I feel really weird saying that I'm enjoying this story. After all, it is a book set in the middle of the Holocaust and World War II. Enjoy sounds too- happy and lighthearted, trivializing the whole thing, like it's a work of fiction, something that never actually happened. I guess the best way to say it is that I'm invested in the story and the characters. I'm wondering, now, how much of the movie plot was created around the list, because I know that in the movie the 'red toddler' wound up dead in a pile of bodies waiting to be disposed of, and that's the moment that propels Oskar Schindler to act. In the book, though, the girl in the red coat is so far alive, and although seeing her in the place and time he did was certainly a clarifying moment for Oskar, he already seems to be working to protect the Jews working in his factory, and spending enormous amounts of money to do it. He's quietly transferring people in danger to the subcamp he has basically provided all the funds and materials to build, he secretly gave the Rabbi a bottle of wine for use in his Shabbat rites. He's also feeding the prisoners a lot more than most in the main camp are getting, for the most part out of his own pocket, and bribing officials with massive amounts of cash, wine and enamelware from his factory whenever someone gets into trouble and needs help. I have to wonder whether the girl is still going to die, or whether there will be another event that propels Schindler to do even more for his cause.
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