Fun Fact: When Spielberg first set out to make Schindler's List, before going full-steam on pre-production, he first went to Roman Polanski, and offered him the project to direct; Spielberg feeling that Polanski out-ranked him in holocaust jew indie cred. (Roman was a child in the nazi-controlled ghettos of Poland, and lost much of his family to the holocaust, including both of his parents who died in concentration camps.) Polanski refused, still not being at all ready to deal with that situation artistically; and so Spielberg went ahead with the project, with Roman's blessing. A decade later, Polanski finally addressed his personal hell regarding this topic with The Pianist.
