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The Hollywood Reporter devoted its December 16, 2015, edition to Holocaust survivors who went on to illustrious careers in Hollywood and the entertainment industry after World War II.
Ten out of the 11 survivors featured in the article have given testimony to the Visual History Archive, only Meyer Gottlieb did not. In addition to these 11, USC Shoah Foundation uncovered additional survivors in the Visual History Archive who also in the entertainment field, but have since passed. To honor them we have pulled clips from their testimony and included them below, interspersed among clips from the ten survivors featured in the article.
Rebeka Arabova
Rebeka was in the fourth grade of elementary school when she had to wear a Yellow Start, leave her home in Sofia, Bulgaria, and follow her parents to Razgrad—all due to anti-Jewish Law for Protection of the Nation, enacted by the pro-Nazi Bulgarian government. After the war, Rebeka graduated from the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film Arts and became an actress. She was married to Boris Arabov—famous Bulgarian film and stage actor.
Albrecht Becker
One of the few homosexual survivors whose testimony is in the Visual History Archive, Albrecht Becker grew up in Thale, Germany, and later settled in Würzburg where he was eventually arrested and imprisoned for violating Paragraph 175, the penal code that outlawed homosexuality in Germany. After the war, Becker parlayed his interest in photography and his skills as a window dresser into a long career in cinema and theater as a set designer, working with such figures of German cinema as Erich Kirchhoff, Helmut Käutner, and Rosa Von Praunheim. Albrecht Becker died in 2002 at the age of 95 in Hamburg, Germany. Read more about Albrecht Becker.
Celina Biniaz
Celina Biniaz was the youngest female on “Schindler’s list.” She and her mother were part of the transport of women who were mistakenly sent to Plaszow concentration camp instead of Schindler’s factory. However, Schindler himself came and insisted the women come to the factory with him. Thus, Celina and her parents both survived the Holocaust, and they immigrated to the United States. Celina became a teacher, and has spoken at USC Shoah Foundation events many times. Her grandson, Alex Biniaz-Harris, was also an intern at USC Shoah Foundation for three years.
Victor Borge
Victor Borge was originally born in Copenhagen, but fled to Sweden once Nazis occupied Denmark during World War II. He managed to escape to the United States in 1940 on one of the last neutral ships leaving Europe. While in the U.S, Borge went on to become a famous comedian, conductor, and pianist. He died in 2000.
Shony Braun
Shony Braun’s talent for violin literally saved his life in Dachau. The SS officers of the camp played a sadistic game in which they asked for violinists among the prisoners and then killed the first two volunteers who tried to play for them. Shony was about to be killed too, until he played “The Blue Danube Waltz” and became a favorite of the guards. Shony became a professional musician and composer in Los Angeles and one of his compositions, Symphony of the Holocaust, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He died in 2002. Read more about Shony Braun.
Robert Clary
Robert Clary was the only one of 14 family members who were sent to Auschwitz to survive the camp, and went on to become a successful singer in his native France before becoming an actor in the United States. He played Corporal Louis LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes and acted in other feature films with World War II themes. He married Natalie Cantor Metzger, the daughter of singer Eddie Cantor.
Itskhak Fintsi
Born in Sofia, Itskhak was expelled from his hometown and forced to resettle, along with his parents, to a smaller town of Razgrad in 1943. By September 1944 when the Soviet Army drew near, the family returned to Sofia. In 1955, Itskhak graduated from the Bulgarian National Academy of Theater and Film Arts and became a film and stage actor, making his debut in the movie “Zvezdi” (“Stars”) (1959). He is known for winning the best actor award in the “Golden Prague” TV films festival (1982).
Dario Gabbai
Dario Gabbai is likely the last surviving member of the Auschwitz sonderkommando – prisoners who were forced to transport bodies from the gas chamber to the crematoria. He immigrated to California and worked in the textile industry and also as an actor. Read more about Dario Gabbai.
Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt
Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt survived Theresienstadt and Auschwitz in part because of her talents as an artist. In Auschwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele conscripted her to draw portraits of Romani women prisoners. She also painted a mural of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on a wall in the children’s barrack. In Los Angeles after the war, she married Disney animator Art Babbitt and became a successful animator herself on films and cartoons including Cap’n Crunch cereal. She died in 2009.
Bill Harvey
Before he was a cosmetologist to the stars in Los Angeles, Bill Harvey fought for his life during the Holocaust. He endured the ghetto in Beregszász, Hungary, as well as a string of concentration camps including Birkenau, Buchenwald, and Leuna, where he was forced to lift heavy stones and iron pieces from the roads. After initially immigrating to New York City after the war, Bill visited an uncle in Los Angeles and stayed, opening several hair salons.
Curt Lowens
Actor Curt Lowens is a Holocaust survivor and also a rescuer. His father, through his connections with the Jewish Council in Amsterdam, managed to get Curt released from Westerbork concentration camp and then into hiding. While in hiding, Curt became active in the network of Dutch rescuers and helped save hundreds of Jewish children. He has appeared in more than 100 TV shows and movies – including The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, and Angels & Demons – with credits as recent as 2013.
Branko Lustig
Auschwitz survivor Branko Lustig became a successful film producer and won Academy Awards for Schindler’s List and Gladiator. He was on the Founding Advisory Committee of USC Shoah Foundation when it launched in 1994, and recorded its 50,000th testimony in 1999, interviewed by Schindler’s List producer Gerald Molen.
Aurora Mardiganian
Aurora Mardiganian, with American screenwriter Harvey Gates, wrote a narrative titled Ravished Armenia, based on her experiences surviving the Armenian Genocide. She later played herself in a movie version called Auction of Souls. During the genocide, Aurora was forced to walk over 1,400 miles and was kidnapped and sold in the slave market. She escaped and made her way to New York. She died in 1994.
Andrew Merkler
Andrew Merkler became a playwright after surviving the Holocaust. He followed in the footsteps of his father, who wrote the scripts of more than 30 Hungarian movies and lyrics to popular Hungarian songs of the 1930s and ‘40s. He survived anti-Jewish measures in Hungary, including “Yellow Star Houses” a forced march and deportation from Hungary to Austria.
Ruth Posner
As a nine year old, Ruth Posner escaped the Warsaw Ghetto with her aunt and spent the rest of the war living as a Polish Catholic under an assumed name. She was even evacuated to Germany under her false identity as a prisoner of war. After the war, Ruth became a dancer and choreographer in the London Contemporary Dance Company and a teacher at Julliard and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, among other universities. She also acted in films and onstage throughout England.
Leon Prochnik
The son of well-to-do chocolatiers in Krakow, Leon Prochnik would grow up to become a film director, editor, producer and writer in Los Angeles. But as a seven year old during the Holocaust, he endured losing his home, hiding in farms in Lithuania, a Trans-Siberian Railway trip across Russia and a voyage to Canada in order to survive.
Ruth Westheimer
She is best known as “Dr. Ruth,” a sex therapist, author and media personality. But Ruth Westheimer is also a survivor of the Holocaust, sent from Germany to Switzerland on the Kindertransport. She studied and taught psychology at the University of Paris and did her post-doctoral work on human sexuality at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Ruth is the author of several iconic books and became famous for her groundbreaking radio shows and television appearances.