Leopold Page, a Holocaust survivor who was the catalyst for both the movie “Schindler’s List” and the book on which it was based, died March 9 at the age of 87.
Born Leopold Pfefferberg in Crakow, Poland, Page served as an officer in the Polish army during World War II, was wounded, captured and interned first in the Crakow ghetto and then in the nearby Plaszcow concentration camp.
He and his wife Mila were saved from almost certain death in the nearby Auschwitz death camp by German businessman Oskar Schindler, who put the couple and 1,200 other Jews to work in his enamel factory and shielded them from the Nazi extermination program.
Liberated at the end of the war, Page came to the United States and opened a leather goods store in Beverly Hills, but his real mission was to let the world know about Schindler’s extraordinary deeds.
When well-known Australian author Thomas Keneally wandered into his store in 1980 to buy a briefcase, Page fixed his eyes on the writer and unfolded the Schindler story. “Schindler’s List” was published in 1982, becoming an international best-seller.
Next was filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who was impressed but said he would need another 10 years to reach the mental maturity needed for the project. “Schindler’s List,” the movie, was completed 10 years after the initial meeting, and the rest is history. At the 1993 Academy Awards presentation, Spielberg publicly credited Page as the catalyst for the film.
“I was jittery,” Page recalled, “because I had promised Spielberg 10 years earlier that if he made ‘Schindler’s List,’ he would get an Oscar for Oskar.”
After the picture went on to become an international phenomenon, Page became a celebrity in his own right. He was interviewed by Larry King on CNN and profiled by ABC anchor Peter Jennings as his “Person of the Week.”
When this reporter once described Page as a Holocaust survivor, he protested, saying, “I’m not a survivor, I am a witness to the truth.”
