May, 2011
LOS ANGELES – American United Capital
Inc., CEO and philanthropist Joe
Siegel Colorado attended the Simon Wiesenthal gala benefit
held last evening at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to honor Hollywood
actor Tom Cruise.
Siegel was part of a select assemblage
of VIP participants that included; Jerry Bruckheimer, Mark Burnett,
Les Moonves, Brett Ratner, Katie Holmes, Julie Chen, Roma Downey,
David Ellison, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Malin Akerman, Richard Lovett,
Edward James Olmos, Mary Hart, Jeremy Renner, and Los Angeles Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa.
Cruise was presented with the
Humanitarian Award for his longtime support of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center and its Museum of Tolerance.
Said Cruise, “Our challenge, ladies
and gentlemen, is to make sure that we do all in our power to see to
it that there will be no more Auschwitz/Birkenaus, no more Rwandas,
no more Darfurs on our planet. That our children and their children
may be free to live in a world where men and women are judged by
their accomplishments and deeds rather than by their race or
religion. That is why I support the Simon Wiesenthal Center and
Museum of Tolerance. As Albert Einstein reminded us, ‘The world is
a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil but
because of the people who don’t do anything about it.’ And as he
wrote in a letter that is one of the prized possessions of the
Center, “Without an atmosphere of intellectual freedom and
tolerance none of us can imagine a life which would be worth living.”
Producer/Director/Writer J.J. Abrams
emceed and the Humanitarian Award was presented to Mr. Cruise by Brad
Grey, Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures. Dinner Chairs were Mr.
Grey, Kevin Huvane, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Barry Meyer, Ron Meyer and
Tom Rothman.
The Wiesenthal Center also presented
Medals of Valor to: Luis Alberto Urzúa, the foreman of the 33
trapped Chilean miners whose cool head and calm leadership guided the
men through their ordeal; Gyöngyi Magó, a Catholic schoolteacher in
Hungary determined to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive despite
a backlash from the growing far-right; and Peter Bergson
(posthumously), an activist who, during the Holocaust, challenged the
Roosevelt government and establishment Jewish organizations to make
the rescue of Europe’s Jews a top priority. Joe
Siegel Colorado listened to everyone’s views they shared in
Wiesenthal Center Dinner and analyzed how that organization can help
people seeking for related aid.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of
the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over
400,000 members. It is an NGO at international agencies including the
United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the OAS and
the Latin American Parliament.
