– The only known privately-held copy of the list of Jews Oskar Schindler saved from the Nazis went on sale this spring for $2.2 million. The 13-page document, made famous by the movie Schindler’s List, includes the names of 801 men the German industrialist transferred from Poland to Germany in the war’s waning months, saving them from certain death. After an anonymous buyer purchased the document from the family of Itzhak Stern, the accountant who helped Schindler compile several copies of the list, it was offered for sale on a “first-come, first-served” basis by MomentsInTime.com, a collector’s website. Only four other copies are believed to have survived the war; one is in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one is in the German federal archives, and two are at
Yad Vashem in Israel.
– Willie and Joe would be cranky, no doubt, but proud. The U.S. Postal Service unveiled a postage stamp this March honoring Bill Mauldin, the World War II cartoonist whose two whisker-stubbled infantrymen spent much of the war sharing the dark comedy of life on the front lines with civilians and real-life soldiers alike. Mauldin won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his “distinguished service” as a cartoonist, and he and both of his much-loved characters appear on the stamp.
– A World War II veteran complaining of arthritis in his hip discovered he may be even tougher than he thought. Fred Gough, an 83-year-old British infantry veteran went to the doctor with an ache in his leg this spring, only to have X-rays reveal the source of the problem was actually an old German bullet. “I didn’t know it was there,” Gough told the Telegraph. “All I can remember is getting this thump in my thigh, but it didn’t knock me off my feet or anything.”