Zach Albert’s journey to USC Shoah Foundation to work as an indexer on the Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) of San Francisco Holocaust testimony collection began when he was 12 years old and preparing for his bar mitzvah.

Albert was volunteering at the Dallas Holocaust Museum and had become totally captivated by the survivors he met there – they were like his surrogate grandparents, he said. When it came time for him to decide on a community service project for his bar mitzvah, he noticed that the museum was lacking something important: a Torah scroll.