Prologue Summary

The novel opens in the autumn of 1943 in Poland, as Herr Oskar Schindler is described. He is a tall, classy, chain-smoking man, who dresses well, possesses an air of dignity and playful decadence. He is a womanizer, who carries on affairs with mistresses, leaving his dutiful wife in Moravia. The author notes that we cannot look at the story of Oskar Schindler simply through his character description, for it contains so much more than the façade of an indulgent movie star. "But it will not be possible to see the story of the pragmatic triumph of good over evil, a triumph in eminently measurable, statistical, unsubtle terms. When you work from the other end of the beast – when you chronicle the predictable and measurable success evil generally achieves – it is easy to be wise, wry, piercing, to avoid bathos. It is easy...