Clinton honored as 'Ambassador of Humanity'
Former US president Bill Clinton has put the blame for American failures to aid Jewish refugees and prevent an African genocide on past presidents, including himself.
In accepting an award from Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, Clinton described the refusal of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in 1939 to admit 900 Jewish refugees aboard the German ship St. Louis as "one of the darkest chapters in United States history."
Clinton also apologized and asked forgiveness for his failure to intervene in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which one million victims were slaughtered during a three-month period.
The ex-president addressed a star-studded audience of some 750 on Thursday evening after accepting the Ambassador of Humanity Award from the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.
Established by Spielberg following the global success of his film Schindler's List, the foundation is currently processing the last of nearly 52,000 videotaped testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses.
The annual event was held on the Universal Studios backlot under a huge tent, occasionally shaken by gusts of rain and wind.
Tom Cruise served as master of ceremonies and John Travolta, Sharon Stone and Scarlett Johansson were in attendance.
Robin Williams welcomed the fashionably dressed guests to "Temple Beth Prada" and assured them that the dinner had been prepared under dietary laws separating "milchig, fleishig and sushidik" ingredients.
In his brief and thoughtful address, Clinton explored his longstanding concern with the roots of human hatred, thanking his grandparents for "growing up to despise racism" in a small, segregated Southern town.
Clinton ascribed the cause of ethnic hatred mainly to power-hungry politicians indoctrinating their followers with "the fear of the other."
"How can we survive in a global society in which we have to have enemies?" he asked.
Clinton paid special tribute to Yitzhak Rabin as "a man I loved as much as anyone I know."
