Obama at Holocaust foundation: Recalling horrors helps protects the future

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President Barack Obama, left, sits next to movie director Steven Spielberg, right, as they listen to Conan O\'Brien during the USC Shoah Foundation’s 20th anniversary Ambassadors for Humanity gala in Los Angeles, Thursday, May 8, 2014. Obama received an award from the foundation created by Spielberg and is spending three days in California where he plans to raise money for the Democratic Party. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – President Barack Obama is paying tribute to a Holocaust history foundation, saying the purpose of memory is not simply to preserve the past but to protect the future.

Obama says Americans have the responsibility “to speak out against rhetoric that threatens the existence of a Jewish homeland and to sustain America’s unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Obama spoke at the 20th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, dedicated to gathering video testimony from Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. Obama received the foundation’s Ambassador for Humanity Award at a gala event that featured a performance by Bruce Springsteen.

Obama says the devastation in Syria, murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, and tribal conflicts elsewhere underscore that decades after the Holocaust, “we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses.”

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