Steven Spielberg’s moving lifetime achievement speech at Berliner Fest brings the house down: “I’m a Jewish director,” he says, praising the festival for its contributions to the Shoah Foundation

In Germany, where he received a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin Film Festival today, Steven Spielberg poignantly referred to the Holocaust and the country’s ongoing efforts to confront its own past in the name of healing. Spielberg’s speech, introduced by U2 singer/philanthropist Bono, received a standing ovation for about a dozen minutes. You can watch it above, but to hear his most poignant comments, set the video to one hour and 54 minutes.

“This honor means a lot to me because I’m a Jewish director,” Spielberg said of his autobiographical coming-of-age film The Fables for which he was nominated for an Oscar. “I would like to believe that this is a small moment in a much larger, ongoing effort to heal the broken places in history – what the Jews call Tikkun Olam, the restoration and restoration of the world.

“I founded The Shoah Foundation because I am convinced that what the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote is true: the opposite of justice is not injustice. The opposite of justice is forgotten. Reconciliation is only possible when we remember what happened. Germany has long been a key partner in the work of the Shoah Foundation. Citizens, the federal government and the Berlin Film Festival joined us in gathering and interviewing contemporary witnesses, presenting documentaries, distributing educational materials and helping us make our archives widely accessible in Germany.

“The German people have shown a willingness to read their country’s history, to confront the lessons of anti-Semitism, bigotry and xenophobia that foreshadowed the Holocaust,” Spielberg said. “Other countries, including mine, can learn a lot from the courageous determination of the German people to prevent fascists from taking power. A nation can only be called righteous when it rejects the mild amnesia that tempts us all. After the 20th century, no nation should perhaps flatter itself or delude itself that it deserves to be called righteous. But we must not deny the possibility of justice. We must not stop pursuing it. This pursuit is our best hope for finding meaning in life. And that it starts with remembering.”

By the way, the GOAT director also said that he plans to make films as long as possible – his father lived to be 103, so the genes are there – and that he plans to return to the scarier films he used to make in his Movie made. Profession.