“We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7 and also condemn the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza,” the director said.
When accepting the University of Southern California's highest honor, the University Medal, Steven Spielberg warned that “those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
“We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7 and also condemn the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza,” the director said on Monday, per The wrap. “This makes us a unique force for good in the world. And that's why we're here today to celebrate the work of the Shoah Foundation, which is more critical now than it was in 1994.”
The award was presented in recognition of 30 years of the Shoah Foundation, which was founded by Spielberg in 1994 after directing Schindler's List. The organization preserves the stories of Holocaust survivors and witnesses through audio-visual interviews and has collected over 56,000 audio-visual testimonies from 65 countries and in 45 languages.
“We see every day how the mechanism of extremism is used on college campuses, where 50% of students say they have experienced some discrimination because they are Jewish. This is also happening alongside discrimination against Muslims, Arabs and Sikhs,” Spielberg continued. “The foundation of fascism has been dusted and is widely distributed today. I worry more and more that we may be doomed to repeat history once again fighting for the very right to be Jewish.
“Stopping the rise of anti-Semitism and hatred of all kinds is critical to the health of our democratic democracy and the future of democracy throughout the civilized world,” he added.
In December, after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Spielberg issued a statement that Israel shared Shoah Foundation, and wrote: “I never imagined that I would see such unspeakable barbarity against the Jews in my lifetime.” At the time, the organization began collecting testimonies from survivors of the attacks as part of the Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony Collection initiative, an initiative documenting post-Holocaust antisemitism. The director said the project is “an effort to ensure that the voices of survivors act as a powerful tool to counter the dangerous rise of anti-Semitism and hatred.”
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