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The couple is particularly excited about the New Dimensions in Testimony project, which allows testimonies to be shared through interactive three-dimensional holograms that facilitate engagement with survivors. “Having seen a demonstration and having learned how new technology enables real-time interaction with a Holocaust survivor is extremely powerful,” says Kathy. “The authenticity of that exchange leaves an indelible impression.”
/ Monday, November 9, 2020
The child of Holocaust survivors, George Schaeffer has supported USC Shoah Foundation’s mission since he first heard about it. His parents met after the Soviets liberated Ravensbrück, the Nazis’ largest concentration camp for women. His father had been sent there as a laborer. The couple married in 1945, the same year they were freed.
/ Monday, November 9, 2020
As the 21st century began, and time threatened to still the voices of many witnesses, Joseph “Yossie” Hollander became concerned about the state of education on the Holocaust. “It was almost frozen,” says Hollander, an Israeli technology entrepreneur whose parents survived the Holocaust. “At some point, we will not have the capability to teach with actual Holocaust survivors.”
/ Monday, November 9, 2020
To honor his parents — now age 93 and 85 — Shapiro endowed the Sara and Asa Shapiro Annual Holocaust Testimony Scholar and Lecture Fund. The program it supports enables scholars to spend up to a month in residence at USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research. Each fellowship culminates in a public lecture.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Melinda Goldrich had long known about USC Shoah Foundation’s dedication to collecting eyewitness experiences — her father, Jona, gave testimony. But it was not until early in 2015 that she learned the full range of the Institute’s educational outreach. Traveling to Poland as part of the Auschwitz: The Past is Present program inspired the Aspen, Colo., resident to visit the Institute to find out more about such programs as IWitness and New Dimensions in Testimony.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
The testimonies of Leon’s late parents, Sima and Rubin, in the Visual History Archive attest to the power of love and never giving up. Married before the war, the couple was torn apart when the Nazis sent them to separate camps. Miraculously, Rubin somehow kept his ring and, after the war, convinced an officer to take it to the nearby women’s camp, in the hope that Sima was alive and would recognize it. The couple soon reunited.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Juliane Heyman’s story of escaping the Holocaust is as harrowing as the rest of her life has been inspirational. At age 12, she and her family were forced to flee their home in what is now Gdansk, Poland. In a scene that could have inspired The Sound of Music, she first had to perform in a violin recital so as not to raise suspicion.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Next Generation Council member Thomas Melcher is a longstanding supporter of USC Shoah Foundation. His work to foster tolerance was reaffirmed by the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, when 130 people were murdered with hundreds more wounded. “I fear that the regularity of these events is slowly desensitizing us all,” he says.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
With only some 200 remaining survivors of the Japanese military’s 1937 campaign of mass killing in Nanjing, China, firsthand memories might be lost to history if not for USC Shoah Foundation and its donors. “The Nanjing Testimony Project enables the world, through our web-based educational content, to learn about this heinous crime against humanity,” says Cecilia “Ceci” Chan, who initiated the strategy to fund and support the collection.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
The late Erna Finci Viterbi shared a passion with her husband, Andrew, for helping people learn from the Holocaust to combat intolerance and the violence that stems from it. In November 2014, three months before Erna passed away, the Viterbis honored another person with that drive when they awarded Stephen D. Smith the inaugural Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Chair.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
The ACE Charitable Foundation has been a generous long-term supporter of the Institute’s work in Rwanda. Previously, the ACE Charitable Foundation provided multi-year support for the Institute’s partnership with Aegis Trust to use testimony as a learning tool to broaden the understanding of genocide’s lasting impacts and to motivate social change.
/ Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Because the Viterbis understand the importance of preserving testimonies for later generations, they have long supported the Institute and its educational mission. Recently, they endowed the Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi Executive Director Chair. Endowed funds are vital to ensuring the Institute’s programs and long-term sustainability as they provide permanent sources of financial support.
/ Thursday, November 12, 2020
Andrew Intrater describes the events leading to his involvement with USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education as “serendipitous.” Intrater, who speaks Russian and Polish, was traveling to Ukraine with a friend whose parents were born there and were Holocaust survivors.
/ Thursday, November 12, 2020
Arthur Lev believes if young people can experience history directly rather than just reading about it in a book, they can change the world. That’s why he endowed an internship program at USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education.
