Steven Spielberg Calls for Action on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Image by Getty Images

By Anne Cohen January 27, 2014

Steven Spielberg called on the world to act on the lessons of the Holocaust during a keynote address to a special UN General Assembly marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Mass graves don’t have to open up before we act,” he said. “It is a great accomplishment of our species that the testimonies [of survivors] can be heard in the high chambers of society.”

“Genocide is an evil. But, the greatest evil is when people who have been spared the horrors commit themselves to despair,” Spielberg continued. “We know despair and remembering are a choice. But we need to confront and act on what we learned.”

“Schindler’s List,” Spielberg explained, was his way of giving Holocaust survivors a voice.

“It took me years of directing sharks, aliens, and dinosaurs before I felt ready to tackle the Holocaust,” the Oscar-winning director admitted.

Spielberg spoke as the founder of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, which he founded 20 years ago, while filming “Schindler’s List.” The Foundation Institute is a long-time partner of the Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Program.

Watch UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s address in memory of the victims of the Holocaust below:

Anne Cohen was the Forward’s deputy digital media editor. When she’s not looking for the secret Jewish history of Voodoo in New Orleans, or making lists about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she writes for The Assimilator. She graduated from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. magazine concentration in 2012.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO