The elderly woman sits on a large white cushion in her wheelchair, eyes shut, looking exhausted. "Are we in Germany?" she asks the woman at her side. "Yes," comes the reply. "That's nice," says the elderly woman. Her head lolls to one side and she dozes off, leaving her companion to answer questions from the press horde gathered in the Reichstag in Berlin.
Almost 60 years ago, Emilie Schindler left Germany with her husband, Oskar Schindler, and moved to Cracow in occupied Poland. Mr Schindler opened an enamel factory there and what happened is now history. By drawing up lists of fictitious jobs in his factory, he saved the lives of over 1,000 Jews by convincing the SS that the workers were vital to the war effort. His story was told in the film Schindler's List, but until now little or nothing is known of Emilie Schindler's part in her husband's scheme.
Now 94, Emilie Schindler is determined to take back some of the credit, despite her failing health. Not only that, but last week, after setting foot on German soil for the first time in over half a century, Emilie Schindler said she wanted to stay.
Born Emilie Pelzl in the Moravian town of Alt Moletein in 1907, she met Oskar when she was 20 years old. She married him a year later in 1928, but she says the marriage was ill-fated from the start.
Her husband was a driven businessman, a loner more married to his work than to her. For her part, she never took much interest in her husband's enamel factory in Cracow. However, when the situation of the Jews in the ghetto became critical, Oskar began preparing the list of Jewish workers he wanted to take to an armaments factory in Brⁿnnlitz (today, Bruenec in the Czech Republic), and his wife took action.
Or at least that is how Emilie Schindler describes it in her memoirs. Before they could resettle the Jews in Brⁿnnlitz, they needed permission from the town mayor.
"Without this authorisation, Oskar would have been sent to the front and the Jews would have been murdered," she wrote. She went to the mayor's office, determined to obtain the necessary authorisation, and was surprised to find that the official responsible was her old swimming teacher.
"Talking about old times and old memories, about his family and mine, helped get the request granted," she said.
In 1949, the couple emigrated to Argentina, where Oskar Schindler tried, unsuccessfully, to start a fur farm. The couple separated in 1957 when Oskar returned to Germany to try and start another factory. He died there in 1974 and was buried in Jerusalem.
Before and after his death, Emilie remained overshadowed by the heroism attributed to her husband alone.
In his 1982 book, Schindler's Ark, author Thomas Keneally remarks in the last chapter that Emilie was "still alive when this account was written". Until two weeks ago, Emilie lived with almost 50 cats, two dogs and two plainclothes policemen outside her door in the town of San Vicente, 60 kilometres south of Buenos Aires.
The worldwide success of the 1995 film Schindler's List brought Emilie Schindler neither recognition nor riches, and she continued to exist as before on a German pension of little more than 1,300 deutschmarks (£520) a month.
Indeed, it was only two years ago, when she sued a German newspaper, that the media even began to take notice of her.
In 1999, the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper ran a series of articles about Oskar Schindler after finding a suitcase that once belonged to him, still full of documents. Emilie, then in better health, took the newspaper to court.
"I am the widow and the only heir of Schindler," she said in an interview, arguing that the suitcase, and the rights to the material inside, therefore belonged to her. Last month, a Stuttgart court ordered the newspaper to pay her DM25,000 (£10,000) for publishing the documents, money she has yet to receive.
The official reason for Emilie Schindler's visit to Germany last week was to hand over other papers belonging to her husband to the Haus der Geschichte (House of History) in Bonn. The papers include letters and excerpts from the diary of one of the Jews saved by the Schindlers.
The Stuttgarter Zeitung donated the contents of the suitcase they found, including the famous "Schindler's List", to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, a source of great annoyance to his widow.
"It is my wish and will that these documents, with the list of names of the rescued Jews, return to Germany soon," said Emilie Schindler last week in Bonn.
Her second stop on her German tour was Berlin, where she had a full schedule: a visit to the parliament, the city's Jewish Centre and the Oskar Schindler Secondary School in the Berlin suburb of Hohensch÷nhausen.
Sitting in her wheelchair, Emilie Schindler was surrounded by students who laid books on her lap and pushed pens into her hand, asking one question after another about her husband. After a short stay, the elderly woman looked overwhelmed and exhausted by the attention and was whisked away.
As the week wore on, Emilie became visibly more worn out and several pre-arranged television interviews, including one with the BBC, had to be abandoned. Her companion and biographer, Erika Rosenberg, conducted most of the interviews instead, telling journalists that Emilie wanted to spend her last days in Germany. After receiving several offers of accommodation from nursing homes around Germany, she accepted a place at a home in the southern state of Bavaria.
But plans to move her to her new home were put on hold last Monday when she was hospitalised in a critical condition.
The rapid deterioration of Emilie's health is no surprise to those who watched her as she was dragged along from one reception to another for a week, accompanied as always by Rosenberg.
Rosenberg met Emilie five years ago, when she worked for the Goethe Institute in Buenos Aires. She is in Germany to work on the new edition of Emilie's autobiography, to be published in the autumn. Emilie has given her full power of attorney over all her affairs and Rosenberg has been criticised for putting the promotion of the book ahead of Emilie's health.
She is defensive about criticism that she knowingly set up interviews with Emilie, for which she charged an £80 fee, when the woman was neither mentally aware nor able to keep awake,
"Journalists earn money from the interviews we give them, so why shouldn't we, Mrs Schindler, have the right to earn money to live from?" she said.
During one television interview last week, Emilie was so mentally unaware that it had to be abandoned and was never aired. As the cameras rolled, she said: "I never was married, I never helped any Jews, I never helped anyone."
Emilie's condition is still serious, but Rosenberg hopes she will recover for the October launch of I, Emilie Schindler, which she says will tell the full story of the woman behind Oskar Schindler.
"For me, it would be a great satisfaction that this woman's life's work be recognised," she said.