Steven Spielberg condemns Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, supports USC Shoah Foundation’s efforts to collect testimonies and counter antisemitism.
By Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner
Steven Spielberg has commented for the first time ever on the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel in a statement shared by the USC Shoah Foundation.
“I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime,” said the Oscar-winning Jewish filmmaker, who founded the organization in 1994.
The USC Shoah Foundation, which collects testimonies from Holocaust survivors and witnesses, began collecting testimonies from survivors of the Hamas terror attacks in Israel as part of an initiative launched mere days after the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel, where 1,400 were murdered and 240 others were kidnapped.
The organization recently spoke with the wife of Israeli filmmaker Yahav Winner, who was killed in the Oct. 7 attack.
The testimonies will become part of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony Collection, which documents incidents of antisemitism after 1945. “The team at the USC Shoah Foundation are leading an effort that will ensure that the voices of survivors will act as a powerful tool to counter the dangerous rise of antisemitism and hate,” Spielberg said.
“Both initiatives — recording interviews with survivors of the October 7 attacks and the ongoing collection of Holocaust testimony — seek to fulfill our promise to survivors: that their stories would be recorded and shared in the effort to preserve history and to work toward a world without antisemitism or hate of any kind,” added the director of The Fabelmans. “We must remain united and steadfast in these efforts.”
The USC Shoah Foundation has the world’s largest video collection of Holocaust survivor and witness testimony.
The organization also recently launched a partnership with Tablet Studios to collect the audio and video testimonies of survivors, family members of victims, and rescuers who saved others on Oct. 7.