Tu be-Shevat is called “New Year of the Trees” and is also known as Jewish Arbor Day. It is celebrated, especially in Israel, by planting trees and also marked by eating fruit on this day. Ela Weissberger remembers someone sneaked in a small plant of an oak tree into Theresienstadt (Terezin) and planted the tree in honor of the holiday.

In the face of the current alarming resurgence in antisemitism, we are expanding our efforts to record testimonies from those who have experienced anti-Jewish hate since 1945 – including those who are experiencing it today. Along with our collection of 55,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies, these new testimonies will be an invaluable resource to researchers, educators, and policymakers in the urgent effort to mitigate the deadly threat of antisemitism to Jewish and non-Jewish communities around the world today.

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.