Thomas Keneally Wales in Sydney. In 1996 the State Library purchased this material from a private collector. Keneally has been awarded honorary doctorates including one from the National University of Ireland. Thomas Keneally Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is a prolific Australian novelist, playwright, and essayist. He is best known for writing "Schindler's Ark", the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982 which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List", which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Both Keneally's parents (Edmund Thomas Keneally and Elsie
Emilie Schindler Emilie Schindler Emilie Schindler (née Pelzl; 22 October 1907 – 5 October 2001) was a Sudeten German-born woman who, with her husband Oskar Schindler, helped to save the lives of 1,200 Jews during World War II by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories, providing them immunity from the Nazis. She was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's Yad Vashem in 1994. She was born Emilie Pelzl in the village of Alt Moletein, (alternate spelling: Old Moletin, in Czech: Starý Moletín, today: Maletín) Austria-Hungary (now in the Czech Republic), to Sudeten German farmers Josef and Marie Pelzl.