LOS ANGELES (AP) ― President Barack Obama is paying tribute to a Holocaust history foundation, saying the purpose of memory is not simply to preserve the past but to protect the future.

Obama says Americans have the responsibility “to speak out against rhetoric that threatens the existence of a Jewish homeland and to sustain America’s unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Obama spoke at the 20th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, dedicated to gathering video testimony from Holocaust survivors and other witnesses. Obama received the foundation’s Ambassador for Humanity Award at a gala event that featured a performance by Bruce Springsteen.

Obama says the devastation in Syria, murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, and tribal conflicts elsewhere underscore that decades after the Holocaust, “we have not yet extinguished man’s darkest impulses.”