/ Thursday, November 19, 2020
From April 8th through May 25th, which coincides with National Days of Remembrance, 219,000 viewers throughout the United States watched at least one offering from the series Days of Remembrance:PastFORWARD on Comcast’s XFINITY On Demand.
/ Thursday, November 19, 2020
“Chronicling the moving and powerful stories of the Holocaust is a moral imperative for all, regardless of religious faith and background”, said Dan Hilferty, president and CEO of Independence Blue Cross (IBC).
/ Thursday, November 19, 2020
Diane Wohl and her husband, Howard, have supported USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education since before it became part of the university. They appreciate how the Institute brings people together and, as she puts it, “can slice out all the propaganda and hate with its visual testimonies.”
/ Friday, November 20, 2020
Their latest gift established the Margee and Douglas Greenberg Research Fellowship, an endowed fund providing permanent support for graduate or post-graduate students advancing testimony-based research.
/ Friday, November 20, 2020
Carolann S. Najarian, M.D., was drawn to USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education through her involvement with the Armenian Film Foundation.
/ Friday, November 20, 2020
Dr. Judy Alpert is the child of Holocaust survivors. Judy was born in Hungary in 1946, after her parents were liberated from concentration camps. When she was 10, she and her parents escaped to the United States from Budapest during the 1956 revolution. Her husband, Mark, was born during World War II and is acutely aware that if he had been born where his grandparents fled the pogroms in the late 19th century, he would have not survived the Holocaust.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
The Koret Foundation in San Francisco awarded a $1 million matching grant supporting a project that is a model for the preservation of Holocaust testimony around the world. The Institute partnered with the Jewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust Center to digitize and preserve the Center’s videotaped Bay Area testimonies.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Lee Liberman has been a stalwart supporter of USC Shoah Foundation –The Institute for Visual History and Education since 1999 and a member of the Board of Councilors since 2007. A resident of Melbourne, Australia, Liberman is a dedicated philanthropist with charitable interests that extend to Israel, the United States and Africa.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Hearing Holocaust survivors tell their stories in person is a powerful experience — and one that Next Generation Council member Louis Smith worried would soon be lost forever. So when he learned about New Dimensions in Testimony, a project of USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education, he wanted to give to help realize its potential.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Masako Togo Kasloff and her late husband Philip were drawn to the USC Shoah Foundation Institute after hearing the testimony of Dario Gabbai, who was forced to work as a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Pears Foundation, based in London, England, is generously supporting News Dimensions in Testimony. Developed in collaboration with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and Conscience Display, and supported by a consortium of committed donors, New Dimensions in Testimony (NDT) is a pioneer technology that allows visitors to engage in dialogue with photo-real projected images of Holocaust survivors.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Susan Crown understands the importance of inspiring future generations to achieve unimaginable goals. Her industrialist and philanthropist grandfather, Henry Crown, who founded Material Service, which merged with General Dynamics in 1959, inspired his son, Lester, who in turn, inspired Susan.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Although they did not meet until years later in New York, both Ulrika Citron and her husband, Joel, were born in Sweden, the children of survivors of the Holocaust. “His story is very different from mine,” she says. “We’re all unique stories.”
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Wendy Smith Meyer first learned about the USC Shoah Foundation in 1996, when her parents, Alfred and Selma Benjamin, gave their testimony. She attended part of the interview, when her parents, who grew up in Nazi Germany, gave their first-person accounts of increasing Jewish persecution. Her uncles, Owen and Edgar Hirsch, and aunt Elise Le Hu also gave testimony.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Edward Mosberg was born in Krakow and survived the Krakow ghetto, Plaszow and Mathausen concentration camps, and slave labor at the Hermann-Goering factory. His entire family was murdered in the Holocaust. He endured further tribulations before sharing his testimony with USC Shoah Foundation. A nearly fatal auto accident prevented him from his first scheduled interview, while a stroke forced him to postpone the second.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020
Dimensions in Testimony: Interactive Biography in Spanish Aliza Liberman’s upbringing in Panama is inextricably tied to the Holocaust: it’s where her Polish-Jewish grandfather, a survivor, immigrated to after World War II. This deep connection to the Holocaust is the main reason Liberman chose to support the Institute’s Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) program, which enables people to engage with a prerecorded video image of a genocide survivor by asking him or her questions and hearing the survivor’s answers in real time.
/ Monday, November 30, 2020

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