Copy of Schindler's List Comes to Light in Australian Library

The copy of Oskar Schindler's list that was given to Thomas Keneally by one of the Polish Jews whom Schindler saved has come to light in the State Library of New South Wales.
by: Alison Flood

A yellowing document listing 801 Jews who were saved from the Holocaust by Oskar Schindler has been found by Australian researchers sifting through the papers of Thomas Keneally.

The 13-page list, a carbon copy of one of Schindler's original compilations of names, inspired Keneally to write his Booker prize-winning title Schindler's Ark (later made into the Oscar-winning film Schindler's List by Steven Spielberg), which tells the story of the womanising, heavy-drinking Schindler, a Nazi who became a hero to over 1,000 Jews, saving them from the gas chambers of the second world war by employing them in his factories.

"It is a copy of a copy, but it's a moving document, regardless. When you look at it you think of the lives that were saved," said Olwen Pryke, co-curator of the State Library of New South Wales, who found the pages late last year when looking through the six boxes of Keneally's old manuscripts, newspaper clippings and photographs which the library purchased in 1996. "We were leafing through the material. Then we came across this list. Clearly it was from the 1940s and it's written in German. We started putting it all together," she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Keneally was given the list, which details the names, ages, nationalities, skills and places of birth of 801 men, in 1980, when he went into a shop in Beverly Hills to buy a new briefcase. The owner, Leopold Pfefferberg, was one of the Polish Jews saved by Schindler - survivor number 173 - and he urged the author to write about his story. "It's the only case in my lifetime that someone has said, 'I've got a great story for you,' where I've ended up doing anything about it," Keneally told the Australian paper.

He went on to travel the world researching the story of Schindler, carrying the document with him. He eventually sold it to a manuscript dealer, who sold it to the library. "That's why I'm not a saint," said Keneally. "Writing so many books is not only a great weariness to the soul, it's also a storage problem. But I'm very glad the list has ended up at the State Library."

There are no original copies of the list still in existence, and only a handful of carbon copies, the most famous of which is displayed in the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Keneally's copy goes on display in the State Library today, along with the final draft of his bestselling novel.

"It's the list Tom used when writing Schindler's Ark and that really brought Schindler's actions to the attention of the world," said Pryke


From: the Guardian