LOS ANGELES, March 17 (UPI) — Michael Douglas says his teenage son experienced anti-Semitism while on a 2014 vacation to Europe.
In an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times, the 70-year-old actor says Dylan, 14, was at a swimming pool in southern Europe when he was verbally abused for wearing a Star of David necklace.
Douglas says he confronted the man who yelled at his son.
“It was not a pleasant discussion. Afterward, I sat down with my son and said: ‘Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism.’”
Douglas, who has a Jewish father, says he had “no formal religious upbringing,” but witnessed anti-Semitism in high school. Dylan reconnected with his Jewish roots through friends, and has since started going to Hebrew school.
“With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I’ve seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger,” Douglas adds.
Douglas says the experience has inspired him to speak up against what he sees as a resurgence of anti-Semitism.
“If we confront anti-Semitism whenever we see it, if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness,” he adds.
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