
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994                   TAG: 9404170057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: JERUSALEM                                LENGTH: Medium

`EVERYBODY COMES FOR SCHINDLER'

For years, the old Arab gatekeeper at a Christian cemetery on Mount Zion passed his days alone. So few people visited that he left the graveyard padlocked, passing his mornings outside under a tree.

Suddenly, Suleiman Abu Ziyad has become busy, unlocking the iron gate for hundreds of pilgrims paying homage to a long-dead German.

In a surreal switch, life has come to imitate art at the grave of Oskar Schindler, the German Christian entrepreneur who saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazi killing machine in World War II.

Ever since Steven Spielberg's hit "Schindler's List" showed Holocaust survivors filing past Schindler's grave, hundreds of pilgrims and tourists have streamed into the Franciscan graveyard overgrown with weeds and poppies to visit the once-forsaken burial place.

"They come again and again and ask: `Where is he? Where is Schindler?' " said Abu Ziyad, 68. "It all started about six weeks ago, when a big group came with a translator. They asked, `Where's Schindler?' I said, `What do you want with him?'

"Now it's up to about 50 a day," he continued. "They come and take pictures. Everybody comes for Schindler."

Even though Schindler's life was memorialized in a 1983 book, on which the Spielberg film is based, there was virtually no interest in the site until the Oscar-winning film focused worldwide attention on the tale.

By the time Abu Ziyad arrived one day recently, several people were already at the gate. He hurried past, opened the lock and trudged past centuries-old tombstones to the center of the graveyard.

There he bowed ever so slightly and whispered, "Schindler," as he gestured to a simple grave on which were piled dozens of tiny stones - each left by a visitor, a traditional Jewish sign of respect, as if to say, "I was here; I remembered."

by CNB