We mourn the passing of Dana Schwartz, 89, a Holocaust survivor and dedicated interviewer for the USC Shoah Foundation, who died on May 9 in Los Angeles.

Dana, who later became a teacher and marriage and family therapist, was four when the Second World War started. She and her mother escaped the Lwów ghetto and survived in hiding.

In 1994, the USC Shoah Foundation launched an unprecedented effort to record, preserve, and share the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Over the past 30 years, we have built a world-class institute anchored in their voices. Today, as Holocaust memory fades and we confront new forces of hatred and antisemitism, the promise we made to survivors 30 years ago demands renewed action. We continue to bear witness for generations to come and hope you will join us with shared purpose and urgency for our Ambassadors for Humanity Gala this fall.

The USC Shoah Foundation mourns the loss of Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who fled Nazi Germany without her parents at the age of 10 and went on to become a renowned and beloved sex therapist and media personality. She was 96 years old. 

In 2020, while longtime USC Shoah Foundation indexer Ita Gordon was participating in a pandemic-era Zoom call about teaching the Holocaust in Latin America, she heard survivor Ana María Wahrenberg describe parting from a dear friend at a Berlin schoolyard in 1939. The story stayed with Ita – she had heard it before. Through several rounds of sleuthing in the Visual History Archive, Ita found the testimony: Betty Grebenschikoff, who in her 1997 interview said she was still hoping to find her childhood best friend, Annemarie Wahrenberg.

More than 75 years after the end of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jewry remains a touchpoint for modern history, international law, and numerous other fields of study. As we face the passing of the generation of the direct witnesses, and confront new challenges with rising antisemitism, the landscape of Holocaust memory is changing. How can the second and third generation - and beyond - ensure the preservation and relevance of Holocaust memory in a world without direct witnesses?

Professor Dan Stone, a renowned historian of the Holocaust, will serve as the 2023-2024 Sara and Asa Shapiro Scholar in Residence at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and USC Shoah Foundation. He will spend a week in residence at the Center and USC Shoah Foundation in April and deliver the Annual Sara and Asa Shapiro Lecture entitled “The Holocaust: An Unfinished History” on April 8, 2024.