Oskar Schindler watch, compass and medal set to fetch £19K at auction

Personal items belonging to Oskar Schindler, the German businessman credited with saving the lives of more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, are expected to fetch $25,000 (£19,000) at auction this week.

Schindler’s remarkable act of saving lives by employing Jews to work in his enamelware and ammunition factories was recounted in the 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark by Australian author Thomas Keneally and became the basis of Steven Spielberg’s multi Oscar-winning Schindler’s List in 1993.

Among the Schindler items included in the sale from RR Auction in Boston are his Longines wristwatch, featuring a white face with gold-tone hands and time markers, silver-tone case, and black leather strap, as well as a compass manufactured by Bezard/Gotthilf Lufft, said to have been used by Schindler and his wife Emilie while fleeing Russian troops and heading for American occupied territory in 1945.

The lot also includes a 1938 Sudetenland Medal awarded to Schindler, who had aided in the annexation and occupation of the Sudetenland as a spy for the German government. 

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Two fountain pens in a hinged Parker case belonging to Schindler and a thin wooden business card, giving his address as Frankfurt am Main, where he moved in 1957 are also going under the hammer.

The items come from the estate of Emilie Schindler, who died in 2001.

“It’s an amazing archive of Schindler’s personal belongings,” said Bobby Livingston at RR Auction. “Schindler continues to be highly sought-after among collectors.”

The auction also includes the sale of a Raoul Wallenberg Blue and gold Schutz-Pass issued to Emil Tanzer.

The scarce one-page signed document in German and Hungarian, is dated September 15, 1944.

Wallenberg arrived in Hungary in July 1944 as the country’s Jewish population was under siege. Nearly every other major Jewish community in Europe had already been decimated, and the Nazis were dispatching more than 10,000 Hungarian Jews to the gas chambers daily.

With time of the essence, he devised and distributed thousands of these ‘Schutz-Passes’—official-looking, but essentially invalid, Swedish passports granting the Hungarian bearer immunity from deportation. Nazi officials readily accepted the paperwork. 

The Fine Autographs and Artifacts Auction from RR Auction ends on March 6 (tomorrow). For information, visit rrauction.com.