Polish director to present Spielberg with Holocaust film

The film, one of a four-part documentary series, draws on several thousand hours of taped testimony by Holocaust witnesses, collected in Poland by Spielberg's Shoah Visual History Foundation. Wajda's contribution focuses on the plight of European Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, the epicentre of Hitler's extermination camps and "final solution" - the planned total annihilation of Jews during World War II.

The remaining instalments deal with Nazi atrocities against Jews in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Russia. Spielberg was inspired to make the series after meeting Holocaust survivors and witnesses on the set of the Oscar-winning "Schindler's List" in Krakow, southern Poland, in the early 1990s. Critics say accusations that "Schindlers List" portrayed a "Hollycaust" version of Nazi persecution prompted Spielberg to turn to documentary film based only on factual testimony. In 1994, Spielberg's Foundation set up offices in 49 countries to tape the testimony of Holocaust survivors and witnesses, which completed more than 50,000 interviews. In Poland, Wajda drew on an archive of 1,420 testimonials. Wajda and "Pamietam" producer, the Warsaw-based head of Heritage Films Lew Rywin, will also discuss a possible Hollywood-linked feature film. The project may depict the 18th century Polish-American military hero Tadeusz Koszciuszko who fought in the American War of Independence, sources close to the director said.

(dpa)