When we speak and think about the 20th century, we sometimes overlook details, episodes, and individual destinies that are lost amidst the threatening global events, but they are no less important.
The peaceful life of Innsbruck and the enchanting atmosphere of the Schindlers' Café, opened in 1922 and reflecting the cultural traditions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where people danced, had affairs, and served the most delicious apple strudel in all of Austria—all came to an end with the rise of the Nazis. The family members were scattered across the world, and the truth about their lives remained unknown until the author of this book, 'having entered the great world of nineteenth-century Bohemia and twentieth-century Austria, two world wars, the fall of an empire, the poison of anti-Semitism, and the Nazi dictatorship,' put together the missing pieces of the puzzle. This is a story not only of tragic loss (some members of the Schindler family perished in the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz camps), but ultimately of renewal and reconciliation.
“Throughout my childhood, we were surrounded by a wide variety of stories. I was determined to understand my father, to separate truth from fiction in his stories, accurate memories from inaccurate ones, and to do this, I had to immerse myself in his past and the intricacies of a long, long family history. I had to become thoroughly acquainted with the history of Austria, to understand what it was like to live in a turbulent country that had fallen from the heights of its imperial grandeur into the abyss of the First World War, had almost disappeared, and yet was absorbed into the Third Reich. I had to find out exactly what became of the ‘Schindler empire.’” (Meriel Schindler)