‘Schindler’s’ Author Tops Local Group’s List : Books: UCI Prof. Thomas Keneally draws 500 to Jewish center, where he receives award for bringing Holocaust atrocities to light.

Australian author Thomas Keneally, feted from one end of the country to the other for writing “Schindler’s List,” told an overflow crowd here Sunday that the Holocaust stands as an “overwhelming event” in human history that should never be forgotten.

A bearded, balding man with a flair for quick one-liners, Keneally enthralled the audience of more than 500 people at the Jewish Community Center with tales about his native Australia and about the making of the decade-old Holocaust book that is now a Steven Spielberg film.

And, in an emotional moment that capped his appearance and drew a standing ovation, Keneally exchanged hugs and kind words with Leopold (Paldek) Page, the Beverly Hills Holocaust survivor who inspired him to write the story of Oskar Schindler. A Nazi industrialist, Schindler is credited with saving the lives of more than 1,200 Jews during World War II by taking them in to work at his factories and protecting them.

The work of Schindler and Page, the author said simply, “makes them giants.”

The Costa Mesa event marked a homecoming of sorts for Keneally, a writing professor at UC Irvine since 1991. He had been on leave for a year to do political work in Australia, but he has now returned to Orange County to resume his place on the faculty, teaching two graduate classes on campus.

Amid the whirlwind of attention that has come his way in recent weeks as a result of the Spielberg movie, Keneally has sipped cocktails at a reception with the President and First Lady in Washington. He has been toasted by Hollywood luminaries and taken part in an awards ceremony presided over by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg.

Even so, Keneally said he found the reception he received Sunday from Orange County’s Jewish community “extraordinary,” as he was presented with a humanitarian award for helping bring to public light the atrocities suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust.

In a letter read to the audience, Spielberg wrote that the Jewish community leaders “made a very wise choice” in bestowing the honor on Keneally. “Plainly, you’re a mensch, “ the Yiddish term for a good, responsible person, Spielberg said.

Tickets for the Keneally event had been sold out for weeks, and so many people lined up afterward to have the author autograph copies of his book that organizers had to block the doorway to allow the author time to attend a private reception with event patrons.

Keneally has penned 21 books, but “Schindler’s List” was pure happenstance in its origin.

In a story that has been told and retold as the publicity surrounding the movie has grown, Keneally and Page recalled Sunday how they met in 1980, when the author walked into Page’s Beverly Hills leather-goods shop to look for a new briefcase.

When he heard Keneally was an author, Page recounted, he announced that he had a story worth telling. He took Keneally to the back of his shop to show him assorted documents on Schindler that he kept on file--”in case a situation like this happened.”

Keneally was intrigued by the story, and after only a few discussions with other survivors, he said, he was committed to the project. “It was such an astounding book,” he said.

The movie, he said, remained faithful to the original work.

Because of the time constraints of a movie, Keneally said, “you have to coalesce events a little bit, jam them together. But it’s absolutely true to the spirit of the events.”

Some have criticized the movie for extolling the role of a Nazi in the war, suggesting that Schindler acted as much out of financial and personal gain as humanitarian motives. But in the eyes of several survivors at Sunday’s event, Schindler’s role in history should remain untarnished.

“Thank God the (Schindler) critics are in the tremendous minority,” said Page’s wife, Mila, who polished shell casings for seven months at a Schindler factory. “To me and to the majority of the survivors--the Schindler Jews as we call ourselves--he is a hero.”