open(pathToFile, 'r', encoding='utf-8')

>>> 'schreitmüller'.encode('cp1251')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python3.3/encodings/cp1251.py", line 12, in encode
    return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_table)
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\xfc' in position 8: character maps to <undefined>
>>>

to_return = []
for word in words:
    try:
         print(word )
         to_return.append(word )
    except Exception as e:
         pass

with open("filename") as file:
    content = file.readlines()

try:
...
... encode(sys.stdout.encoding)