SHOAH FOUNDATION EXPANDS MISSION
SpielbergFilms.com, IL
April 30 2007
In 1994, Steven Spielberg founded the Survivors of the Shoah Visual
History Foundation to document and preserve testimonies of survivors
and witnesses of the Holocaust. Spielberg was so moved and enlightened
by discussion with survivors that helped with the research and
production of "Schindler’s List," that he contributed his fees for the
Academy Award winning 1993 film toward founding the Shoah Foundation.
Now, 13 years after its inception, and with 52,000 videotaped
testimonies in its archives, the Shoah Foundation (under the care of
the University of Southern California since 2006) will be widening
its mission to promote tolerance, cultural understanding, and mutual
respect through documentation of other historical and current acts
of oppression and genocide. By casting a light on both past and
current human rights violations, the Shoah Foundation will serve
world communities through remembrance and activism that can only
change our world for the better.
"Now we ask ourselves: How do we make this vision a priority in
communities all across the world?" Spielberg asked this past Monday
night at the Foundation’s annual benefit dinner.
"Our work on the Holocaust will continue," promised Foundation
Executive Director Douglas Greenberg, "but we plan to join it now
to work with others around the world. Our commitment is to combat
(violence and racism) wherever and however we can – no matter who the
victims are… 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."
For more information on the Shoah Foundation, be sure to visit their
official website.
Spielberg famously donated all of his "Schindler’s List" profits to
founding the Shoah Foundation and the Righteous Persons Foundation,
saying that he couldn’t keep what he considered "blood money" earned
in the telling of the Schindlerjuden’s story.