As president of the Koret Foundation and chairman of Taube Philanthropies, Tad Taube has contributed millions to philanthropic causes around the world. But he says his dedication to USC Shoah Foundation is simply “a natural thing to do.”

Taube and his parents fled Poland in 1939 and ultimately settled in Los Angeles. After getting his master’s in industrial engineering from Stanford, Taube was one of the creators of E-H Research Laboratories and began a career in real estate.

After helping apparel magnate Joseph Koret invest millions, Taube became an early investor of Siltec Corp. He returned to Koret, helped him sell his company to Levi Strauss & Co. and convinced him to invest his late wife’s community property into a charitable foundation. Taube became president of the Koret Foundation in 1982.

The Koret Foundation supports numerous causes in the Bay Area, Israel and Poland, including the arts, education, Jewish causes, medicine and more. Taube joined the USC Shoah Foundation board of councilors in 2010. The Koret Foundation is a financial supporter of USC Shoah Foundation; in 2012, it donated $1 million and facilitated the inclusion of testimonies from Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco (JFCS) into the Visual History Archive.

Taube’s sister, Anita Hirsch, gave her testimony to the Visual History Archive – one particular reason for Taube’s dedication to USC Shoah Foundation, he said. Anita’s mother had been adopted and raised by Taube’s grandparents, and after she and Anita’s father were murdered by the Nazis, Anita was narrowly saved by an order of Catholic nuns.  Taube’s parents located Anita after the war and adopted her. Anita died Sept. 27; watch a clip of her testimony below.

“My sister Nita was a Holocaust survivor in the truest sense of that definition,” Taube said.

Taube said he is proud of the Koret Foundation’s support of USC Shoah Foundation and its role in facilitating the acquisition of the JFCS testimonies, as well as the relationship he has helped forge with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

“My hope is that the Shoah Foundation can help the Warsaw museum and other historical centers fill in the blanks in contemporary Jewish history through its archival data as mined from the testimonies,” Taube said. “That way, Jewish life and culture, which the Nazis tried to extinguish, can live on forever.”