Gene Wilder listening to one of his favorite songs, a rendition of "Over the Rainbow" sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Gene Wilder Jerome Silberman (June 11, 1933 – August 29, 2016), known professionally as Gene Wilder, was an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, singer-songwriter and author. Wilder began his career on stage, and made his screen debut in an episode of the TV series "The Play of the Week" in 1961. Although his first film role was portraying a hostage in the 1967 motion picture "Bonnie and Clyde", Wilder's first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1967 film "The Producers" for
David Silberman a member, and in 2013 Acting President, of the Jewish Survivors of Latvia organization. In 2007 he and his wife Aviva founded the group "Aviv Lenitzolei Hashoa" (Spring for Holocaust Survivors) which supports aging survivors in need of assistance. Because many of the Jewish people who survived the Holocaust were unable, or found it too upsetting, to relate their experiences in readable stories, at the end of the 1950s David Silberman and other activists began to covertly gather information from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust living in Latvia. Silberman met two of the four known survivors of the Rumbula Forest