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October 7 2001 EUROPE

Schindler widow dies in poverty

Peter Conradi

EMILIE SCHINDLER, who with her husband Oskar helped save more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazis, has died after suffering a stroke. She was 94.

Emilie, who separated from the womanising industrialist in the 1950s, spent her twilight years fighting for more recognition for her role in his wartime crusade - depicted in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film, Schindler's List, which won seven Academy awards.

According to friends, she lived in poverty, unable to benefit from the millions made by the film or Thomas Keneally's book, Schindler's Ark, on which it was based.

After self-imposed exile in Argentina, she returned to Germany in July, but fell into a coma weeks later. Oskar Schindler died in 1974.

Their roles in saving the Jews could be split 50-50, said Erika Rosenberg, a friend who wrote a book of her life. "But she was cut out of the film and the book in a humiliating and offensive way."

-- (heroic@woman.shunned), October 06, 2001

Answers

There are many wealthy Jewish descendants of the people who were saved by this lady and her husband. Why did they let her die in poverty? They did not even have enough gratitude to help her be comfortable?

-- (huh?@huh?.huh?), October 06, 2001.

Oskar died in poverty too, if you believe what is written. For another perspective on Emilie read this:

http://www.jewishsf.com/bk960510/etschind.htmMay 10, 1996

Spielberg, others defend Oskar Schindler SERGIO KIERNAN and TOM TUGEND

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

LOS ANGELES -- The three men most responsible for popularizing Oskar Schindler, the flawed hero of "Schindler's List," are blasting Emilie Schindler's outspoken attack on her late husband.

In her book, "Memoirs," written in Spanish and published last month in Argentina, the 88-year old widow describes her husband as a non- stop womanizer and a "selfish coward." She says he saved 1,300 Jews working in his factory solely for their cheap labor and to avoid being drafted into the German army if he ceased to be an industrialist.

At a press conference in Buenos Aires, Emilie Schindler also attacked Thomas Keneally, who wrote "Schindler's List," and Steven Spielberg, who turned the book into an Academy Award-winning movie.

She charged that the book was "packed with lies" and that the movie "idealized" her husband's role in protecting Jews, while underplaying her own contribution.

The strongest rebuttal to these charges came from Los Angeles businessman Leopold Page, formerly Leopold (Poldek) Pfefferberg, who worked for and with Oskar Schindler from 1939 to 1945. It was Page who first told the Schindler story to Keneally and persuaded him to write the book.

Page termed Emilie Schindler's remarks "a disgrace to the memory of one of the true heroes of the century" and vouched for the accuracy of both the book and the movie.

He acknowledged Emilie Schindler's own heroism in nursing frozen and starved prisoners back to health, but said that she only appeared on the scene during the last six months of the war, while her husband protected his Jews for almost six years.

Spielberg, meanwhile, charged that "three years after publicly supporting (and praising) the film and its contents at numerous public events, Emilie Schindler has chosen to reverse herself with recent public statements to promote her book."

The most serious criticism she leveled at him in private conversations, said Spielberg, was that her husband had many more extramarital affairs than shown in the film.

Spielberg acknowledged that some of the scenes portraying Emilie Schindler's care of prisoners were cut to keep the movie at a manageable length.

However, "the most important fact is that [Oskar] Schindler saved over 1,300 lives and made it possible for them to survive, and for 6,000 members of their families to be alive today," Spielberg said.

Keneally also said his book and film did not whitewash Oskar Schindler, though Emilie Schindler said "her husband was opportunistic and selfish, that he wanted Jewish labor for its cheapness, and that he was an appalling husband."

Those points, Keneally responded, "are the very arguments of the book and the film. Mixed motives were the mainspring of our personal fascination with Oskar, and ultimately of the public's fascination with him."

In "Memoirs," co-written with journalist Erika Rozenberg, Emilie Schindler charges that her husband struggled to keep his factory open only because "he feared he would be drafted and sent to the Russian front if he ceased to be an industrialist."

She also claims Spielberg "idealized" her husband's actions during the war.

"Neither he nor Tom Keneally, who wrote `Schindler's Ark,' on which the movie was based, ever bothered to ask me how things truly were," she writes.

According to Emilie Schindler, her husband's role in saving the Jews on the list was "overstated" both in the movie and the book.

"It was I who got the mayor of Brunnlittz to authorize the Jewish workers to settle in his town. The Germans did not want Jews in their town," she writes.

She further claims that Oskar Schindler was "indifferent" to his workers' welfare, adding that it was she who saw after their well- being.

After the war, the Schindlers left Europe for Argentina. After failing in several business ventures here, Oskar Schindler took a loan from a lover and left his wife, never to return.

Emilie Schindler sold everything to pay his debts and moved to a simple house in a poorer suburb of Buenos Aires.

For years, she subsisted "on tangerines from my trees and milk," she writes.

In 1963, the Argentine B'nai B'rith association found her and gave her a small monthly pension.

After Spielberg's movie was released, she was invited to the United States and Israel and was received by the pope.

When the hype over the film died out, she moved back to her house and her 12 cats.

"The only visit that really moved me was from a man that came here and barely said a word," she writes in her book. "He showed me his concentration camp number tattooed in his arm and told me I had been like a mother to him.

"He was on the list and gave me a lamp I keep in my living room."

Oskar Schindler was declared a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem in 1962, and Emilie Schindler received the same recognition in 1994.

Oskar Schindler reportedly drank heavily and subsisted on charity from Jews he had helped. He died in poverty and is buried in Israel.



-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), October 07, 2001.


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