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.

“This effort is especially important now when the world is experiencing a rise of violent antisemitism,” says Ilia Salita, CEO of Genesis Philanthropy Group. “We believe that Dimensions in Testimony will help counteract this and, more broadly, to disseminate knowledge about the tragedy of Soviet Jewry during the Shoah and the heroism of Jews who fought against the Nazis.”

USC Shoah Foundation and Delirio Films in association with Neko Productions have completed an animated short film that brings to life the remarkable childhood journey of Holocaust survivor Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer escaping Nazi Germany, as she faced the choices that made her who she is today.


Trudy Elbaum Gottesman keeps her family tree in her purse, close to her at all times, so she will always remember the names of relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Board of Councilors member William P. Lauder has been part of USC Shoah Foundation from its very beginning, when founder Steven Spielberg asked him to support a collection of interviews with Holocaust survivors. “We met on the Amblin backlot, in a conference room with a whiteboard that had upcoming movie ideas on it,” Lauder recalls. Over the next two decades, those interviews grew into the Visual History Archive, and Lauder has steadfastly backed the Institute ever since.

The story of Sara and Asa Shapiro is one of shared tragedy and shared success. Both were born in the small pre-war, predominantly Jewish town of Korets, in what was then Poland and is now Ukraine, into large Jewish families. Both survived the Holocaust. Sara escaped the ghetto and pretended to be a Ukrainian orphan while working as a maid. Asa was in a Russian Labor Camp in Siberia and then was subscripted into the Russian Army. They married, moved to America with practically nothing, settled in Detroit, and built a large family and a thriving business.

Wilma Bulkin Siegel was seven years old in 1945 when her father took her to the movies to watch newsreels of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. “Why couldn’t I have done something about it?” she whispered to her father. Decades later, Siegel, a retired New York City oncologist and a pioneer in hospice care, has discovered a new tool for making an impact: a paintbrush.

“Walking a Fine Line: Hungarian-Jewish Survivors and the Discourse Surrounding Sexual Violence in Postwar Testimonies” Allison Somogyi USC-Yale Postdoctoral Research Fellow August 27, 2020