The Anti-Defamation League joined The Weinstein Company and other local groups for a March 25 pre-release screening of Woman in Gold, based on the true story of ADL Executive Committee member Randy Schoenberg’s legal battle on behalf of Maria Altmann for the return of Gustav Klimt paintings looted by the Nazis.
Following the screening, ADL Regional Director Amanda Susskind moderated a Q&A with Randy Schoenberg, who is currently President of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, about what it was like to be portrayed on the big screen and how the case has affected his life.
Schoenberg indicated that the movie mostly got it right, although some facts were changed to accommodate the film’s flow. He also stated that it was a propitious time for the film’s release due to the recent rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. He explained that he had always been fascinated with the Holocaust and noted the film’s takeaway: “It’s to remember. People forget…..the film’s underlying message is about memory.” Schoenberg’s great grandparents were killed in the Holocaust and his grandparents came to the U.S. as refugees. Susskind is the child and grandchild of survivors.
Schoenberg also emphasized that the case proceeds allowed him to “give back.” As noted at the end of the film, Randy Schoenberg went on to make a new building possible for the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.
The film opens April 1. The following description is provided by The Weinstein Company:
WOMAN IN GOLD is the remarkable true story of one woman’s journey to reclaim her heritage and seek justice for what happened to her family. Sixty years after she fled Vienna during World War II, an elderly Jewish woman, Maria Altmann (Helen Mirren), starts her journey to retrieve family possessions seized by the Nazis, among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Together with her inexperienced but plucky young lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), she embarks upon a major battle which takes them all the way to the heart of the Austrian establishment and the U.S. Supreme Court, and forces her to confront difficult truths about the past along the way.