Montreal, December 19, 1994.
Poldek Pfefferberg kept the story of Oskar Schindler alive in his heart waiting for someone to really listen.
Thomas Keneally listened and brought Schindler’s story to life in his book, Schindler’s List.
Steven Spielberg made the story bigger than life in his film, “Schindler’s List” so all the world could see and hear.
And everyone who read and saw and heard wondered “Why?” Why did this unlikely hero do what he did? To save 1,100 lives.
Perhaps part of the answer could be found in the dusty cellar trunk of a Canadian journalist who knew Oskar Schindler.
Herbert Steinhouse met Oskar Schindler after World War Two and got to know him quite well. As a journalist, Steinhouse documented and verified the Schindler story, only to find in the late 1940s, no one wanted to hear any more about the Nazis and their atrocities to the Jews. So he locked the story away.
When Steinhouse read Keneally’s book and saw Spielberg’sfilm, he knew it was time to unlock the trunk and add his missing piece to the puzzle of Oskar Schindler….
Steinhouse, a native of Montreal, graduated from McGill Univer