Max Schindler remembers the German occupation of Poland and his family’s decision to return to their grandmother’s small village to evade the Nazis. He recalls how even though there were anti-Jewish measures including expulsion from school, his family’s Jewish owned store still operated in the small town. Just weeks before the Nazis issued an edict forcing all Jews into a ghetto, Max celebrated his bar mitzvah.

Professor Omer Bartov, considered one of the world’s leading experts on the subject of the Holocaust, will serve as the 2016-2017 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research. He will be in residence at the Center May 4-11, 2017, and will give a public lecture at USC on May 8.