Steven Spielberg: Time to Confront the Rise of Hatred

Famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg is urging people to confront the rise in hateful ideologies.

He made his comments during an interview shown on "NBC Nightly News" on Wednesday.

They come in the wake of the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue and as Spielberg's academy Award-winning film about the Holocaust, "Schindler's List," is returning to select theaters this week to mark its 25^th anniversary.

"I think there is more at stake today than even back then," Spielberg said, referring to when the film was released.

"When collective hate organizes and gets industrialized, then genocide follows. We have to take it more seriously today than I think we have had to take it in a generation."

"Schindler's List" is about Oskar Schindler, a German businessman, whose efforts saved Jews during the Holocaust.

"I couldn't imagine, based on the story that we told, that an audience would tolerate just the amount of violence, human against human or inhuman against human," Spielberg said. "No one thought the film was going to make any money."

Meanwhile, anti-Semitic truck driver Robert Bowers has been accused of gunning down 11 people at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. He has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that could land him on Death Row.

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