Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on March 30, 2024

The University Medallion is a symbol of USCs lasting commitment to use these visual and oral histories to educate, enlighten and shape a future without hate, Folt said.

The granting of the University Medallion comes at a time when antisemitism is on the rise globally in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza.

I am increasingly alarmed that we may be condemned to repeat history to once again have to fight for the very right to be Jewish, Spielberg said. In the face of brutality and persecution, we have always been a resilient and compassionate people who understand the power of empathy to combat fear.

We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of Oct. 7 and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza, Spielberg added. This makes us a unique force for good in the world and is why we are here today to celebrate the work of the Shoah Foundation, which is more crucial now than it was in 1994.

Spielberg, who is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust, spoke about his own experiences as a target of antisemitism, recounting how he was physically and verbally harassed as one of the only Jewish students in his high school in California. He shared that he was inspired to create the foundation when filming Schindlers List in Krakow, Poland, after a group of Holocaust survivors visited the set. To date, the institute has recorded more than 56,000 survivor testimonies from 65 countries and in 44 languages.

Spielberg entrusted USC with the stewardship of the foundation and its audiovisual archive in 2006. Since then, USC has invested $50 million in the foundation, providing the necessary infrastructure to ensure the permanence of the collection and its use for education and research purposes.

It is USCs mission to preserve and protect these eyewitness accounts in perpetuity, Folt said. Awarding the University Medallion is one way that we do it. It will forever be a public display of our commitment to ensuring the testimonies from the survivors will be preserved for generations to come. And it honors individuals whose testimonies are preserved in the Shoah Foundation for bringing light in times of darkness.

While countering antisemitism lies at the core of USC Shoah Foundations mission, Spielberg emphasized that the foundation endeavors to inoculate the world from hatred in all its forms. The foundations visual history archive contains testimonies from survivors of other mass-atrocity crimes and genocides, including the Armenian genocide, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the killing and expulsion of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.

USC Shoah Foundations visual history archive serves as an educational tool for middle and high school students and those enrolled at USC. Last summer, the foundation sponsored the first Stronger Than Hate Leadership Summit, which sent a group of USC student-athletes to Europe to tour the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and experience Jewish culture in Poland.

One of the survivors who participated in the summit was Shaul Ladany, who joined Mondays medallion ceremony at USC virtually via Zoom from his home in Israel. The 88-year-old Olympic athlete and world-record holding speed-walker, who gave his testimony to USC Shoah Foundation in 2023, is a survivor of both the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Ladany spoke to those at the medallion ceremony about how he was able to survive the Holocaust, emigrate to Israel and become a professional athlete and academic. Afterward, USC fourth-year track and field athlete Rae-Anne Serville, who first met Ladany as part of the Stronger Than Hate summit group, had a poignant question for him.

How did you find the strength to go through all [your] experiences while still having such a positive outlook? Serville asked.

I was born as an optimist, Ladany replied.

Serville also spoke about the profound impact the trip had on her. Seeing the gas chambers where Jews perished and adjacent towns where Jews suffering was ignored drove home the role that bystanders can play in genocide.

The main takeaway for me is that indifference is just as dangerous as being a perpetrator of hate, Serville said. Being indifferent allows hate to continue.

Sponsoring educational trips such as the leadership summit is one way USC Shoah Foundation is evolving.

Robert Williams, the Finci-Viterbi Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation, noted that while the foundation is rooted in the model of survivor documentation established by Spielberg 30 years ago, the day when no living Holocaust survivors remain is drawing close.

Today, we live in a world where there are less than 245,000 Holocaust survivors still with us to share their stories, Williams said. And at an average age of 86, Im sorry to say, the sun is soon setting.

The foundation is now working to build a collection on antisemitic violence after 1945 that will be used for scholarly pursuits and investigative journalism. It recently launched an initiative to add 10,000 testimonies to its Contemporary Antisemitism collection and has plans for a Countering Antisemitism Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research center. In partnership with schools across USC, the foundation will leverage pioneering technology to tackle online antisemitism.

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University Medallion recognizes Holocaust survivors who entrusted testimonies to USC Shoah Foundation - University of Southern California

Category: Holocaust
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