Liberation Through a 15-Year-Old’s Eyes—Fear, Relief, Uncertainty

By: Julie Gruenbaum Fax

For weeks, Eva (Geiringer) Schloss and a small band of young women had been exploring the far corners of the women’s section of Auschwitz-Birkenau, alone and, for the first time in months, unwatched.

It was January 1945, and Allied forces were nearing the camp. The SS had already evacuated most of the surviving inmates by way of middle-of-the-night marches in freezing temperatures. The gas chambers and crematoria had been destroyed. The SS guards had fled.

Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Julie Gruenbaum Fax is a content strategist and writer for the USC Shoah Foundation. She was a senior writer and editor at the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and has co-authored six personal history books. She is currently writing a book about her grandmother’s Holocaust experience.

Rachael Cerrotti in Conversation with Tracy Aftergood

Saturday, July 12, 2025 - 12:57 PM PDT
Join Temple Israel of Hollywood, USC Shoah Foundation, and Chevalier Books for a special event with artist-in-residence and author Rachael Cerrotti about her critically-acclaimed memoir “We Share the Same Sky” based on her award-winning podcast.

Scholar Lab Experiments with Novel Approach to Exploring Antisemitism

By: Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Dr. Josh Kun, who won a 2016 MacArthur "genius” grant for his unbounded thinking and artistry, doesn’t like to compartmentalize. A scholar of culture, social politics, history and communications, he is more interested in exploring the rough edges that result from unlikely connections than he is in the insularity or reflexive affirmation that might come from operating in a silo.

Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Julie Gruenbaum Fax is a content strategist and writer for the USC Shoah Foundation. She was a senior writer and editor at the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles and has co-authored six personal history books. She is currently writing a book about her grandmother’s Holocaust experience.

Rachael Cerrotti: We Share the Same Sky

Saturday, July 12, 2025 - 12:57 PM PDT
In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, award-winning storyteller and photographer Rachael Cerrotti joins live via Zoom from her home in Maine to share her grandmother’s story using photographs, video, testimony, and clips from her critically-acclaimed podcast We Share the Same Sky.

The long arc of history bends towards justice

Rabbi Gunther Plaut was born in Germany and escaped to the United States in 1935, two years after the Nazi rise to power. He later immigrated to Canada, where he became rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. In March 1963, at Rabbi Plaut’s invitation, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Holy Blossom Temple. During his speech, Dr. King said, “Time is neutral. Time can be used destructively or constructively. We must help time and the time is right now.”

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