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Spielberg recalls childhood on TCM special

He is perhaps Hollywood’s greatest living director.

And Monday, Steven Spielberg, 60, winner of countless Oscars is the subject of “Spielberg on Spielberg,” a 90-minute interview premiering July 9 (8 p.m. EDT, Turner Classic Movies).

In it he speaks about filmmaking and his earliest memories.

“My grandmother taught English to Hungarian Holocaust survivors when I was only about 3 years old living in Cincinnati,” he says in the film while commenting on “Schindler’s List,” his 1993 film about the Holocaust which won seven Academy Awards, including best picture.

“I learned my numbers based on all the numbers that they had tattooed on their arms [from the concentration camps]. And I had one man that used to say, ‘That’s a two. That’s a five,’ ” says Spielberg, showing how the man pointed to the figures on his arm.

Spielberg, recalls his childhood fondly during the interview. He was born Dec. 18, 1946, in Cincinnati to Arnold Spielberg, who was studying electronic engineering at the University of Cincinnati, and Leah Posner Spielberg, now Leah Adler.

They married in 1945 and lived in Cincinnati until they moved to New Jersey after Arnold graduated in 1949. They divorced in 1966. His mother later married Bernard Adler, with whom she operates The Milky Way restaurant in Los Angeles. Arnold Spielberg, 90, also lives in the Los Angeles area.

Leah’s mother, Jennie Posner, taught English to Holocaust survivors around the corner from the Spielbergs, Arnold says from his California home.

“Each class was about eight people around the big dining room table. I can still see it today,” says Leah, 87. “Steven was just running wild as a child in their home. We spent most of our time there.”

Arnold says that he and Leah “would visit her parents on Saturday, the Sabbath, for lunch and prayers, after I returned from half-day classes on Saturday at UC. At other times, the Posners would wheel Steven in his buggy to their home, where he met the survivors.”

For Fay Postolski Siegel of suburban Cincinnati, word of Spielberg’s Holocaust survivor remembrances confirmed a story frequently told by her mother, Etta Postolski, who died in March.

“Oh my gosh, isn’t that something?” Siegel says. “She would tell us the story many times about Steven Spielberg’s grandmother teaching her English.”

In the documentary, Spielberg tells of a “magic trick” done by one of his grandmother’s students. A man would bend his arm up and down, turning the six upside down.

“He said, ‘This is a six. And now it’s a nine.’ I’ll never forget that,” Spielberg says. “I was a little kid, 3 or 4 years old. I’ll never forget that.”

On TCM, Spielberg says he made his World War II epic “Saving Private Ryan” as a tribute to his father, a World War II veteran. But in a 1993 interview, Spielberg says it was his mother who inspired him to make “Schindler’s List.”

“I was very ashamed when I was a child of being Jewish. And this film has kind of come along with me on this journey from shame to honor,” he told CBS’ Connie Chung. “My mother said to me one day, she said, ‘I really want to be able to see a movie that you make someday that’s sort of about us, and about, you know, who we are.’ This is it. This is for her.”

After “Schindler’s List,” Spielberg created the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which has filmed 52,000 interviews with Holocaust survivors.

“In that respect, ‘Schindler’s List’ is the most important film I’ve ever made,” Spielberg says on TCM, “and the Shoah Foundation, outside my family, is the most important work I’ve done.”

On the tube:

• What: “Spielberg on Spielberg”

• When: 8-9:30 p.m. July 9

• Where: Turner Classic Movies

• More Spielberg: “Jaws” airs at 9:30 p.m. July 9, followed by a “Spielberg on Spielberg” repeat at midnight and ”Close Encounters Of The Third Kind“ at 1:30 a.m. July 10.