Ann Brenoff Senior Columnist, The Huffington Post
By the next time a major anniversary rolls around, there may not be any voices left to speak to the horrors, says producer.
The Holocaust ended 70 years ago last spring and The Hollywood Reporter embarked on an ambitious seven-month project to find every living Holocaust survivor with connections to the entertainment industry. It was a project with the ultimate deadline: There was a 12th survivor who died two weeks before she could be interviewed.
The Hollywood’s Last Survivors project producer, Peter Flax, credited the USC Shoah Foundation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, for their assistance.
In a note on the project, he wrote, “The next time a major anniversary rolls around, there will be even fewer voices to testify to the horror of the Holocaust. Maybe none. All told, it is estimated that fewer than 100,000 living survivors exist around the world, and that number is declining quickly.”
The survivors featured include actor Robert Clary, who played Corporal LeBeau in Hogan’s Heroes; Meyer Gottlieb, who is president of Samuel Goldwyn Films; and Dr. Ruth Westheimer, prominent sex therapist.