USC Shoah Foundation is sorry to learn of the passing of Aleksander Laks, the first Holocaust survivor to give his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in Brazil and a special friend of the Institute. Laks passed away July 21 at age 88.

Laks survived the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz and a death march as a teenager. He immigrated to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and became a leader of the survivor community there as president of the Sherit Hapleita (Holocaust survivors’ organization).

We are sad to learn of the passing of Thomas Blatt, a Holocaust survivor who was one of the few people to survive an escape from the Sobibor death camp in 1943. He was 88.

Born April 15, 1927, in Lublin, Poland, Blatt also served as a witness at the 2009 trial of the camp guard John Demjanjuk.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Johnny Strange, a record-holding adventurer and supporter of USC Shoah Foundation.

USC Shoah Foundation is sad to learn of the passing of Sir Nicholas Winton, the organizer of the Czechoslovakian Kindertransport and one of the most beloved rescuers of the Holocaust. Winton was 106 years old.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the passing of Erna Viterbi, philanthropist and longtime supporter of USC Shoah Foundation.

Erna Finci Viterbi, a descendant of Sephardic Jews, was born in Sarajevo but fled Yugoslavia with her family during World War II. They were deported to the Parma region of Italy and interned in the village Gramignazzo di Sissa, but were saved from deportation to the extermination camps by the townspeople. Erna and her family were able to escape to Switzerland for the rest of the war. In 1950, they moved to California.

To honor this remarkable man and visionary scholar, the Institute gratefully re-posts his profile below. During the brief week that Harry spent with us here in Los Angeles this past July as our inaugural Rutman Teaching Fellow, he managed to touch and inspire all of our staff and friends of the Institute who worked with him and who heard his public lecture.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the untimely passing of Dmytro Groisman, Ukranian human rights activist and USC Shoah Foundation interviewer. Groisman died Monday of a heart attack after a long illness, according to his colleague Maksym Butkevych. He was 41.