LOS ANGELES, Oct. 21 (JTA) Director Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation has made a grant of $100,000 to establish a public lecture series on rescuers who took large risks to save Jews and others during the Holocaust.
The grant, distributed over a five-year period, was awarded to the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.
The grant was made to honor the memory of Leopold “Paul” Page, who was one of some 1,200 Jews saved by German entrepreneur Oskar Schindler.
Page repaid his benefactor years later, when he convinced author Thomas Keneally to write the book and Spielberg to make the movie “Schindler’s List.”
Page, who died last March, was a founder of the 1939 Club, an organization of Holocaust survivors.
The small, independent Chapman University has one of the most active Holocaust education programs in the country.
The lecture series started in early October with a talk on American rescuer Varian Fry.
On Nov. 27, author David Crowe will speak on “The Search for Oskar Schindler: One Historian’s Journey.”
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