Michael Douglas has revealed that his teen son Dylan was the victim of anti-Semitism on a family holiday last year.
The 70-year-old actor found himself forced to confront his son's abuser after the 14-year-old came to him in tears.
In an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times Douglas explained how he told his child: 'Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism.'
Michael explained that the teen was visibly upset when he came to his father in the family's hotel room, following a visit to the hotel swimming pool in Southern Europe.
Being the father of a teenager, Douglas asked if the boy had provoked the man's anger by misbehaving, only to be met with his son's tears.
It was then that The Game star caught sight of his son's Star of David necklace.
He wrote: 'I had an awful realization of what might have caused the man's outrage... After calming him down, I went to the pool and asked the attendants to point out the man who had yelled at him.
'We talked. 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."'
His son had already faced his share of hardships, as Michael shared in 2010 that the family - wife Catherine Zeta-Jones and daughter Carys - would be moving from Bermuda to New York so that Dylan could attend a special school to attend to his needs.
Michael was not raised in the Jewish faith for although his father Kirk Douglas is Jewish, his mother Diana is not.
However his son's growing interest in Judaism led Michael to explore his father's faith later in life.
He told of the first time he had to defend his faith, when a high school friend casually commented: 'all Jews cheat in business.'
'Anti-Semitism, I've seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger,' he continued.
The Oscar winner cited bad economic times, demographics, and an irrational and misplaced fear of Israel as reasons for a resurgence in anti-Semitism.
However, he isn't content to just accept such circumstances, commenting that he hopes his son will never have to teach his children about it the way he just had to.
He issued a call to action for people to fight back against such feelings of hate, saying: 'So that is our challenge in 2015, and all of us must take it up.'
'Because 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.'
