Keneally's list turns up at the library
Stranger than fiction . . . Tom Keneally with the copy of Schindler's list that he sold to a dealer. It was later found among papers bought by the State Library. Inset: Novel hero . . . Oskar Schindler.
Story by Steve Meacham in the Sydney Morning Herald, April 5, 2009
They don't look much. Thirteen closely typed pieces of yellowing paper, identifying 801 names, ages, nationalities, places of birth and mechanical skills.
Just a list, really, and a carbon copy at that. Indeed, most of the information on the list is "bullshit", according to the leading Australian expert. Yet historian Olwen Pryke was astonished when she discovered it, searching through six boxes of manuscripts buried deep in the subterranean vaults of the State Library of NSW. Sandwiched between newspaper clippings, old photographs and multiple drafts of a novel was one of the most powerful documents of the 20th century: Schindler's list.
"We were leafing through the material. Then we came across this list," Dr Pryke said. "Clearly it was from the 1940s and it's written in German. We started putting it all together . . ."
Dr Pryke and colleague Steve Martin had another clue. The six boxes contained Tom Keneally's research papers, amassed when he wrote the 1982 Booker Prize-winning novel Schindler's Ark, later turned into the Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List.
Just a list, really, and a carbon copy at that. Indeed, most of the information on the list is "bullshit", according to the leading Australian expert. Yet historian Olwen Pryke was astonished when she discovered it, searching through six boxes of manuscripts buried deep in the subterranean vaults of the State Library of NSW. Sandwiched between newspaper clippings, old photographs and multiple drafts of a novel was one of the most powerful documents of the 20th century: Schindler's list.
"We were leafing through the material. Then we came across this list," Dr Pryke said. "Clearly it was from the 1940s and it's written in German. We started putting it all together . . ."
Dr Pryke and colleague Steve Martin had another clue. The six boxes contained Tom Keneally's research papers, amassed when he wrote the 1982 Booker Prize-winning novel Schindler's Ark, later turned into the Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List.
The library bought the Keneally papers in 1996 from a manuscript dealer without realising the boxes contained a carbon copy of the list. None of the originals survive and only a handful of carbon copies, the most famous a prized treasure in the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. It goes on display at the State Library on Tuesday, along with Keneally's final draft of the best-selling novel which introduced a disbelieving world to Oskar Schindler, the hard-drinking, sexually voracious Nazi who saved more than 1000 Jews from Hitler's gas chambers.
Keneally first saw the list in 1980 when he walked into a Beverly Hills shop to buy a new briefcase. The owner, Leopold Pfefferberg, had been one of the Polish Jews saved by Schindler, along with his wife Ludmila.
"It's the only case in my lifetime that someone has said, 'I've got a great story for you,' where I've ended up doing anything about it," Keneally said. He carried the list in his briefcase as he travelled the world researching Schindler's Ark, then sold it to a manuscript dealer.
"That's why I'm not a saint," he said, adding: "Writing so many books is not only a great weariness to the soul, it's also a storage problem. But I'm very glad the list has ended up at the State Library."
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