Sydney’s Jewish Museum and descendants of survivors saved by Oskar Schindler are angry that a carbon copy of the German industrialist’s famous list was sold to the State Library of New South Wales.
News of the sale emerged only recently — the document had been bought by the library 13 years ago, archived and then forgotten about until it was discovered by a researcher.
The list of more than 800 Jews was given to Australian author Thomas Keneally in 1980 by Leopold Pfefferberg, a Schindler survivor living in Los Angeles.
It prompted Mr Keneally to write his Booker Prize-winning work, Schindler’s Ark, which spawned Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film, Schindler’s List.
The library said this week that it paid an undisclosed sum to a dealer for Mr Keneally’s list in 1996.
The Sydney Jewish Museum president John Landerer said: “I can only express disappointment that he [Keneally] chose to dispose of such a precious document this way.”
Jake Selinger, whose parents were saved by Schindler’s list, added: “It’s hard to believe that he would sell this document without having any care or concern as to where it would end up.”
