Schindlers List

In 2000, Schindlers List of Jewish employees drawn up by Oscar Schindler to save them from Nazi death camps was discovered in a suitcase full of papers left to a German couple, the German newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung reported. Stuttgarter Zeitung said it planned to give the suitcase to Yad Vashem.

The Stuttgart couple, relatives of close friends of Oscar Schindler, found Schindlers List of 1,200 workers among the papers, which deal mainly with his life after World War II. The papers were donated to the newspaper, the Stuttgarter Zeitung. They include a speech Schindler gave on May 8, 1945, as the war ended. In it, he urged the Jews who worked for him not to pursue revenge attacks.

Schindlers List History

The Schindlers List obtained by the newspaper is on letterhead for Schindler's enamelware factory in Krakow, southern Poland. Schindler wrote the names and jobs of 1,200 Jews at the Plaszow concentration camp and gave the list to the Nazi SS, said Mordechai Paldiel, director of the department at Israel's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Paldiel said no one at the memorial has ever seen the original list, and that presumably it would have been saved in the SS archives. It is also possible Schindler kept a copy, he said.

A second list, the one that appears in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film "Schindler's List" was created a month before the war ended. Schindler made up that list with fictitious jobs for each worker to convince the SS that they were vital to the war effort.

The suitcase with Schindlers List inside was found by the Stuttgart couple at a relative's house in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony. A former neighbor of Schindler's in Frankfurt, Dieter Trautwein, confirmed that Oscar Schindler spent the last months of his life in Hildersheim with friends after becoming ill.

Learn more About Schindlers List

Learn more about Schindlers List at the Official Schindler's List DVD web site. You can also preorder and purchase your Schindler's List DVD at the Universal Home Video & DVD store.