A women is claiming ownership to Oskar Schindler's documents and is suing the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

JNS.org – The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem has been sued by a woman who claims ownership of a collection of documents that belonged to Holocaust rescuer Oskar Schindler and are now housed at Yad Vashem.

Schindler was a Catholic businessman from Germany who saved more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, and his story was dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List. Prof. Erika Rosenberg claims that the documents, which include copies of lists of the Jews who Schindler saved, were snuck out of Germany without permission after being discovered in a suitcase in an apartment.

Rosenberg, who is the legal heir of Schindler’s wife Emilie, claims the documents belong to her, while the museum claims they were gifted by the couple who lived in that apartment.

“Emilie never asked for these materials. Only after her death did her friend Erica Rosenberg demand them,” a spokeswoman for Yad Vashem told The Jerusalem Post.

“We believe that Schindler’s List is a document of historical importance and its place [is] in the public domain,” the museum said. The case will be heard by a Jerusalem court in April.