 Steven Spielberg (I) (qv) offered the job of director to  Roman Polanski (qv). Polanski turned it down because the subject  was too personal. He had lived in the Krakow ghetto until the age of  8, when he escaped on the day of the liquidation. His mother later  died at Auschwitz concentration camp. Polanski would later direct  his own film about the Holocaust, _Pianist, The (2002)_ (qv).