Each year, USC Shoah Foundation welcomes a new intern from the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service to work at the Institute as an alternative to his compulsory military service. Just a few weeks ago, Austrian intern number 13 Andro Ofenheimer started his ten months at the Institute.

Ofenheimer just graduated high school in Graz, Austria, in June. He said he first got involved with the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service program three years ago, after a favorite teacher inspired him to take an interest in history.

After volunteering with the Memorial Service in high school, mostly helping organize visiting lectures by survivors and politicians, Ofenheimer was placed with USC Shoah Foundation to complete his year of service. Other organizations where interns are placed include United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, and Yad Vashem.

“I was very proud, and really interested in learning more about the Shoah,” Ofenheimer said of his reaction to finding out that he would be embarking on one of the Memorial Service’s coveted internships.

So far, Ofenheimer has spent time working at the front desk of the Institute’s office at the University of Southern California, responding to email inquiries and speaking with callers. He has also watched the testimonies of survivors Marko Feingold, president of the Jewish community in Salzburg, Austria, and Max Mannheimer, a famous writer, painter and speaker who recently passed away on September 23, 2016.

“They are pretty interesting, the stories behind the people, not just learning about the Holocaust in general but what one person experienced at the time,” he said.

Something Ofenheimer hopes to do during his internship is help record a testimony, so he can experience USC Shoah Foundation’s work firsthand.

Preserving testimonies of survivors is important, Ofenheimer said, because it ensures that people can never forget about the Holocaust and other genocides of the past.

“Max Mannheimer said it best: It’s because the youth has to be forearmed, because it is still a possibility that the deniers of the Holocaust will increase again,” Ofenheimer said.