Bruce Springsteen performed a surprise mini-set on Sunday night at a star-studded USC Shoah Foundation’s Ambassadors for Humanity Gala in New York.
The event benefited the foundation founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg to record testimonies of Holocaust survivors for future generations.
“The work of collecting the personal testimony and the voices of those who’ve witnessed history has just something in common with the work that songwriters, filmmakers, all artists do to understand and to create our real and imagined worlds,” Springsteen said at the event, which was also attended by Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Debra Messing, Drew Barrymore, Whoopi Goldberg and other celebrities., according to the Asbury Park Press.
“We follow the ghosts of history. We listen for the voices of the past to take us into the future, and we lean into their stories and listen to them.”
Mistaken for a member of the tribe
The Catholic Springsteen joked that he sometimes gets mistaken for Jewish because of his last name.
“I was Bruce Springstein for the first year or two of my career. Everywhere I went — I pulled up to the club. ‘Welcome, Bruce Springsteen,’” said Springsteen from the stage. “This happened as late as a month ago. I’m not joking.”
Springsteen performed solo acoustic versions of “Dancing in the Dark” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
Itzhak Perlman, the evening’s other musical performer, played the theme from the Academy Award-winning film “Schindler’s List.”
The Ambassadors for Humanity Award to Holocaust survivors went to Irene Weiss, 93, who accepted the award on behalf of more than 50 survivors in the room.
“I am 93 years old. When I speak about my experience, I am 13 years old again – 80 years later, my memories are vivid,” said Weiss, in comments from the USC Shoah Foundation. “It is unthinkable to me that stories like mine should be forgotten. I am grateful to the USC Shoah Foundation for providing the platform for survivors to tell what happened, a place where survivors like me can give voice to those who perished.”
The Foundation moved to its permanent home at the University of Southern California in 2006.
“These survivors can change the world,” said Spielberg on Sunday. “Their stories are a rebuke to hatred and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Through these voices, we find the courage to stand against injustice wherever it arises. By sharing their stories, they have given us a gift that will never stop giving and will never stop proving the strength of the human spirit, the will to survive, and the unforgettable power of memory.”