Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation widens scope
By Anthony Breznican, USA TODAY
USA TODAY
April 23, 2007
Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation is expanding beyond the Holocaust
to document survivor memories from other atrocities.
After collecting 52,000 interviews, the filmmaker’s unprecedented
effort to record the stories of those who survived Nazi persecution
during World War II is now applying the mantra "Never forget" to more
recent acts of genocide and oppression.
"Now we ask ourselves: How do we make this vision a priority in
communities all across the world?" Spielberg said.
The announcement came Monday night at a benefit dinner featuring
Spielberg and other leaders from the Shoah organization, attended by
hundreds of Hollywood power brokers.
"Our work on the Holocaust will continue. But we plan to join it
now to work with others around the world," said Douglas Greenberg,
executive director of the Shoah Foundation Institute at the University
of Southern California. "Our commitment is to combat (violence and
racism) wherever and however we can – no matter who the victims are."
Greenberg said the Shoah group has begun early discussions to enact
similar programs focusing on genocide in Rwanda and Cambodia as well
as stories of life under apartheid in South Africa.
"The obligation to remember is a moral responsibility that all of
us owe to all of those who have suffered violence and racism in the
modern world, whether they are Jews or Armenians or Cambodians or
Rwandans or Darfuris," Greenberg said.
Spielberg said the Shoah Foundation was "my second career," founded
"with a dream of a world where the memories of the victims of history’s
greatest crime could be used to teach new generations that hatred is
not something we are born with, but something we acquire."
He created the foundation after finishing his Oscar-winning Schindler’s
List nearly 14 years ago, saying he was overwhelmed by the personal
stories he heard from Holocaust survivors after the movie came
out. Creating a library of those people telling their own stories
would have a power he said he couldn’t replicate in a movie.
Spielberg presented the Shoah Foundation’s inaugural Ambassador for
Humanity award to Wallis Annenberg, vice president of the philanthropic
Annenberg Foundation, founded by her billionaire publishing family.
Monday night’s event was hosted by Jerry Seinfeld, who brought
levity to the sometimes serious proceedings. In his opening remarks
he deadpanned: "It’s fantastic to be here. I am Jewish … as are my
parents also."
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