Oskar Schindler helped hundreds of Jews during World War II

A list compiled by the German industrialist Oskar Schindler has been discovered by a researcher at a library in Australia.

Schindler's list helped hundreds of Jewish workers escape death in the Holocaust during World War II.

It was found in research notes which belonged to the Australian author of Schindler's Ark - the basis for the Oscar-winning film, Schindler's List.

The document was found at the New South Wales Library in Sydney.

It saved 801 men from the gas chambers - it's an incredibly moving piece of history

Library co-curator Olwen Pryke

There are 13 pages of fragile, yellowing paper, upon which are typed the names and nationalities of 801 Jewish people.

They are being described as some of the most powerful documents of the 20th Century.

Gas chambers

The list was hurriedly typed on 18 April 1945, in the closing days of World War II, and compiled by Oskar Schindler, a card-carrying Nazi.

Schindler ran a factory in Krakow, Poland, during the war, where he used Jewish labour.

Appalled by the conduct of the Nazis, he sought to persuade officials that his workers were vital to the war effort and should be spared from the death camps.

"It saved 801 men from the gas chambers... It's an incredibly moving piece of history," library co-curator Olwen Pryke said.

This Schindler's list was found sandwiched between research notes and German newspaper clippings gathered by Australian author Thomas Keneally.

Ms Pryke said neither the library nor the book dealer, from whom it bought the six boxes of material in 1996, realised the list was hidden among the documents.

Mr Keneally was handed the list almost 30 years ago in a shop in Los Angeles, by one of the people whom Schindler helped - Leopold Pfefferberg, Jewish worker 173 on the list.

Mr Pfefferberg wanted the novelist to write Schindler's story.