The document that saved the lives of hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation is now up for auction on eBay. With the starting price set at $3 million, the bidding for one of the four remaining copies of Schindler’s list began Thursday.
Schindler’s list was the brainchild of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist during World War II who spared over one thousand Jews from Nazi imprisonment. The list itself was compiled by Schindler’s accountant Itzhak Stern, and it contains the names of 801 Jewish males who Schindler hired to work in his factories.
Stern passed the list down to his nephew, who then sold it in 2011 to a private collector. That collector has now decided to sell the list, employing the help of California collectors Gary Zimet and Eric Gavin.
“We decided to sell the list on eBay because it has over 100 million worldwide members, and this is a global story,” Gazin said in an interview with the New York Post. “There are billionaires using the site, wealthy celebrities. We like the platform.”
The three surviving copies of the list are still under institutional protection. An Israeli holocaust museum currently holds two of the copies, and the third is at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
The story behind Schindler’s list was made into an Academy Award-winning drama in 1993 by Steven Spielberg. It stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern and Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth, the German SS officier who tried to foil Schindler’s plans.
Currently, no bids have been placed on the list.