Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum is being sued by a woman who claims ownership of a collection of documents of Righteous Gentile Oskar Schindler, who saved approximately 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust.
A suitcase kept at Yad Vashem containing the late German businessman’s paperwork and photos are being claimed by Erika Rosenberg, an Argentine woman who says they were taken out of Germany without permission after being discovered in a suitcase in an apartment. Rosenberg, who is the legal heir of Schindler’s wife Emilie, says these documents belong to her, while Yad Vashem says they were gifted by the couple who lived in that apartment.
Schindler’s story was famously dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s award-winning film ‘Schindler’s List’.
Erika Rosenberg is now claiming the documents, which include copies of lists of the Jews who Schindler saved. A spokeswoman for Yad Vashem told the ‘Jerusalem Post’: “Emilie never asked for these materials. Only after her death did her friend Erica Rosenberg demand them. We believe that Schindler’s List is a document of historical importance and its place [is] in the public domain,” the museum said.
The case will be heard by a Jerusalem court in April.
