SUNDAY, MAY 30, 1999
SCHINDLER
WIDOW THREATENS TO SUE SPIELBERG; WANTS 6%
OF HOLOCAUST MOVIE PROFITS "Steven
Spielberg only gave me $50,000 for
making a film about the Holocaust and
my husband, and he never ask me
permission, he just did it." EMILIE Schindler is angry,
again. After causing commotion with her
autobiography in 1996, at the age of 91,
the widow of Oskar, the hero of
Spielberg's Oscar-winning
SCHINDLER'S LIST,
is trying once again to put the historical
record straight and get her just reward
while she still has the time. "I saved many Jews, too -- more than
Oskar did," Mrs. Schindler says in an
interview set to air on German television
Monday night. And she now wants Spielberg to pay! Schindler is now demanding full and
appropriate recompense from Spielberg for
the blockbuster film. She is asking for 6 percent of the
boxoffice proceeds and says she will
pursue the matter through the courts if
necessary. Steven Spielberg could not be reached
for immediate comment. Spielberg's movie, Emilie Schindler
says, was simply incorrect. "What does he
know about my life? Absolutely
nothing." In the past, Spielberg has said: "She
had praised the film to me
personally." In the interview on Monday night,
Schindler insists it was she, not
Oskar, who signed the documents
that placed more than a thousand Jews into
her husband's small armaments factory,
saving them from certain death in
Auschwitz. Mrs. Schindler has lashed out at her
husband for his infidelity: "What did I think? I'll tell you.
Scheisskopf [s---head]. But
I was the idiot for falling in love with
him. I am never going to cry; there is no
sense in it. Schindler changed women like
he changed suits. Once, we were well-off,
but then we lost everything and he
abandoned me and I have not
recovered." And Mrs.
Schindler has made the shocking claim:
There was never anything called a
'Schindler's List'! "There never was a 'Schindler's List'.
It was drawn up by a man called
Goldman. This man took money to put a
name on that list - no money, no place on
the list. I was told this by a Dr
Schwartz, in Vienna; he had paid in
diamonds to save his wife... "Hah! Neither of us was a hero," Mrs.
Schindler said. "Oskar was always complex;
he was playing both extremes, always, even
at the end with Nazis against the Jews."
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