Chapman is now home to largest collection of ‘Schindler’s list’ documents

Author David Crowe, Holocaust survivor Mila Page and President Daniele Struppa attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for new collection of Oskar Schindler archives donated to the Chapman Holocaust Memorial Library by Crowe. Photo by Rebeccah Glaser

The Leatherby Libraries is now home to the most complete set of Oskar Schindler’s archives and documents in the world – including copies of the original Schindler’s lists that saved more than 1,000 Jews in the Holocaust.

About 50 people attended a ceremony Nov. 10 of the grand opening of a room in Leatherby Libraries that now includes 22 boxes of Schindler’s letters, photographs and architectural drawings that researcher and Chapman Presidential Fellow David Crowe donated to the Chapman Holocaust Memorial Library, located on the fourth floor of the library.

Crowe said that he donated the documents, which took him about seven years to accumulate, to Chapman because of its proximity to the Beverly Hills home of the late Leopold Page and his wife Mila Page, who attended the event Thursday afternoon. The Pages were among those that Schindler’s lists saved from concentration camps.

“This is where the Schindler story was born,” Crowe said. “(Leopold Page) was deeply committed to the idea of telling the world the Schindler story.”

Crowe, who was on the education board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for 14 years, said that he wanted to put the letters and archives in a smaller location, where they would be available for anyone interested in Holocaust study.

Holocaust survivor Mila Page attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Oskar Schindler’s archives now housed at Chapman. Photo by Rebeccah Glaser

“There are those enormous archives where this collection would be buried, I wanted it to be in a place where it would be accessible to the middle school student, to the high school student and not just snooty scholars like myself,” Crowe said with a laugh.

President Daniele Struppa, who gave a speech at the ceremony, said Marilyn Harran, director of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, emailed him asking if he’d like to include Crowe’s archives, but the contents of the room were kept a secret until Thursday.

“My response contained more exclamation points than (Harran) had ever seen,” Struppa said. “This is truly a giant step for our center.”
Marie Knecht, the Pages’ daughter, was excited to see photos of her mother and father, and hopes that the exhibit will help ensure that students don’t forget the history of the Holocaust.

“Many different groups of people during the Holocaust just went out of their way to do something unthinkable, to save these people,” Knecht said. “And I’m very glad they saved my mom and dad.”

Crowe said that Leopold Page convinced author Thomas Keneally to write the book that inspired Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” after Keneally came into Leopold Page’s tiny Beverly Hills leather shop one day.

“(Leopold Page) spent decades, anytime there was a chance – a producer came in, or a director came in,” Crowe said. “Leopold pestered Spielberg every week. He’d call him and say, ‘When are you going to make this film?’”

Struppa said that he believes Chapman is the right home for the archives because they won’t just be used by scholars and historians.

“This is not just to research,” Struppa said. “This is to make sure the voices stay alive.”

The ceremony culminated with a champagne toast and a ribbon-cutting ceremony, where Struppa, Crowe and Harran gathered around Mila Page.

The archives are on display in the Brandman Survivors’ room, adjacent to the Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Library. They will be on display by appointment only to Chapman students, faculty and visiting researchers.