Steven Spielberg will soon have another accolade to add to his crowded mantelpiece.
On March 25, the legendary filmmaker will be feted with USC‘s University Medallion — the university’s highest honor, which has been presented on only three previous occasions — in recognition of 30 years of the Shoah Foundation. The Shoah Foundation is an organization that Spielberg formed after making Schindler’s List to collect testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other historical events of genocide and crimes against humanity. (More than 56,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors have been collected over the past three decades, for the last two of which the foundation has been based at USC.)
USC president Carol Folt will emcee the ceremonies, at which Spielberg will share the honor with Joel Citron, a child of Holocaust survivors who serves on the board of councilors of the Shoah Foundation’s Institute for Visual History; and, on behalf of all who have provided testimonies to the foundation over the past three decades, Celina Biniaz, whose life was saved by Oskar Schindler and who has been particularly active with the foundation.
Robert Williams, the Finoi-Viterbi executive director of the foundation and UNESCO chair on antisemitism and Holocaust research, will lead a panel discussion with Shaul Ladany, an 87-year-old survivor of the Holocaust and the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympians in Munich, and USC student-athlete Rae-Anne Serville.
