Where Light and Shadow Meet: A Memoir

Oskar Schindler--who ""made himself look important in other people's eyes just through his conviction of his own importance""--is not a hero to his former wife. Although her husband's activities in WWII have already been famously chronicled in Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List and Steven Spielberg's Academy Award- winning film of the same name, Emilie Schindler describes here these same years from her point of view. The distortions she points out in the book and the film are minor, but she does contribute a detailed description of how she assisted her husband in running the factory in Krakow whose Jewish workers they saved from German persecution. At great risk to herself, she often provided food and medical aid. Obviously bitter about her husband's frequent infidelities, his former wife portrays him as opportunistic, immature and self-indulgent. The couple settled in Argentina after the war, but Oskar Schindler left for Germany in 1957 and never saw his wife again. Her compelling memoir provides a well-deserved testimony to her own courage during WWII and the opportunity to vent her feelings toward the husband who abandoned her. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)