Spielberg launches contest aimed at promoting tolerance

Director Steven Spielberg launched a Germany-wide contest today designed to promote tolerance through students’ intercultural interaction.

Spielberg said the September 11 attacks and increasing tensions in the Persian Gulf region highlight the need for children to be schooled in understanding other cultures, but no more so than other events in history.

“We’ve been at the brink of many world crises ever since the Holocaust, and this is one more crisis,” Spielberg said at a news conference. “But the need for tolerance education has always existed.”

The contest challenges students to put together video, audio, written, Internet or photo presentations that promote understanding between countries, cultures and religions.

German students from Hanover who won the first contest in 2001 worked with Jewish and Arab students from Israel to produce Gotthold Lessing’s play “Nathan the Wise” in three languages.

German Education Minister Edelgard Buhlman commended Spielberg on the contest and his other work through the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which he established in 1994 to record the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and combat prejudice through the use of the materials.

“It is our common responsibility to make sure that young people experience different cultures,” Buhlman said. ”It’s one of the most important contributions to our future.”

Spielberg said he came up with the idea of the Shoah Foundation, which has videotaped the testimonies of more than 50,000 Holocaust survivors, after making his film ”Schindler’s List,” which chronicles the life of a German man who saved hundreds of Jews from Nazi death camps.

“Schindler’s List was made for a reason ... because the Shoah Foundation had to come into existence,” Spielberg said.

The competition awards €3,000 to the first place winners, €2,000 to second place, and €1,000 to third place. All entries must be in by the end of July, 2003.