Arnold Schwarzenegger recalls his family’s Nazi past

Austrian actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger evoked his Nazi family past to highlight the need to fight anti-Semitism, after receiving the first Courage Award for his fight against anti-Semitism and intolerance at the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum’s annual ceremony.

Actor, son of Nazi who constantly instilled in him a rejection of Jews, accepted the award at a gala held this week at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he gave a speech in which he reflected on his family background.

Schwarzenegger referred to outbursts of anti-Semitism that appeared in the in recent weeks after the gun attack Hamas to Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza and said that we must “confront” all “this negativity and hatred”.

“The more we talk about it, the better it will be. So every day we have to talk about it, we have to talk about it over and over because we can’t let them get away with these lies and this hate,” he argued.

“I come from a country that is known to have been heavily involved in World War II and which had the fiercest Nazis during the Second World War and before it. “I thought it was important to come out and let people know that the next generation doesn’t have to be the same, that the next generation can change,” the actor said.

Schwarzenegger recalled encounters with anti-Semitism in his own house and said that when he arrived in the United States after winning the Mister Universe competition, he felt he had to “speak out about hate” and get involved in the issue.

“And the more famous I became, the more I became Film star and a bodybuilding star and all that, I felt more like, ‘Oh, I have another power,'” to be a public voice against anti-Semitism.

The former governor said he toured the old field Auschwitz Nazis and said he plans to come back with “a bunch of Hollywood celebrities so they can see what’s going on, what happened there and put the spotlight on this issue.”