Copy of original ‘Schindler’s List’ discovered

I’m very pleased, from an historical point of view, to read that a carbon copy of the original ‘Schindler’s List‘ has been discovered in an Australian library.

An Australian library has discovered it has a carbon copy of the original complete “Schindler’s List,” detailing 801 of the more than 1,000 Jews saved by Oskar Schindler from Nazi extermination, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday.

The 13-page list on yellowed paper includes the typed names, nationalities, birthplaces and mechanical skills, and was discovered by historian Olwen Pryke while she looking through author Thomas Keneally’s research papers for his book “Schindler’s Ark,” which was later made into the Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List.”

“This list was hurriedly typed on April 18, 1945, in the closing days of WWII, and it saved 801 men from the gas chambers,” Pryke told the paper, adding that the document was “an incredibly moving piece of history.”

Oskar Schindler was an unlikely hero: a member of the Nazi party who used Jewish forced labourers in his factory in Krakow, Poland, he became disgusted by violence towards Jews and sought to protect his workers. Because his factory had special status as essential for the war effort, he was able claim exemption for those Jews the Nazis wanted to deport to concentration camps. Women, children and people with disabilities were shown to be essential employees at the factory.

The list discovered in the New South Wales State Library archives is one of only a handful of carbon copies of the original, which does not survive. Pryke added that Schindler compiled a number of lists as he persuaded the Nazis not to send his workers to the camps.

This is a very important find for scholars of the Holocaust. There are a few other copies in existence, but in poor condition, and most of them incomplete. The one pictured below is in the Holocaust archives at Bad Arolsen in Germany.

Let’s hope that this newly-discovered copy will be preserved for future generations – particularly to counter those who deny that the Holocaust ever happened.

(Oh – and if you’ve never seen ‘Schindler’s List’, may I recommend it very highly? It’s not easy viewing, by any means, but it’s one of the most important films ever made, in my opinion.)

Peter