Category: MoNews

Houston, TX (Sept. 9, 1998) – Holocaust Museum Houston will honor Steven Spielberg with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award on October 1, 1998, at the George R. Brown Convention Center. It was announced by E. D. Wulfe, Chairman of the Board of the Museum. The event is chaired by Barbara and Charles Hurwitz of Houston and honorary chairs are President and Mrs. George Bush. The event is sold out and the Museum expects 1,800 guests
to help honor the legendary filmmaker.

Holocaust Museum Houston honors Mr. Spielberg for bringing the subject of the Holocaust, with all of its atrocities and lessons, to mainstream America with Schindler’s List. This film was the catalyst that brought the Holocaust into American consciousness.

It is estimated that Schindler’s List has been seen by more than 75,000,000 people in theaters, and over 65,000,000 through television and millions more on home video. The film won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. But, the most important accomplishment of the film was to heighten awareness of the Holocaust world-wide and to communicate the importance of teaching the lessons to be learned from this tragic event.

Schindler’s List is used as a tool in middle and high schools across the country to teach tolerance, human rights, respect and the importance of standing against injustice. In the Fall of 1994, a videotape of the film, accompanied by a study guide, was sent as a donation from Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures to every public, private and parochial high school in the
country. Last year, the Texas Education Association mandated that Holocaust studies be taught in United States History and World History, and Schindler’s List is frequently an important part of the curriculum.

Steven Spielberg has three major philanthropic causes to which he devotes his efforts. Funded by his personal profits from Schindler’s List, he established the Righteous Persons Foundation, which supports a wide breadth of Jewish causes.

Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation is Spielberg’s way of ensuring that the experiences of Holocaust Survivors are never forgotten, by capturing personal testimonies of survivors on film. The Foundation currently works in 54 countries and in 31 languages. Nearly 47,000 testimonies have already been taped. The Foundation is currently developing state-of-the-art digital technology which will enable these testimonies to be available to the
millions of users of the world-wide web.

Steven Spielberg is also the chairman of the Starbright Foundation, whose mission is to develop projects through the combined fields of pediatric health care, technology and entertainment, that empower seriously ill children to combat the emotional and medical challenges accompanying prolonged illness.

Through this exciting event, this and future generations will learn that the hatred and prejudice that fueled the Holocaust must be extinguished and that it must never happen again. Holocaust Museum Houston opened its doors on March 3, 1998 and has hosted nearly 150,000 visitors. The mission of the Museum is to promote awareness of the dangers of prejudice, hatred and violence against the lives of millions of Jews and other innocent victims. By fostering Holocaust remembrance, understanding and education, the Museum will educate students in our area, as
well as the general population about the uniqueness of that event an its ongoing lesson: that humankind must learn to live together in peace and harmony.