Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Author Thomas Keneally would probably not have won the 1982 Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark had his briefcase not broken in Los Angeles and he not found himself headed to a luggage store to buy a new one.
There, he met store owner Leopold Page (Poldek Pfefferberg), a Polish immigrant whose life had been saved along with nearly 1300 other Jews by Oskar Schindler during World War II in Krakow.
On hearing he was a novelist, Pfefferberg/Page, whose gift of the gab was an equal match for chatty Keneally’s, used a technique he’d tried before on countless Hollywood writers and producers.
Yvonne Korn’s family provided the interviews that informed the book by Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark.Credit: Oscar Colman
“Poldek locked him in his luggage store until Tom agreed to tell the story,” said Yvonne Korn, whose parents, grandmother, great uncle and aunt were saved by Schindler, the character immortalised by Liam Neeson in the film Schindler’s List based on Keneally’s book.
Korn and her sister, Anita Moss, and a dozen or so of their family members took to the stage on Sunday night at the University of NSW to honour Keneally, 87, at a Holocaust commemoration event at UNSW Kensington where he was the keynote speaker.
Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day, is Tuesday, April 18, and Wednesday, April 19, marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
Yvonne Korn and family pay tribute to Tom Keneally.Credit: Oscar Colman
“This family would not be here were it not for Oskar Schindler, and the story of Oskar Schindler would not be known to the world were it not for Thomas Keneally,” Korn told the audience of more than 1000, there to honour Keneally and those who were killed in and those who survived the Holocaust.
Korn still remembers the day in 1981 when her mother, Leosia, who had migrated from Poland to Sydney in 1950, told her an author called “Tom Kennerley” had called to ask her about Oskar Schindler.
SURVIVORS (clockwise from top left) Leosia Korn with daughter Anita, Leosia with husband Mundek and daughter Yvonne, Leosia, Oskar Schindler and Mundek in 1972, Leosia, her daughter-in-law Lini and great grandson Aaron. Background, the Schindler factory workers Holocaust survivors.Credit: Fairfax Media
“It’s Keneally,” her daughter had said. “I studied his book The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith at school.”
Korn was puzzled as to how Keneally had known her family’s story until she’d heard of Pfefferberg’s involvement in LA. He had been friends with her parents in Poland.
“Poldek told me that when I returned to Australia, I needed to talk to the future Sydneysiders and Easts supporters Mundek (Edmund) and Leosia (Leonie) Korn.
“‘An Oscar for Oskar’ were the words Poldek used to bully Steven Spielberg when he was making the film,” Keneally said.
After that initial phone call to her parents, Korn said she watched Keneally spend many precious hours over the next 18 months to two years interviewing them.
“Although we knew the bare bones of the story, we had no idea about the details,” said Korn.
Tom Keneally with actor Liam Neeson, who starred in the film adaptation of Keneally’s Booker prize-winning Schindler’s Ark.Credit: Fairfax Media
“Both our parents said it was a good thing the story had been told, and although our mother cleared the drafts for accuracy, they weren’t interested in reading the book,” said Anita, who also has not read the book.
“Schindler’s rescue remains, in all its scale, bravado and exactitude, with us,” Keneally said.
“And the impact of meeting people who were on a death list – which Schindler’s list was meant to be, which it was as far as the authorities were concerned – made me realise … it was all real.
Keneally said the scale of the Holocaust “that hate bug, its wantonness, its ferocity” was all a bit of a shock for someone who had grown up in Australia.
“Had I lived through that infernal process of the Holocaust, I doubt I could have had the will to live on.
“Frank Lowy experienced the breath of obliteration during the vicious siege of Budapest in 1944, and so did another child of that time, Erica Frydenberg, mother of our former treasurer. So did many other Australians of my age,” he said.
Keneally paid tribute to the people of Poland, the geographic sites of Auschwitz and Sobibor and Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec and Chelmno, where the SS killed three million Poles as well as six million Jews.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Darren Bark told those gathered that Keneally gave a powerful voice to those who were silenced and could no longer speak.
“It is because of him we know about the incredible courage and bravery that Oskar Schindler displayed during the Holocaust,” Bark said.
“Without Mr Keneally, the world simply would not have known.”
A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here.
Most Viewed in Culture
From our partners
Source: Read Full Article