For Board of Councilors Chair Emeritus Robert J. Katz, involvement with USC Shoah Foundation stems not from a direct personal connection, but from an emotional pull he’d later identify.

An Auschwitz survivor who lost her parents, little brother, and grandparents during the Holocaust, she does not know her birthday, but says, “every day I wake up is my birthday.” After the camps were liberated, Mantelmacher came to the United States in the 1950s to begin her new life. She found work and started a family. Her two daughters became teachers, and she found her own life’s work as an educator.

As a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, Sarah Sternklar, PhD, recognizes the powerful healing effects of words - how important and therapeutic it can be for people to tell their story. "This is a wonderful benefit for the survivors."

Samuel H. Pond, managing partner of Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano and a longtime supporter of USC Shoah Foundation, decided to dedicate even more time and energy to the cause by joining the Institute's Next Generation Council after a moving conversation with Board of Councilors Chair Stephen Cozen.

“Stories have the power to educate, change people’s world view, and inspire empathy,” says David Zaslav, a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Executive Committee and the president and CEO of Discovery Communications. “It’s a kind of understanding that can’t be replicated by history books.”

Tianfu Bank and Tianfu Group support the collection of Nanjing Massacre survivors’ testimonies for USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive and New Dimensions in Testimony project. They want to ensure that the world will learn from — and never forget — the Nanjing Massacre, which resulted in the mass rape and killing that began on December 13, 1937, and lasted for several weeks, ending nearly 300,000 lives.

Melanie Dadourian is an active member of the Next Generation Council because she understands all too well the dangers of silence and denial. Her grandparents were Armenian Genocide survivors who escaped certain death in Turkey by fleeing to the United States and that history deeply affects her.

The San Francisco-based Koret Foundation shares USC Shoah Foundation’s goals of using history to build connections between communities and cultures. “An important pillar of the Koret Foundation is to create a vibrant and connected Jewish community,” Koret Foundation Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Farber says.

Rautenberg's longtime accountant, Tom Corby, now the president of the foundation that bears the Rautenberg name, remembers Erwin as a hard-working, deeply principled man. “He established the Erwin Rautenberg Foundation to strengthen Jewish causes,” Corby says. “He wanted to make sure that the Jewish people and religion endured.”

The grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, Aliza Liberman wonders whether her children will feel as connected to its horrors and lessons as she does. As a member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Next Generation Council, Liberman is doing what she can to ensure future generations feel that bond by supporting the Institute’s mission.