Schindler’s documents sold at auction

BOSTON - Reuters

A one-page letter in German dated Aug 22, 1944, signed by Schindler.

Documents linked to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist known for his efforts to save Jews from World War II concentration camps, were sold at auction for more than $122,000, a New Hampshire auction house said on Aug. 16.

The documents included a rare one-page letter, signed by Schindler and dated Aug. 22, 1944, sent from his enamelware factory in Krakow, Poland, where he employed more than 1,000 Jewish workers from a nearby Nazi concentration camp. The letter was written on behalf of one of Schindler’s employees, Adam Dziedzic. Schindler’s story was recounted in the 1982 novel “Schindler’s Ark” by Thomas Keneally and became the basis of Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” in 1993.

Schindler had learned in the summer of 1944 that the Nazis planned to close factories unrelated to the war effort. Through bribery and personal connections, he won permission to produce arms and move the factory and its workers to Brunnlitz, in Sudetenland, or Sudetengau, in what is now Czech Republic. The nine or 10 lists of employees he submitted to the Nazis became known collectively as “Schindler’s list.”