Why Jeffrey Katzenberg and Rabbi Marvin Hier Journeyed to Jerusalem With a Letter From Hitler
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Jeffrey Katzenberg and Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, took a trip to Jerusalem late last month to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog. The pair presented Herzog with a facsimile of the Hitler Letter, a correspondence written in 1919 by Adolf Hitler that espouses the destruction of the Jewish people by “a government of national strength.”
The piece is on permanent display in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in L.A. The meeting, which lasted more than an hour, fell on June 26, a date that marked the June 26, 1945, anniversary of the signing of the charter that established the United Nations by representatives of 50 countries. During the trip, Katzenberg also toured the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem for the first time.
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“As the former head of the Jewish Agency, President Herzog has traveled the world and understands what the current global uptick of antisemitism and bigotry means. He knows the terrible price our world paid for ignoring the Hitler Letter of Sept. 16, 1919, where Hitler wrote, ‘Our final objective must be the total removal of the Jews altogether,’” Hier tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Given the current instability of our world, our delegation came away with the strong feeling that President Herzog will act decisively in confronting the haters. As Simon Wiesenthal warned, ‘Freedom is not a gift from heaven, you have to fight for it each and every day.’”
This story first appeared in the July 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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