Content Warning: Schindler’s List depicts antisemitism, ableism, pogroms, graphic violence, extreme human suffering, substance abuse, racial bias, Nazi imagery, discussion of sexuality, racial and sexual slurs, and anti-LGBTQ+ bias.

The prologue takes place in the fall of 1943, when Schindler is already ingratiated into the inner workings of Płaszów and must work through Goeth to keep the prisoners safe. Thomas Keneally notes that he’s about to tell a tale of the “pragmatic triumph of good over evil” (14) and that Schindler isn’t a traditionally virtuous person: He’s a womanizer, a spy who joined an ultranationalist far-right party, and a profiteering capitalist, yet he risks everything he owns and his entire life to save strangers. Keneally sets the stage for the novel by mapping out Cracow: Schindler’s factory on Zablocie street, right next to the neighborhood of Podgórze (where the Jewish ghetto was located), is overshadowed by Wawel Castle (where the German mayor of Cracow, Hans Frank, lives).

Schindler attends a dinner at the Płaszów villa with Amon Goeth and several other SS men of importance—Julian Scherner, Rolf Czurda, and Franz Bosch—and pretends to be close friends with each of them, giving them small gifts and bribes that he can use to leverage favors in the future.