Shoah Foundation Collecting testimony from October 7th survivors

‘I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime.’

By Vered Weiss, World of Israel News

Acclaimed director Steven Spielberg spoke out about the “barbarity” of Hamas atrocities in a feature published Friday by the USC Shoah Foundation.

Steven Spielberg founded the Shoah Foundation in 1994 to record testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses of the Shoah.

In the feature, Spielberg said, “I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime.”

In addition to collecting testimonies of Shoah survivors, the Shoah Foundation has established a Countering Antisemitism Through Testimony Collection initiative to collect accounts of survivors and witnesses to October 7th.

Spielberg said the initiative is “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.”

“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,” he said.

Before he commented on the October 7th massacres, in early November, thousands of Holocaust survivors signed a letter to Steven Spielberg demanding that he speak out about the Hamas atrocities.

David Schaecter, the president of the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA (HSF), wrote in the letter, “Schindler’s List was about one man having the moral courage to risk his life to save others. We are not asking you to risk your life. We are asking you to use your voice.”

Schindler’s List, one of Spielberg’s most well-known films and one which was awarded multiple Oscars, deals with the life of Oscar Schindler a German businessman who secretly saved Jews from the Nazis.

“Take it from those of us who were subjected to the most brutal and deadly antisemitism of all time: It will never go away, and Jews will never be safe until Israel is safe and secure,” Schaecter further wrote.