USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn of the recent passing of Sol Gringlas, who survived both the Nordhausen and Auschwitz concentration camps. Sol passed away in May of 2020. He was 100.

USC Shoah Foundation is deeply saddened by the passing of Hannah Kent, who survived three concentration camps and a death march, but went on to live a full life filled with love, family and resolve. She was 88. Born Hanka Szarkman on Oct. 9, 1929, in Lodz, Poland, Hannah Kent was the wife of Roman Kent, a Life Member of USC Shoah Foundation’s Board of Councilors and a leader in the Holocaust survivor movement. Hannah and Roman Kent met in New York after World War II and married in 1957. They had two children, Jeffrey and Susan.

As he described in the testimony he gave to USC Shoah Foundation in 1997, it was one stroke of luck after another that allowed Herman Shine to become one of only a few hundred people to escape the Auschwitz death camp.

USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn about the passing of Kalman Aron, a Holocaust survivor who created in paint the horrors he witnessed during World War II. He died on Feb. 24. He was 93.

Born Nachman Aaron Elster in 1933, in Poland, Elster escaped persecution and came to the United States in June of 1947. There, he gained an education in Chicago, served in the armed forces during the Korean War, married and had children. To remain in touch with his heritage and to spread awareness about his experiences and lessons learned from the Holocaust, he served as vice president and gave regular talks at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

Judith Leiber, a Holocaust survivor whose talent for making whimsical handbags took both the fashion and art worlds by storm, died Sunday in her New York home.

The staff at USC Shoah Foundation is saddened to learn about recent the passing of Asa Shapiro, father of board member Mickey Shapiro and Holocaust survivor.

Sam Gustman, USC Shoah Foundation Chief Technology Officer, reflects on his long friendship with Arnold Spielberg, who passed away August 25 at the age of 103.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the loss of Luke Holland who passed away this week, a transformative figure in the field of historical documentation and a dear friend of the Institute. “Luke guided us all to face our pasts—to face our fears—as pathway to living a more informed, peaceful life,” said Stephen Smith, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation.

We at USC Shoah Foundation are saddened to learn about the passing of Marion Pritchard, a Dutch woman of great courage who rescued many Jews during the Holocaust. She was 96.

We are saddened to learn of the recent passing of Arkadii Vaispapir, one of few people ever to have survived the Sobibór death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. He was 96.

We are saddened to hear of the recent passing of Selma Engel, who, after becoming one of the few people to escape Sobibor death camp in Poland during the Holocaust, immediately began telling the world what she saw. She was 96.

A distinguished voice of history has been lost today in the passing of Auschwitz survivor Roman Kent, who captured the agony of the Holocaust and the power of love in his telling of a simple story about his childhood dog, Lala. Kent was 92.

USC Shoah Foundation joins the Hollywood community and people worldwide in mourning the loss of Kirk Douglas, who passed away earlier this week at age 103. Douglas was an acting legend and an icon of the Golden Age of moviemaking, but it was the zeal and empathy that he brought not only to his work as an artist but also to so many humanitarian causes that made him a close friend of USC Shoah Foundation.

USC Shoah Foundation mourns the passing of our friend and partner Eddie Jaku, who has passed away in Sydney, Australia, at age 101. Eddie will be remembered for his extraordinary life—which included surviving the Holocaust by escaping from four concentration camps—and for his relentless positivity and kindness to all.

We are sorry to hear about the recent passing of Jewish Holocaust survivor Margot Schlesinger. The Chicago resident was 99. Schlesinger gave her testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1995. Born Maria Miriam Wind, on July 24, 1918, she was raised in Berlin. In her interview, she talks about life before the war, and living in a ghetto, before being sent to the Plaszow concentration camp, where she was put to work in Oskar Schindler’s nearby factory. She was among a group of women who were accidentally sent to the Auschwitz death camp.

