Colorado State Hillel and Shoah Foundation Will Join Exclusive Nationwide Screening of Steven Spielberg’s “The Last Days”

Colorado State University students will join thousands of other students across the United States for an exclusive nationwide campus screening of the Shoah Foundation’s Academy Award-winning film "The Last Days." The program, to be screened on Tuesday, Nov. 9 at 7 p.m. in Room A101 of the Clark Building on Colorado State campus, will commemorate the 61st anniversary of "Kristallnacht–the Night of Broken Glass."

There will be only one screening, which is open to the public and free of charge. The film is being presented in cooperation with CSU’s Office of International Programs as part of International Week, which runs from Nov. 4-13. An introduction by Rabbi Jack Gabriel of Congregation Har Shalom will explain the significance of Kristallnacht as the start of the Holocaust in Europe.

"My hope is that young college students all over the world will see this film. It is terribly important that they learn just where bigotry, hatred and xenophobia — not to mention anti-Semitism — can lead," says Hillel International Chairman Edgar Bronfman.

"I am pleased that the Shoah Foundation and Hillel have joined together to make ‘The Last Days’ available to such a large and diverse audience on the anniversary of Kristallnacht," says Shoah Foundation founder and Chairman Steven Spielberg. "It is my hope that students of this and future generations continue to engage in a discussion about the consequences of bigotry and hatred."

"The Last Days" chronicles the true stories of five Hungarians who fell victim to Adolf Hitler’s final genocidal push at the end of World War II. From the villages of Carpathia to the cosmopolitan city of Budapest, the Nazis ravaged Hungary and filled the Auschwitz death camp beyond capacity. In "The Last Days," survivors journey back to their hometowns and to the places where they faced the Holocaust. Their eyewitness testimony and rare archival footage reveal the harrowing journey that meant death for millions and survival for a precious few.

In 1994 after filming "Schindler’s List," Steven Spielberg who executive produced "The Last Days," established Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to videotape and archive interviews with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust. To date, the Shoah Foundation has collected more than 50,000 testimonies on a total of 57 countries and 32 languages and is currently in the process of making its archive available worldwide as a resource for teaching tolerance.

The largest Jewish campus organizaiton in the world, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is committed to creatively empowering and engaging Jewish students through its network of over 120 Foundations and 400 affiliates at colleges and universities worldwide, including Colorado State University.

For more information about the screening or about Hillel organization, contact Hillel at CSU at (970) 491-2080.