Schindler widow seeks rights to husband’s found belongings

BERLIN, Oct. 19 (JTA) – The 92-year-old widow of Oskar Schindler is questioning the right of a German newspaper to the ownership of a suitcase that her late husband left with friends before he died in 1974. In an interview published Tuesday in the German news magazine Stern, Emilie Schindler said she was planning to fly to Germany soon to retrieve the suitcase from the Stuttgart Zeitung. The documents it contains, including letters and a copy of the famous list of Jews whom Schindler rescued during the war, “belong to me, because I am the widow and legal heir of Oskar Schindler,” she said. Emilie Schindler, who lives in a small town outside Buenos Aires, said she did not know the couple with whom Schindler had left the suitcase and hadn’t even spoken to her husband since the late 1950s, when he left her and returned to Germany. She said she would have to see the documents before she could confirm their authenticity. Emilie Schindler, whose memoirs have been published in Germany under the title, “In Schindler’s Shadow,” remains bitter over her relationship with Oskar Schindler. She once told a Jewish group in New York that he had “run around with women in lavish hotels and gave his money away.” According to the Stuttgart Zeitung, Schindler’s suitcase has been in the attic of his close friends since his death. After the friends passed away, their children, who live in Stuttgart, discovered the suitcase and entrusted it to the newspaper. The newspaper plans to give the contents of the suitcase to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem.