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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Worried about conjuring bad memories, Ilse Delman was initially reluctant to share her story with USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education. But after meeting with Institute staff, encouraged by her friend Anita Mayer, who had contributed her own testimony, and supported by her husband, Abner Delman, M.D., she shared her memories. A decade later, she remains grateful that her story will live on through the archive.

Elisabeth Citrom bears a sense of responsibility in telling her survival testimony: “I have a duty to share my story for the next generations to hear, in the hope they will get something from it.” Born in Romania, she survived the children’s barracks at Auschwitz-Birkenau and was taken on a death march to Lenzing, where she was eventually liberated by Americans in 1945. She then lived in Israel where she served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces before settling in Sweden to raise a family.

Like many Holocaust survivors, Joe Adamson had been reluctant to speak of his experiences, which included a series of relocations brought about by the rise of Nazism: from his birthplace in Koenigsberg, Germany to Frankfurt Oder to live with his grandparents—whose house was ransacked on Kristallnacht—and then to England on the Kindertransport when he was 14, arriving at Weston-at-the-Sea with a small suitcase and no knowledge of English. Later, he worked as a translator for the U.S. Army on a team that interrogated Nazis and was at the front with troops who liberated Mauthausen.

Holocaust Survivor Ed Mosberg has not slowed down. At 95, he’s dedicated much of his life to the tireless work of sharing his story and preserving the memory of those lost, which includes more than 60 of his family members. “I lost my whole family,” Mosberg said, “and I have to ensure that their story will never be forgotten.”

Board of Councilors Life Member Jerry Coben can pinpoint a moment that highlighted the importance of his involvement with USC Shoah Foundation. During a discussion with his son David about family history, David mentioned how much more meaningful he found the personal writings of Jerry’s mother compared to a detailed family history written by a cousin David had never met. The difference, according to Jerry, was that David could “hear” his grandmother’s voice in her writing, having known her well, something that wasn’t the case with his cousin’s narrative.

Partnerships are crucial in saving the accounts of Holocaust survivors and sharing them widely. Via USC Shoah Foundation’s Preserving the Legacy Initiative, Gabriella Karp, a Holocaust survivor, along with her sons Gary and David Karp, forged a three-way collaboration in which USC Shoah Foundation digitized and preserved more than 1,000 testimonies recorded through the Holocaust Memorial Center (HMC) near Detroit and the University of Michigan-Dearborn Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive.

Though he did not know about USC Shoah Foundation until attending an Ambassadors for Humanity Gala years ago, current Next Generation Council (NGC) Co- Chair Thom Melcher was drawn to the Institute’s work upon learning of its mission at the time—to end hatred, bigotry and intolerance. Calling the Institute’s approach to education through testimony “the best way to create lasting change,” Melcher relished the chance to be active in the fight against hatred.

Holocaust education remains vital—as a means of understanding the horrors of the past, and for addressing contemporary antisemitism and combating the forces that lead to genocide. Echoes & Reflections stands as one of the premiere sources for Holocaust education and professional development in the United States. Formed by a partnership among USC Shoah Foundation, Anti-Defamation League and Yad Vashem, Echoes & Reflections has reached more than 85,000 educators since its founding in 2005.

Next Generation Council member Aliza Liberman’s philosophy for philanthropy is simple: “If you feel connected to a cause, you should get involved.” Liberman’s connection to USC Shoah Foundation comes from her upbringing in Panama, where her paternal grandfather immigrated from Poland to escape the Holocaust, in which his entire family was later murdered.

Ruth: A Little Girl’s Big Journey is a short, animated film produced by USC Shoah Foundation. The film follows Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s early life, with Dr. Ruth’s own voice recounting how she survived the Holocaust as a young girl. According to Executive Producer Jodi Harris, the film gives viewers “a chance to discover much more about Dr. Ruth’s childhood and learn how she emerged from tragedy stronger than before.” 

In her philanthropic pursuits, Andrea Cayton has made a point of focusing on education, supporting institutions such as the Cayton’s Children Museum and Holocaust Museum LA. By focusing in part on “education about humanity,” according to Cayton, she and her family hope to help children “learn about the past and be more tolerant.” When it comes to issues like prejudice and hatred, Cayton believes it’s “harder to change older minds. But if you start young, you are more likely do so.”

Growing up, Nancy Shanfeld was disturbed by the stories her mother and aunt told of facing antisemitism as some of the only Jewish children in their south Saint Louis neighborhood during the 1930’s. “Imagining these incidents still breaks my heart,” Shanfeld said of the harassment and threats her mother Mignon Senturia and aunt Ruth faced from children and adults alike. Though Shanfeld did not experience much direct antisemitism as a young person herself, hearing of the hatred and prejudice faced by her mother and aunt moved her greatly: “It was two little girls against the world.”

Glenn L. Felner was just 18 years old when he joined the Army during WWII. “There was an undercurrent that I recall that Jews don’t fight, that Jews are cowards. So, I had to make a statement…I wanted to prove that Jews do fight…and to get as close to the action as I possibly could,” said Felner of his enlistment, which led to a wartime experience that would see him awarded with the Combat Infantry Badge, the U.S. Bronze Star and the French Legion of Honor decoration.

After being introduced to USC Shoah Foundation 15 years ago, Tamar Elkeles and Larry Michaels became invested in continuing the work of preserving Holocaust survivor testimonies. Many of their own relatives were killed in the Holocaust, and they keenly felt the responsibility to carry the torch for future generations.