Saved by Schindler’s List | Celina Biniaz | Jewish-American Heritage Month | USC Shoah Foundation

May 22, 2023 | Holocaust survivor Celina Biniaz was the youngest female on Oskar Schindler’s famed list. Celina survived the Kraków Ghetto, Nazi labor camps, and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp before being rescued by Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust.

Celina, 91, is a longtime friend of USC Shoah Foundation. Both Celina and her mother recorded testimony for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive in 1996. For many years after the war, Celina was reluctant to share her story because she feared no one could comprehend what she had been through. That changed in 1994, when Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List and established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became USC Shoah Foundation.

Celina often says that “Oskar Schindler gave me life, but Steven Spielberg gave me a voice.” Some of Celina’s testimony was included as an extra feature on a DVD release of Schindler’s List, to help fight Holocaust denial. …