The Oscar-winning director spoke at an event where he was recognized for his work with the USC Shoah Foundation, an organization he founded in 1994 to record and preserve interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust.
As virulent antisemitism roils the nation’s college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, USC is making a rare gesture to recognize the crippling effect of anti-Jewish hatred on society and the human spirit.
Olympic Race Walker Shaul Ladany Survived Bergen-Belsen and the Munich Massacre
Shaul Ladany, an 88-year-old world-record holding speed-walker, has defied death multiple times. As a small child, he survived the German occupation of Budapest and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Then, representing Israel in the 1972 Munich Olympics, he narrowly escaped the massacre that took the lives of 11 Israeli athletes.
Schindler’s List Survivor Celina Biniaz Warns Against the Corrosive Power of Hatred
For years, Celina Biniaz, one of the youngest people saved by Oskar Schindler, did not tell anyone – not even her children – that she was a Holocaust survivor. She feared no one could comprehend what she had been through, and she didn’t want to impose the trauma of her childhood upon her son and daughter.
Celina’s reluctance to speak ended in 1994. That year, director Steven Spielberg brought Oskar Schindler’s story to the screen with Schindler’s List. He established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which later became the USC Shoah Foundation.
Laya Albert, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, is a journalism student at USC's Annenberg School and an active contributor to Annenberg Media. She is the Celina Biniaz Student Intern at the USC Shoah Foundation.