During her lifespan of 110 years, Alice Herz-Sommer has been an accomplished concert pianist, teacher, prisoner in Theresienstadt, wife and mother, and now she is the star of an Oscar-nominated documentary.
In 1986, Oscar-nominated production designer Arthur Max (\”Gladiator\”) visited Jerusalem in the midst of the intifada.\n\n\”People told me not to go almost everywhere, but I went everywhere,\” said Max, who is Jewish. \”Of course, some of the Old City was closed off for security reasons, but I went to the Western Wall and into the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. And I stood on top of the Jaffa Gate and I looked out over what to me always had been a name, and suddenly I felt connected to my heritage, a close connection to all the Jewish history I had studied as a bar mitzvah.\n\nMax drew on those feelings to recreate medieval Jerusalem for \”Kingdom of Heaven,\” in which the protagonists also journey to Jerusalem to connect to their religious roots. The Ridley Scott film revolves around a crusader (Orlando Bloom) swept up in the 12th-century battle between Christian King Balian and Muslim leader Saladin.
John Forbes Nash, the brilliant mathematician whose life is portrayed in the Oscar-nominated movie, \”A Beautiful Mind,\” has denied allegations that he hates Jews, during a March 17 interview with Mike Wallace on \”60 Minutes.\”
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