USC Shoah Foundation Marks Yom HaShoah with a Dialogue Across Generations
USC Shoah Foundation Marks Yom HaShoah with a Dialogue Across Generations
On April 13, 2026, the USC Shoah Foundation observed Yom HaShoah with a program that moved deliberately from testimony to live dialogue—bringing together a Holocaust survivor, her granddaughter, and USC students to reflect on how memory is carried forward.
Titled Dialogue Among the Generations, the event centered not only on what is remembered, but on how responsibility for that memory passes from one generation to the next.
The program opened with a testimony reel featuring Holocaust survivor Yetta Kane and her late husband, David Kane. Yetta spoke about the choices many survivors made in the years after the war, particularly the decision not to share the full weight of their experiences with their children while they were young. As she reflects in her testimony, “We did not want to burden them with our pain, with our agony.”
It is in that context, she explained, that testimony became essential.
Through recording their experiences, survivors ensured that future generations would have access to the facts of what happened, and the voices of those who lived through it, allowing each generation to understand itself as part of a larger continuum, a shalshelet, a living chain of memory and responsibility.
For David Kane, that responsibility carried a particular urgency to speak, to teach, and to make clear that the Holocaust was not an abstraction, “because it happened to me.” His words reflect a broader imperative shared by many survivors that remembrance is not passive and that telling what happened is essential to ensuring that it is neither denied nor forgotten.
From Testimony to Dialogue
These themes came into sharper focus during the live panel discussion, moderated by Jenna Leventhal, Senior Director of Administration, which brought the conversation from recorded testimony into the present.
Leventhal guided a dialogue among three perspectives—survivor, descendant, and student—each representing a different point along the continuum of how testimony is transmitted.
Yetta Kane spoke not only as a witness to history but also as someone who has made deliberate choices about how that history is shared. Returning to a theme in her testimony, she reflected on the balance between protecting her children from painful experiences and ensuring those experiences would not be lost. That responsibility, she emphasized, is ultimately about what we choose to pass on.
Her granddaughter, Emily Kane Miller, offered insight into what it means to grow up alongside that history. As she reflected, “my grandparents realized that strangers knew our family story better than we did,” a shift that opened the door for deeper intergenerational understanding. Kane Miller also reflected on how growing up as the granddaughter of survivors shaped many aspects of her life, including her career in social change.
The student panelists extended that arc even further. Jaxson Blum, a former William P. Lauder Junior Intern and now a USC student intern at the USC Shoah Foundation, described encountering testimony as immediate and personal: “someone across time can share their story with you… and with that comes a responsibility.”
Alyssa Hope, a USC student-athlete and current intern at the organization, reflected on engaging with testimony through immersive educational experiences, including visits to sites of Holocaust history. For her, the experience underscored both loss and the importance of understanding Jewish life beyond the Holocaust, recognizing individuals as people with full lives and identities.
As Leventhal observed in moderating the discussion, these perspectives demonstrate that a personal family connection is not required to engage deeply with testimony. What matters is the willingness to listen, to learn, and to carry that knowledge forward.
Throughout the conversation, Kane returned to a principle that has guided her life: kindness. As she shared, her hope is that others will learn “to be inclusive, to be loving, to be kind, to shine a light when there is darkness.”
Institutional Responsibility and Collective Memory
The program also included remarks from USC President Beong-Soo Kim and from Dr. Robert J. Williams, CEO and Finci-Viterbi Chair of the USC Shoah Foundation.
President Kim emphasized the broader responsibility that accompanies stewardship of testimony, describing it as both an institutional and moral obligation. “We are all witnesses,” he said, calling on each of us to “renounce indifference and embrace knowledge and mutual respect.”
Williams reflected on the origins of Yom HaShoah and its connection to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, underscoring the importance of recognizing both loss and resistance. “We must never forget that the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust were not passive witnesses to their fate. Many Jews fought back, many resisted in other ways, and all had agency and innate humanity.”
In her opening remarks, Senior Director of Programs Dr. Catherine Clark emphasized the importance of preserving testimony and ensuring that it is engaged with and carried forward by successive generations through education, research, and public programming.
Together, the program traced a progression from survivor, to descendant, to student that reflects our broader role: preserving testimony in its original form while creating opportunities for new generations to engage with it, interpret it, and carry it forward.
Memory and Responsibility in the Present
Yom HaShoah commemorates the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust and honors both the victims and the acts of resistance that took place during that period. But as the program made clear, remembrance is not confined to a single day.
At a moment when antisemitism continues to evolve, shaped by digital environments, misinformation, and the erosion of historical understanding, and when we are on the cusp of an era when speaking directly to survivors will no longer be possible, the role of testimony takes on renewed urgency. Survivor voices do more than document the past; they provide a foundation for recognizing and responding to hatred in the present.
For the USC Shoah Foundation, this work is grounded in a clear premise: that preserving testimony is only the first step. Making it accessible is what will allow it to retain its meaning.
Events like Dialogue Among the Generations reflect that commitment. They create space to remember, to connect, to see how testimony moves across time, and how each generation becomes responsible for what comes next.