Keneally
told The Observer that he had
paid Emilie a sum agreed with her
lawyer, and Spielberg is said to
have given her a large
payment. . .
 |
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,564662,00.html 
London, Sunday, October 7, 2001
Schindler's
bitter widow dies aged 93 Kate Connolly, Berlin EMILIE SCHINDLER, who helped her
husband to save more than 1,000 Jews from
the gas chambers, has died in Germany, two
months after fulfilling her wish to return
home after spending over half a century in
self-imposed
exile. 
| | Emilie
Schindler |
The widow of the industrialist Oskar
Schindler, who was a few days short of
her 94th birthday, had been ill since July
after suffering a stroke during a tour of
Germany, where she was to settle soon in a
retirement home in Bavaria.She died on Friday night at a hospital
in Strausberg, outside Berlin, her friend
and biographer, Erika Rosenberg,
said yesterday. The Schindlers went down
in history for saving 1,300 Jews from the
Holocaust. But their story might have
remained largely forgotten had it not been
for the
book Schindler's Ark, by the
Australian writer Thomas Keneally,
which was transferred to the screen in
1993 in Steven Spielberg's
award-winning Schindler's List. Emilie,
who was born in 1907 in a German-speaking
village in what is now the Czech Republic,
married Oskar in 1928 and they moved to
Krakow in Poland. There they ran the munitions factory
which was later central to their efforts
to hide Jewish workers. Oskar later
compiled the famous list and paid Nazi
commanders thousands of pounds to secure a
workforce for his factory. In 1949 the
couple moved to Argentina, where Emilie
remained until her return to Germany in
July. Oskar abandoned his wife and left for
Germany in 1957, leaving Emilie living
alone in the Argentine countryside. The
dozens of stray cats given the run of her
dilapidated farm house were her only real
companions. For the next half century she
survived on donations from Jewish
organisations and pensions from both the
Argentine and German governments. 
| Steven
Spielberg |
The Argentinians, who knew of her wartime
role, nicknamed the eccentric old German
woman 'Mother Courage'. Oskar died in
1974, before his wartime role became
publicly known. In recent years Emilie
became increasingly bitter, feeling that
she had been given insufficient credit for
her role in helping to save the Jews.'Oskar is the hero - and what about me?
I saved many Jews, too,' she told German
television in a 1999 interview. This
autumn the publication of Rosenberg's
biography of her friend, I, Emilie
Schindler, will reveal the full extent of
the bitterness she felt in her final
years, which she spent, according to
Rosenberg, forgotten and apparently living
in poverty, while her swashbuckling
husband was feted - albeit posthumously -
around the world. 'Emilie has suffered her whole life
from being the woman in the shadow of a
great man, when in fact their roles in
saving the Jews could be split 50-50,'
Rosenberg told The Observer. 'But she was
cut out of the film and the book in a very
humiliating and offensive way.' Both
Keneally and Spielberg staunchly dismissed
claims that they had failed to give her
money after the successes of their book
and film. Keneally told The Observer that he had
paid Emilie a sum agreed with her lawyer,
and Spielberg is
said to have given her a large
payment after the completion of
Schindler's List. In 1993 she was
awarded the 'Righteous among the Nations
Award' by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust
memorial.
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