The Sound Of Oscar

And the award goes to –The Holocaust! No, the Academy Awardshave not been given out yet, but the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts andSciences nominated “The Pianist,” a searing film of one Jew’s survival duringthe doomed uprisings of the ghetto and city of Warsaw during the Nazioccupation, for seven Oscars, including best picture.

Roman Polanski, the movie’s director, and Adrien Brody inthe title role of Wladyslaw Szpilman, were nominated in the directing andleading actor categories respectively.

There had been considerable speculation whether Polanski,who escaped from the Krakow ghetto as a boy of 7, would be nominated. He isofficially a fugitive from the United States for having had unlawful sexualrelations with a minor and currently lives in Paris.

Polanski was previously nominated for his films “Tess”(1979), “Chinatown” (1974)  and “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)

“Frida” whose title character was half-Jewish, received sixnominations at the Feb. 11 ceremony in Hollywood.

The German entry, “Nowhere in Africa,” was nominated forbest foreign language film. It described the struggles of a German Jewishrefugee family in the 1930s to adapt to life in Kenya. Israel’s entry, “BrokenWings,” was not nominated.

Nominated in the documentary feature category was “Prisonerof Paradise.” Its central character is Kurt Gerron, a popular Jewishentertainer in pre-Hitler Berlin, who directed a Nazi propaganda film about the”model ghetto” of Theresienstadt and was killed in Auschwitz.

Miramax, headed by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, garnered themost nominations for any studio. (Their hit musical, “Chicago,” topped the listof all films with 13 nominations.)

The 75th Annual Academy Awards will air Sunday, March 23 at 5:30 p.m. on ABC