Steven Spielberg Warns of ‘Rising Demons of Intolerance’ at Holocaust Commemoration

Speaking at an event on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the multiple award-winning director stressed the importance of Holocaust education and awareness. 

Jews are again facing the “perennial demons of intolerance,” famous film director Steven Spielberg told a group of Holocaust survivors in Krakow, Poland, on Monday, which marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Speaking before the start of the official 70th anniversary commemoration of the Soviet army’s liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, Spielberg warned the audience about anti-Semites on the internet who work to identify Jews, including their geographic locations, in preparation for, as they say, a future holocaust.

“Anti-Semites, radical extremists and religious fanatics that provoke hate crime – these people that want to, all over again, strip you of your past, of your story and of your identity, and just as we talk about our personal histories and what makes us who we are, these people make their own points,” Spielberg told the audience, telling Jews to be vigilant.

There are “Facebook pages, for instance, identifying Jews and their geographic locations with the intention to attack, and the growing effort to banish Jews from Europe.”

Among his earliest memories was “learning how to read numbers from Holocaust survivors showing me their tattoos when my grandmother and grandfather taught English in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Hungarian survivors. As a little kid I understood what the numbers were saying, but I certainly could not grasp the magnitude of the numbers, that they were in fact indelible marks of death, unimaginable suffering, unimaginable loss.”

Spielberg stressed the significance of carrying the survivors’ stories to the next generation, to which he personally has invested heavily through his Shoah Foundation.

By United with Israel Staff

Click below to listen to his speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Ar5D7auRY