Any individual testimony of a Holocaust survivor tells a story that is personalized and unique.

But a new Jewish Studies class at the University of Toronto is encouraging students to watch USC Shoah Foundation’s testimonies in another way – using applied statistics – to test hypotheses and find broader stories that often aren’t detectible in any single interview.

The aim for the course – called Jews: by the numbers – is to take a quantitative approach to studying the humanities.

Miriam Katin survived the Holocaust as a toddler because her quick-thinking mother faked their deaths in Budapest at a historically perilous time for Jews in Hungary. Now 77, Katin has a thriving career as a graphic artist whose humor cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker.

Her remarkable oral history would have been lost to time without the initiative by USC Shoah Foundation to document the stories of Holocaust survivors before it is too late.

Survivors speak to future generations through our innovative, award-winning educational services and programs, including IWitness, IWalks, and our professional development programs for educators such as Echoes & Reflections, produced in partnership with ADL and Yad Vashem.

In the 1980s, a tiny woman in her 50s named Ruth Westheimer shocked and delighted the world with her blunt advice – delivered in a grandmotherly German accent – about sex. She became a media sensation and remains a household name as “Dr. Ruth.”

Less known is her perilous journey to get there – a story that includes her survival of the Holocaust and immigration to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, where she briefly became a sniper in a Jewish paramilitary force.

Professor Taner Akçam, Kaloosdian & Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University, gave a public lecture about Father Krikor Guerguerian’s Archive, a collection of thousands of documents about the Armenian genocide that this scholar and Armenian genocide survivor collected from the 1930s to 1988. Professor Akçam and his graduate students have recently digitized and classified the collection, which is now available to the public.

After months of beta testing with educators around the globe, USC Shoah Foundation is launching the brand new IWalk app, which offers 29 IWalks in seven countries and eight languages.