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LOS ANGELES, April 27 (UPI) -- Ben Foster and Vicky Krieps said they referenced personal stories of the Holocaust while filming The Survivor, premiering Wednesday at 8 p.m. EDT on HBO. The film tells the true story of Harry Haft (Foster), who became a professional boxer after being forced to box in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
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"The Shoah Foundation guided us quite a bit," Foster, 39, said on a recent Television Critics Association Zoom panel. "I watched thousands of hours -- thousands of hours -- of Holocaust survivor interviews, spending time with Yiddish experts, learning about this world."
The Steven Spielberg-founded Shoah Foundation recorded 53,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors telling their stories since 1994. Their archive is housed on the University of Southern California campus.
Krieps, 38, plays Miriam Wofsoniker, an agent at the Displaced Persons Service who is helping Haft locate Leah, a girlfriend from whom he was separated by the Nazis. Krieps said her grandfather was a Holocaust survivor, and that The Survivor reminded Krieps of the guilt he would talk about.
"They came out and felt guilty because maybe I ate the bread my neighbor didn't eat," Krieps said.
Haft and Wofsoniker married, even though Haft continued to look for Leah. The Survivor flashes back and forth between Haft's experience in the camps and his post-World War II boxing career.
"She accepted marrying him knowing that he had this other woman who might come back," Krieps said.
Krieps said she also admired Wofsoniker's ability to love Haft without judgment should he find Leah.
Foster visited Auschwitz in Poland before filming The Survivor with director Barry Levinson. Foster said it was necessary to witness the extent of the atrocities through which Haft lived.
"It's an altering experience to be there, to touch the rails that brought the boxcars full of human beings in mass slaughter," Foster said.
"Seeing the mountains of baby shoes and toothbrushes that had been disposed of when they stripped the passengers of their belongings -- these are things you can't unsee."
Foster said he kept images of Auschwitz with him throughout the production because Haft lived with his firsthand memories.
"I then plastered my trailer with the images of the camps so that when I closed my eyes, that's all I saw," Foster said. "These are the things that he takes with him throughout the rest of his days and finds healing through compassion."
Foster has played roles in other intense movies like Hostiles, Leave No Trace and Hell or High Water. Early in his career, Foster made his motion picture debut in Levinson's 1999 film Liberty Heights, after two years on the TV series Flash Forward and a few TV movies.
Levinson sent Foster the Survivor script.
"I was overwhelmed by the tale and overwhelmed with a full heart that Barry wanted to work with me again in this way," Foster said.
Krieps, who is from Luxembourg. has been working in European film since 2009. Her role opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in 2017's Phantom Thread was a Hollywood breakthrough that led to roles in The Girl in the Spider's Web and Old.
As intensely as The Survivor captured Haft's experience in the Holocaust, Krieps said the film also shows how some survivors found peace.
"We have the good and bad in the world, and there are a few people who were able to create a space of the gray in-between," Krieps said. "I think the script is about forgiveness and how we have to live with the good and the bad."
The Survivor even ends with a moment of levity. Foster did not want to spoil the joke, but it's one he heard Levinson tell on the set.
"That joke was not in the script," Foster said. "Anytime it felt too emotional, he would turn it."
Foster said the closing joke of The Survivor is just one example of Levinson's ability to lighten heavy moments.
