The work of StoryCorps is not dissimilar to what another of Spielberg’s nonprofits, the USC Shoah Foundation, has been doing for more than three decades. Inspired by conversations Spielberg had with Holocaust survivors during and after the making of Schindler’s List, the foundation was set up to record and preserve their stories, in hopes that those firsthand accounts of hate and antisemitism would prove a bulwark against those forces in the future. In addition to running education initiatives and producing research, it has gathered more than 60,000 audio-visual testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, and of other tragedies including the Cambodian, Armenian, and Guatemalan genocides and those in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Around the same time that he established the Shoah Foundation, Spielberg also founded the Righteous Persons Foundation (RPF) with the profits from Schindler’s List, which he says he refused to keep. “That was blood money and it needed to be converted into something that would build tolerance and understanding through education,” he says. RPF is dedicated to strengthening Jewish life and identity through culture, community, and social justice.
During a speech in 2024, Spielberg raised the alarm about rising anti-semitism and discrimination against Muslims, Arabs, and Sikhs, saying “the creation of the other and the dehumanization of any group based on their differences are the foundations of fascism.” Does he worry about a slide toward fascism today? “That’s always been a worry,” he says. “But it hasn’t just been the dangling sword for eight years. It’s been the dangling sword for hundreds of years.”
And yet, even under that ever present threat, he believes that bringing people together can prevent them from demonizing one another, by fostering empathy and human connection. “What gives me hope is when I hear people all laughing together,” he says. “Laughter always gives me hope.”
The original version of this story mischaracterized Kate Capshaw’s portraits of unhoused people. They are paintings, not photographs.
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