Legal battle for 'Schindler's list' begins in Jerusalem

[Surya Gayatri]

A preliminary hearing starts Wednesday in Jerusalem in a legal case that pits the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre against the estate of Oskar Schindler’s widow to decide who owns the legacy of the man who saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazis.

Who owns Schindler’s list? That is the question to be decided by a Jerusalem court, which holds a preliminary hearing on the case on April 15. A document from almost exactly 70 years ago lies at the heart of the legal battle – dated April 18, 1945, it lists the names of 801 Jewish workers who German industrialist Oskar Schindler saved from extermination by asking the Nazi authorities to allow them to work at his factories.

The rights to this document and others are being claimed by both Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial centre and Erika Rosenberg, who is both a beneficiary and the executor of the estate of Emilie Schindler, Oskar's wife.

Yad Vashem, which describes itself as the Jewish people’s “living memorial to the Holocaust”, is dedicated to safeguarding the remembrance of the tragedy for future generations. In 1999 the Jerusalem-based centre received a suitcase sent from Germany containing thousands of documents, including two of the four remaining copies of Schindler's list, of which there were originally seven copies typed on onionskin paper.

The suitcase – of incalculable historical and financial value – was in the possession of Anne-Marie Staehr, who was once Oskar Schindler’s mistress. Schindler left for Argentina with his wife after the war, returning alone to Germany in 1957, where he died in anonymity in October 1974.

http://www.france24.com/en/20150415-legal-battle-schindlers-list-court-vashem-rosenberg-suitcase/

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Seems to me it should go to the people connected to Schindler.

[ret5hd]

1. Who compiled the original list? The original that the copies were made from?

Was it a list Schindler himself made, listing everyone he felt he saved? Or was it a gov't list of some sort?

Schindler: The Schindler estate
Govt: Yad Vashem

Just my take on it. Also, the answers to my question may be in the linked article...i just didn't look.

[Surya Gayatri]

2. It's a long saga, with competing claims. The piece is a very interesting read.

This stands out:

'In July 2013, another copy of Schindler's list – which notably inspired the eponymous film by American director Steven Spielberg – was sold on eBay for $3 million.'