Stephen Cypen said it took him about 30 seconds after seeing a letter from UF\'s Documentary Institute to make the decision to donate $200,000 for an upcoming film about a Holocaust victim.
Cypen, president of the Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Foundation Inc. in Miami, had just returned from a trip to the Czech Republic where he visited Terezin Ghetto, a camp near Prague where Nazis exiled Jews during World War II.
The institute\'s letter detailed plans for a documentary about Petr Ginz, a teenage Jewish artist and writer who spent his last years in Terezin Ghetto before dying in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.
"I\'m hoping it can bring to reality what we saw personally (on the trip), so the majority of people who were not able to go there themselves will be able to experience it" Cypen said.
Cypen, a 1965 UF alumnus, has also supported UF\'s Jewish studies program, the restoration of Newell Hall and UF Hillel.
The institute has already spent about $100,000, which included the $66,000 rights to the story and trips to the Czech Republic and Israel, institute co-director Churchill Roberts said.
Roberts estimated the documentary will total about $700,000, most of which will come from fundraising.
Institute co-director Sandra Dickson will travel to Israel with Roberts from June 21 to 28 to start filming - a process that will take about two years.
Dickson stumbled upon Ginz\'s story in the fall in a store selling his diary, which his sister edited after it resurfaced in 2003.
Dickson contacted her about making a film, which started a negotiation that lasted about nine months for rights to the diary and other artwork. UF won the rights against two other production companies.
Before his death at 16, Ginz had authored five novels, written a diary and completed 120 pieces of art.
The Nazi threat did not deter the Jewish teen. When the Nazis occupied Prague, he listened to the forbidden BBC news broadcast and wrote the information in code to share with others in the community. After 14-year-old Ginz was taken to Terezin Ghetto, he risked his life as an editor and writer of an underground magazine called Vedem.
"No matter how difficult the circumstances, he kept expressing himself creatively," Dickson said.
Roberts said they hope Ginz\'s life can be an inspiration to younger generations.
"I think we\'re going to aim this more at children," Roberts said, "To show that children - in the worst possible times, in the midst of the Holocaust - that the human spirit can prevail."
