(JTA) — A Manhattan judge has ruled that an original copy of Schindler’s List can be sold.
New York State Supreme Court Justice Louis York ruled last week that dealer Gary Zimet may auction off what is believed to be the only privately held original copy of Oskar Schindler’s list of Jews, which saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Zimet, a historic document sales specialist in upstate New York, announced in March that he would sell the document on behalf of an anonymous seller, offered on a "first-come, first-served" basis on his Web site, MomentsInTime.com.
Marta Rosenberg, an Argentine woman who wrote a biography of Schindler and his widow, Emilie, contends that the will of Schindler’s widow gives her the exclusive rights to anything that belonged to the couple. She also alleged that the list held by Zimet is a fake.
The list, dated April 18, 1945, records 801 names on 13 pages. It was compiled by Schindler and his accountant, Itzak Stern, and made famous decades later in the Oscar-winning film "Schindler’s List."
Several copies of the list were written; the four surviving original lists are in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, in the German federal archives in Koblenz and at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
