Cover Mietek Pemper, Viktoria Hertling, Jewish culture and contemporary history
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Viktoria Hertling

Mietek Pemper

Der kluge Kopf hinter Oskar Schindlers Liste

Language: German
126 pages, softcover with (fold-in) flaps
30 illustrations
ISBN: 978-3-95565-371-2
Publication date: 2020
16.00 €

Forced to work as the personal stenographer and translator for Amon Göth, the sadistic commandant of the Płaszów concentration camp, Mietek Pemper, the learned 23-year-old Jewish-Polish prisoner, quickly realized that he could use this unwanted position to familiarize himself with the inner workings of the Nazi bureaucracy. Thereby he managed to discover secret plans to eliminate the entire camp population by the end of 1943. 
Oskar Schindler’s brave effort to save Jewish lives has since attained worldwide recognition. But almost a year before Schindler compiled his list, there occurred a no less courageous act of resistance. Mietek Pemper´s diversionary maneuver of the faked “production lists” saved the lives of thousands of his fellow inmates and the Płaszów camp was not eliminated. This clever act became the indispensable underpinning of Oskar Schindler’s famous list. 


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Viktoria Hertling

Professorin für Holocaust- und Exilforschung, arbeitete von 1994 bis 2009 als Direktorin des von ihr gegründeten Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies an der University of Nevada in Reno. Sie hat zahlreiche Bücher und Essays zum Thema veröffentlicht. Bis 2013 lehrte sie in Berlin. Sie lebt in Köln und ist Cellistin in einem Kammerorchester.