Acclaimed director Barry Levinson has revealed a deep personal connection to his latest film, “The Survivor.”
The movie — premiering April 27 on HBO — is based on the true story of Harry Haft, a Polish-born Jew who was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a teen. There he managed to survive by being a boxer and was forced to pummel fellow prisoners for the amusement of the German officers.
After World War II, Haft eventually moved to the United States, where he continued his boxing career for an unusual reason: Haft was convinced his first love was still alive and believed that if he became famous enough through boxing, she would see his name in newspapers and they would be reunited. His final bout was against future champ Rocky Marciano.
He died in November 2007 at the age of 82.
The incredible tale, starring Ben Foster as Haft, deals with many issues surrounding the Holocaust including post-traumatic stress disorder, Levinson told The Post.
The Oscar-winning director revealed in an exclusive interview that as a little boy growing up in post-war Baltimore he remembers his grandmother’s brother turning up one day on their doorstep.
“I didn’t know she had a brother,” Levinson, 80, explained. “He stayed with us for several weeks, and they put him up in my bedroom, and the first night I was awakened by him screaming and talking. He tossed and turned and then went to sleep. It went on every night for two weeks.”
“Then he moved to New Jersey and no one in the house talked about him, at least not when I was there,” Levinson continued, “When I was 16, I’m sitting with my mother in the kitchen and she says, ‘Well, when Simcha was in a concentration camp,’ I went, ‘What?’ And as she’s telling me the story, it immediately flashed in my mind, him screaming when I was 5.”
The “Bugsy” director said that when he first read “The Survivor” script he instantly thought of his great-uncle and felt that it was a story of “post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Now we have a name for it,” he explained, “the idea that you’ve survived something and it’s over and it’s finished and get on with life, it doesn’t happen for many people. Some struggled to put it behind them.”
“The Survivor” which also stars Vicky Krieps, Danny DeVito and John Leguizamo drops on HBO on April 27, at 8 p.m., in honor of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).
