Schindler Heiress Wants To Stop Auction of Famed List

By JTA July 11, 2011

An heiress of Emilie Schindler, the wife of Oskar Schindler, is trying to prevent a copy of the famous list that saved the lives of 1,200 Jews from the auction block.

Erika Rosenberg is working to stop an original copy of Schindler’s list from being auctioned off by U.S. memorabilia dealer Gary Zimet on his website, according to the Daily Mirror. The London paper said Rosenberg, 60, of Buenos Aires, may file a lawsuit in an international court.

Rosenberg told the Daily Mirror that the Schindlers wanted the list to be displayed in a museum. She owns the copyright to the list, according to The Media Line.

An auction for the list was suspended in 2010 after Rosenberg filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan court, which she lost.

Zimet claims on his website that the list belonged to the family of Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s accountant, and that it is the only copy of the list ever to be for sale.

Two other copies of the list are on display at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, and another is housed at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Emile Schindler died childless in 2001 and named five heirs, including Rosenberg, the daughter of German Jews who fled to Argentina in 1940.

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