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Wiesenthal Center honors Tom Cruise

May 8, 2011

(JTA) -- Actor and producer Tom Cruise was recognized with the The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Humanitarian Award.

The award, presented at a national tribute dinner May 5, was given to Cruise for his longtime support of the center and its Museum of Tolerance, the organization said. It was presented to Cruise by Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures.

"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," Cruise said in accepting the award. "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."

The Wiesenthal Center also presented Medals of Valor to Luis Alberto Urzua, the foreman of the 33 trapped Chilean miners whose cool head and calm leadership guided the men through their ordeal; Gyongyi Mago, a Catholic schoolteacher in Hungary determined to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive despite a backlash from the growing far right; and posthumously to Peter Bergson, 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.
 

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