Road to Rescue or The Last Lion

Road to Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler's List

Author: Mietek Pemper

Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List popularized the true story of a German businessman who manipulated his Nazi connections and spent his personal fortune to save some 1,200 Jewish prisoners from certain death during the Holocaust. But few know that those lists were made possible by a secret strategy designed by a young Polish Jew at the Plaszów concentration camp. Mietek Pemper’s compelling and moving memoir tells the less-known story of how Schindler’s list really came to pass.

Pemper was born in 1920 into a lively and cultivated Jewish family for whom everything changed in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland. Evicted from their home, they were forced into the Krakow ghetto and, later, into the nearby camp of Plaszów where Pemper’s knowledge of the German language was put to use by the sadistic camp commandant Amon Göth. Forced to work as Göth’s personal stenographer–an exceptional job for a Jewish prisoner–Pemper soon realized that he could use his position to familiarize himself with the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy and exploit the system to his fellow detainees’ advantage. Once he gained access to classified documents, Pemper was able to pass on secret information for Schindler to compile his famous lists. After the war, Pemper was the key witness for the prosecution in the 1946 trial against Göth and in trials against several other SS officers. The Road to Rescue stands as a historically authentic testimony of one man’s unparalleled courage, wit, defiance, and bittersweet victory over the Nazi regime.

The New York Times - Ruth Franklin

Pemper's book, The Road to Rescue: The Untold Story of Schindler's List, is no takedown. It is, rather, a deepening of the story, which Spielberg's movie inevitably oversimplified. Pemper argues that the "crucial accomplishment" was not the list itself but "the multifarious acts of resistance that, like tiny stones being placed into a mosaic one by one, had made the whole process possible." Though he takes the opportunity to correct a few factual inaccuracies and settle some old scores, Pemper devotes most of his carefully written book to the numerous small initiatives that, in his telling, played a part in the rescue effort. It could not have occurred without Schindler's tremendous commitment, but its success relied also on the courage and creativity of many other people, not to mention plain luck.

Publishers Weekly

This is a suspenseful account of how Metek Pemper, the Jewish secretary to Amon Göth, the commandant of Plaszow concentration camp, saved not just his own life but that of his family and other inmates, finally giving the damning testimony that helped convict Göth of war crimes. Steven Spielberg drew from the stories of Pemper and his friend Izak Stern for his movie Schindler's List(based on Thomas Keneally's book Schindler's List) but omitted Pemper's character from the film. After being made secretary to the commandant, Pemper lived in constant fear, but collected information and ensured that the camp would continue to operate. Some Jews were kept alive by Pemper providing fabricated figures to persuade high command that the camp was vital to the war effort. A bookish young man with a gift for languages and guile, Pemper was "the only witness who could give a complete and accurate overview" of Schindler's operation. Pemper's book is careful and sad, telling of both triumph and the inability to get over the grief. Illus. (Oct.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

A former inmate of the concentration camp that provided slave labor to Oskar Schindler's factory informatively recounts the compilation of the businessman's famous list. Pemper, who offered key assistance to Schindler in saving the lives of several hundred Jews during the Holocaust, begins by chronicling his childhood in Krak-w. It was always an anti-Semitic city, but not until the Nazi occupation of Poland did life for its Jewish residents become intolerable. Chapters on the maneuverings and deception required just to survive during those dark days are stark and dramatic, though similar to those in many other memoirs about the period. What makes the book stand out are the author's harrowing descriptions of life at the Plasz-w concentration camp and his work there. Chosen by camp commandant Amon Goth to be his typist and personal secretary, Pemper's translation skills and administrative abilities protected him from much of the cruelty inflicted on inmates. He had extensive exposure, however, to the barbaric treatment of others and was later a key witness at Goth's trial for war crimes. Through the commandant, Pemper came to know Schindler, who used camp personnel in his weapons business. The author lavishly praises Schindler's humane efforts to rescue his employees and their families, but goes to great length not to deify his friend and savior. Schindler "certainly didn't come to Krak-w as a rescuer," Pemper writes. "He came as a businessman. But when he saw what was going on in Poland, and how the occupiers were treating us, he decided to do something about it." Though the author admires Steven Spielberg's Academy Award-winning film version of Schindler's List, he details instances inwhich the director changed facts to make the 1993 film more dramatic. Schindler did not dictate the list of people he wanted from memory as he did in the movie, for example, nor did he show up at Goth's villa with a suitcase full of cash. Compelling subject matter rendered in somewhat dry prose, a possible result of the translation.

Table of Contents:

Contents Preface....................ix
Kraków in Peacetime, 1918 to 1939....................1
The Invasion....................12
In the Ghetto....................24
Amon Göth, Oskar Schindler, and the Krakow-Plaszów Camp....................41
The Trick with the Production Tables....................76
A Surprising Revelation During the Trial of Gerhard Maurer....................91
Plaszów Becomes a Concentration Camp....................100
Oskar Schindler, One of the Righteous Among the Nations....................124
The Untold Story of How Schindler's List Came to Be....................132
The Liberation of Brúnnlitz....................154
Return to Kraków, a City Without Jews....................168
Murderers Without Remorse....................172
Why We Must Never Forget....................189
Acknowledgments....................199
Appendices 1. Izak Stern's Report, an Excursus by Viktoria Hertling....................201
2. Chronology....................207
3. SS Ranks and Their U.S. Army Equivalents....................211
Notes....................213
Bibliography 1. Books and Articles....................225
2. Texts on the Internet....................231
3. Audio-Visual Media....................233
Picture Credits....................235
Index....................237

See also: Fermenting Revolution or Swedish Homecooking in America

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940

Author: William Manchester

ALONE is the second volume in William Manchester's projected three-volume biography of Winston Churchill. In it Manchester challenges the assumption that Churchill's finest hour was as a wartime leader.

During the years 1932-1940, he was tested as few men are. Pursued by creditors, he remained solvent only by his writing. He was disowned by his party, dismissed by the establishment as a warmonger and twice nearly lost his seat in Parliament. Churchill stood alone against Nazi aggression and the British policy of appeasement.

Manchester brings new insight to this complex, fascinating period of history without ever losing sight of Churchill the man--a man with limitations--but a man whose vision was global and whose courage was boundless.