The three men most responsible for bringing the story of Oskar Schindler, the flawed hero of “Schindler’s List,” to world attention have taken strong issue with Emilie Schindler’s outspoken attack on her late husband.
In her book, “Memoirs,” written in Spanish and published last month in Argentina, the 88-year-old widow describes her husband as a non-stop womanizer and a “selfish coward,” who saved 1,300 Jews working in his factory solely for their cheap labor and to avoid being drafted into the German army if he ceased to be an industrialist.
At a news conference in Buenos Aires, Schindler also attacked Thomas Keneally, who wrote “Schindler’s List,” and Seven Spielberg, who turned the book into an Academy Award-winning movie.
She charged that the book was “packed with lies” and that the movie “idealized” her husband’s role in protecting Jews, while underplaying her own contribution.
The strongest rebuttal to these charges comes from Los Angeles businessman Leopold Page, who as the young Polish Jew Leopold (Poldek) Pfefferberg, worked for Oskar Schindler from 1939 to 1945. It was Page who first told the Schindler story to Keneally and persuaded him to write the book.
Page terms Schindler’s remarks “a disgrace to the memory of one of the true heroes of the century” and vouches for the accuracy of both the book and the movie.
He acknowledged the widow’s own heroism in nursing frozen and starved prisoners back to health, but said she only appeared on the scene during the last six months of the war, while her husband protected his Jewish employees for almost six years.
Spielberg expressed his perplexity that “three years after publicly supporting [and praising] the film and its contents at numerous public events, Emilie Schindler has chosen to reverse herself with recent public statements to promote her book.”
The most serious criticism she leveled at him in private conversations, said Spielberg, was that her husband had many more extramarital affairs than shown in the film.
Spielberg acknowledged that some of the scenes portraying her care of prisoners were cut to keep the movie at a manageable length.
However, “the most important fact is that [Oskar] Schindler saved over 1,300 lives and made it possible or them to survive, and for 6,000 members of their families to be alive today,” Spielberg said.
Author Keneally said Schindler’s statement that her husband was opportunistic and selfish, that he wanted Jewish labor for its cheapness, and that he was an appalling husband “are the very arguments of the book and the film.
“Mixed motives were the mainspring of our personal fascination with Oskar, and ultimately of the public’s fascination with him.”
Oskar Schindler was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1962, and Emilie Schindler, who lives in Argentina, received the same recognition in 1994.
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