Schindler's Original List Found

An original list of Jewish employees, drawn up by Oskar Schindler to save them from Nazi death camps, has been discovered in a suitcase full of papers left to a German couple, a newspaper reports.

The Stuttgart couple, relatives of close friends of Schindler, found the 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.

The papers include a speech Schindler gave on May 8, 1945, as the war ended. In it, Schindler urged the Jews who worked for him not to pursue revenge attacks, the newspaper's editor in chief, Uwe Vorkoetter, said Friday.

The 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, Paldiel said. Schindler made up that list with fictitious jobs for each worker to convince the SS that they were vital to the war effort.

Schindler and his wife emigrated to Argentina in 1949. Eight years later, he left his wife and returned to Germany. He died there in 1974.

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

The newspaper has researched the material to produce a series of reports called Schindler's Suitcase, which it will publish beginning Sunday, the 25th anniversary of Schindler's death.

Trautwein, who first met Schindler in 1967, said there are many previously discovered documents relating to Schindler, and he doubted the suitcase's contents would drastically change the known story of the former factory owner.

"I think there will be some details. I can't see that there will be a completely changed view of his life," Trautwein said.

Schindler was buried in Jerusalem at his own request.