Israel's Holocaust museum is sued by former friend of Oskar Schindler's widow who says his famous list documenting 1,200 Jews he saved during World War Two belongs to her

Forty years after his death, a legal battle yesterday began to play out in a Jerusalem court over documents belonging to Oskar Schindler including personal copies of the lists of Jews he saved from the Holocaust.

The case has been brought by Erika Rosenberg, an Argentinian woman, who is suing Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum over a suitcase containing thousands of Schindler's documents.

The case sheds unusual light on Schindler's personal life after he saved some 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during World War II, and the battles over his estate. 

Visitors at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem walk past a portrait of Oskar Schindler, who saved some 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during World War II. Argentinian Erika Rosenberg is suing the museum over a suitcase containing thousands of Schindler's documents

An Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man looks at facsimiles of Oskar Schindler's lists displayed for the public at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, where the original documents are being stored in the museum's archives. 

The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum insists the documents it received in 1999 never belonged to Emilie Schindler, seen here during a 1993 ceremony for her late husband in Buenos Aires

Schindler's story captured public attention with Spielberg's 1993 Oscar-winning movie

Rosenberg claims ownership of the documents by virtue of being the heir of the German industrialist's late wife, Emilie.

The suitcase and the documents have been held since 1999 by Yad Vashem, which insists they never belonged to Emilie Schindler but were passed on by Oskar Schindler to a third party before his death.

During World War II, Schindler, an ethnic German from then-Czechoslovakia and a member of the Nazi party, persuaded German officers - through bribes and other means - to let him employ Jews at his factory, saving them from the death camps.

His story captured public attention decades later with Steven Spielberg's 1993 Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List, with Liam Neeson playing the lead role. 

After the war, Schindler emigrated with his wife to Argentina, but in 1958 returned to Germany alone and died there in 1974. She remained his legal heir.

The suitcase containing Schindler's personal documents and pictures - as well as a number of copies of the original lists of Jews he saved - eventually turned up in the home of a friend, the late Annemarie Staehr.

In her lawsuit, Rosenberg describes Staehr as Schindler's 'lover' and claims she took it from his home after he died.

But Yad Vashem's legal team says their relationship was platonic and that Schindler had given her the suitcase and its contents as a gift.

According to the plaintiff, the suitcase was found at Staehr's house after she died and her children handed it over to a German newspaper and the German national archives in 1997.

When news of the discovery became public, Emilie Schindler took legal action in Germany to retrieve the suitcase and its contents.