USC Shoah foundation is saddened to learn of the recent passing of Anneliese Nossbaum, who survived a Jewish ghetto and three concentration camps. Anneliese passed away March 23, 2020 after falling ill within weeks of returning from a trip that commemorated the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. She was 91. She was born on January 8, 1929 in Guben, Germany as Anneliese Winterberg.  At the age of two, her family moved to Bonn where her father later became the rabbi of their synagogue.  

We are very saddened to learn of the passing of our dear friend and valued colleague Dr. Sharon Gillerman on November 20, 2020, at the age of 60.   Sharon was a scholar in Jewish history on faculty at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC) and at USC for more than 20 years. Her scholarship focused on modern German and central European Jewish history with a particular interest in gender history, cultural studies, popular culture, and transnational history.   

The Institute mourns the passing of members of our community in 2021, including survivors who have given testimony Julio Botton, Fritzie Fritzshall, Eddie Jaku, Roman Kent, Rabbi Bent Melchior, Ruth Pearl, Suzy Ressler, Irving Roth, and Marcus Segal.

Today we mourn the loss of one of our closest friends, Branko Lustig, a Holocaust survivor and two-time Academy Award winner who produced Schindler’s List and played an indispensable role in the founding of USC Shoah Foundation. He was 87. Shortly after the film’s 1993 release, Lustig -- who witnessed horrific atrocities at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and other concentration and labor camps -- led the drive to implement Steven Spielberg’s vision of collecting 50,000 Holocaust testimonies for what was then called Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.

We are saddened to hear of the recent passing of Jack Welner, who survived a Jewish ghetto in Poland, a labor camp near the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, and the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland – where his mother was murdered on arrival – before immigrating to Denver, Colorado, where he began a new life. He was 98. When Welner gave his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 1995, it changed his life.

Suzy Ressler, a survivor of Auschwitz who parlayed her family’s old-world recipes into the Philadelphia-based Mrs. Ressler’s Food Products, died July 3, 2021, at the age of 93. She was remembered for her business savvy, her warmth and generosity, and her impeccable elegance.

Theogene Kayitakire, a sergeant in the Rwandan Patriotic Army, helped capture the strategic high ground of the Mount Rebero neighborhood in Kigali in April 1994, just days after the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda had begun. With the location secure and reinforcements arriving, Theogene had a request for his command: Could he go to save his relatives nearby? When given permission, he disguised himself in a government army uniform and, with a few other soldiers, went to find his uncle. But his uncle refused to flee to safety without his neighbors.

The young boy was walking down the street in Łodz, Poland, when he spotted the treasure. He could not believe his luck! He picked up the belt admiring its beautiful etchings and the decorative metal buckle. With his chest out, he proudly continued walking down the street with his new treasure rolled up and safe in his pocket. Now he would be able to wear long pants instead of the short pants and suspenders young boys wore. His new belt would rocket him from boyhood to manhood status! What a monumental find!

The Holocaust collection in USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive contains nearly 53,000 testimonies; however, only a mere six of those testimonies are from survivors who were persecuted by the Nazis for being gay: one in English, three in German, one in French, and one in Dutch. There are other gay survivors we have in the Archive, but they were persecuted by the Nazis for the greater sin of being Jewish; Gad Beck being one of them. The meager number says a lot about the history of the gay men who lived through the Nazi regime and who came out the other end willing and unafraid to speak about their lives.

What makes Gad Beck’s story so remarkable, however, was that not only was he a “Mischling” but he was also a gay teenager living in Nazi Berlin, the epicenter of a military power antagonistic to both Jews and gays.

We are sad to learn of the passing of Thomas Blatt, a Holocaust survivor who was one of the few people to survive an escape from the Sobibor death camp in 1943. He was 88. Born April 15, 1927, in Lublin, Poland, Blatt also served as a witness at the 2009 trial of the camp guard John Demjanjuk.

  Call for Applications from PhD Candidates   Greenberg Research Fellowship Katz Research Fellowship in Genocide Studies

  Call for Applications   Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellowship Summer 2022