CANCELED April Monthly Institute Visit: RSVP to Attend


Sunday, July 6, 2025 - 06:24 PM PDT

April's visit is canceled. For the next scheduled visit click here

 

Free and open to the public, monthly Institute visits give guests a chance to explore the life stories of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides and to discover how their memories are being used to overcome prejudice, intolerance and bigotry.

Description:

In Memory of Erna Viterbi


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.

Hema Panesar

Hema Panesar has just joined the USC Shoah Foundation education team as coordinator of educational programs, bringing experience in digital education, museums and history.

Panesar received her bachelor’s degree in history from UC Berkeley and master’s in museum studies from New York University. Her master’s thesis was titled “Digitize Me: Museum Educators and Their Digital Oriented Visitors,” and it focused on how museum visitors are becoming more central to the museum experience, particularly digitally and online.

Los Angeles, Feb. 17, 2015 – USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education is pleased to announce Stephen A. Cozen as chairman of its Board of Councilors. Cozen, founder and chairman of the law firm Cozen O'Connor, will provide leadership to the board, which guides strategic direction and policy on the dissemination, scholarship, and educational use of the 53,000 testimonies in the Institute’s Visual History Archive. Cozen succeeds Robert Katz, who has served as board chair since May 2010.