his suit with a Nazi Party badge on it, calling on Pfefferberg’s mother while he’s there, so he goes to hide in the kitchen (believing that Schindler is with the Gestapo). Schindler surprises them, however, with his quiet demeanor. He says that Mrs. Pfefferberg was recommended to him by a Jewish family called the Nussbaums, and that he is looking to have his new apartment redecorated.
Poland during the Nazi occupation was a chaotic place, and it was often unclear who could be trusted and who couldn’t. Though in hindsight it seems amazing that any Jewish person could want to kill Oskar Schindler, Keneally tries to show how, from an outsiders perspective, Schindler looks the same as any other invading German.
Themes
Pfefferberg can see that Pfefferberg’s mother doesn’t know what to do, so he enters the room to introduce himself to Schindler and get his name. Schindler explains that he’d like his apartment redone in a style to please his Czechoslovakian wife, who will be coming up soon. Despite Mrs. Pfefferberg’s initial hesitance to take a German client, Leopold Pfefferberg and Schindler begin to talk like friends.
Schindler’s charm isn’t just something he deploys to make business connections—he also uses it to make genuine friends. The contrast between this scene and the previous one shows how people’s perceptions of one another can change after even a brief conversation.
Themes
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Schindler asks if Pfefferberg might be able to help him procure some local goods, suggesting Pfefferberg’s blue shirt as an example. Pfefferberg quotes him a rate that’s five times what the shirt cost. Schindler pays Pfefferberg an amount that’s well beyond the price Pfefferberg quotes. Eventually, he brings Schindler twelve blue shirts. He sees Schindler out with a blond Polish woman but does not see Schindler’s wife, not even after Mrs. Pfefferberg redecorates Schindler’s apartment.
Schindler shows tremendous generosity toward Pfefferberg by overpaying him. Partly this is just Schindler’s personality: he genuinely is generous, sometimes to the point of carelessness. There is also a tactical element to Schindler’s generosity, however: he is trying to ensure that Pfefferberg will be a trusted ally. Pfefferberg is only too happy to accept this offer.
Themes
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