Jewish Club of 1933 Honors Wolf Gruner, Director of Center for Advanced Genocide Research

Fri, 11/21/2014 - 5:00pm

<p>[[{"fid":"6202","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"","field_tags[und]":""},"type":"media","attributes":{"class":"media-element file-default"},"link_text":null}]]The Benefactors of the Jewish Club of 1933, Inc., have bestowed Professor Wolf Gruner their Legacy Award for his work with the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research.</p><p><a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1020030">G... is the Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History at USC. In April 2014, he became the inaugural director of the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which focuses its research efforts on an interdisciplinary study of resistance to mass violence, emotion and behavioral change in genocidal contexts, and digital genocide research.</p><p>The Jewish Club of 1933 was founded by German Jewish immigrants in Los Angeles in 1933 to support each other and help other new arrivals settle in Southern California. Today, its membership includes many Holocaust survivors as well as second and third-generation survivors and supports the Jewish Home for the Aging along with other philanthropic causes.</p><p>Members of the Jewish Club of 1933 attended the <a href="http://sfi.usc.edu/news/2014/04/usc-president-c-l-max-nikias-announces-c... conference</a> announcing the launch of the Center in April 2014 and were very impressed by the Center’s mission and research activities, Gruner said. The Legacy Award praises Gruner as an example of “Tikkun Olam – Healing the World,” and his “overriding quality of humanity and feeling for the Holocaust which permeates everything [he does].”</p><p>Gruner said he was surprised and honored to be given the award, not just as an individual but for what it represents for the Center.</p><p>“This early recognition shows that [the Center] strikes a chord with people,” Gruner said. “At the award lunch, I not only had conversations with survivors who were really interested, but also the second generation is interested and supportive of the Institute in general and of the new Center.”</p>