He just graduated from high school last year, but Manuel Müller has already begun his first full-time job as USC Shoah Foundation’s 2014 Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service intern.

The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service is an alternative to Austria’s compulsory national military service. Instead of serving in the Austrian military for six months, men may intern with Holocaust remembrance organizations abroad (or with social service organizations at home). Like his predecessor, Lukas Binder, Müller will work full-time at USC Shoah Foundation for the next year to fulfill his service requirement.

Müller, who is from Vienna, said he first became interested in World War II and Holocaust history after making a video project using Holocaust survivor testimonies in high school. He contacted Binder to find out more about the position at the USC Shoah Foundation, and Binder emphasized how much he enjoyed working with the staff of the Shoah Foundation and getting to interact closely with testimonies.

Only on the job a few weeks, Müller has already helped with administrative tasks and translating an online video exhibit into German. He’s also created a spreadsheet for keeping track of the survivors who contact the Shoah Foundation wanting to record testimony. Many of them say they used to never talk about their experiences, he noted.

“What was really interesting was that one person who contacted the Shoah Foundation wrote that after seeing Steven Spielberg on the 27th of January speaking at the UN, they want to have their testimony done,” Müller said. “You can really see and feel how important it is for these people to have their testimonies done.”

By the time his internship is over and he returns to Austria to begin college, Müller said he hopes to increase his knowledge of history, improve his language skills, and discover a little bit about himself.

“When you go to another country for one year, in this year you really learn who you are,” he said.