Members of the Board of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, a video archive of testimonials from Holocaust survivors, met with President Isaac Herzog and his wife, Michal, on Tuesday, a day after signing a partnership agreement with the Israel National Library.
The delegation, representing Jewish communities across the United States, includes offspring of Holocaust survivors who grew up with Holocaust awareness long before famed filmmaker Steven Spielberg made his multiple award-winning film Schindler’s List in 1993.
Spielberg has said many times that making the film was a turning point in his life.
Leading the USC Shoah Foundation Board delegation to Israel were the organization’s CEO, Dr. Robert J. Williams, who is by profession a Holocaust historian, and board chairman Joel Citron, who was born in Israel, raised in Sweden, and lives in America.
Citron happened to be in Israel on October 7 for his mother’s birthday. His mother lives in Kfar Saba, and he also has a sister living in Israel with her family.
Almost everyone in the group had a background of multiple visits to Israel.
This visit, during the organization’s 30th anniversary year, was more than an act of friendship, said Williams. It was a demonstration of solidarity with Israel as well as with the National Library and with Yad Vashem.
Also present was Arye Halivni (born Eric Weisberg), an American immigrant who founded the Jerusalem-based Toldot Yisrael, which is modeled on the USC Shoah Foundation and whose archive is housed in the National Library. It contains a variety of testimonies, including those of Americans who fought in Israel’s War Of Independence and who settled in Israel in the early years of the state.
Williams told the Herzogs that since October 7, the organization has been collecting testimonies from people who were victimized by Hamas on October 7, or who witnessed the atrocities.
400 testimonies collected
So far, they have collected 400 testimonies using the services of two Israelis who are professional interviewers with whom they have worked in the past in collecting testimonies from Holocaust survivors. Altogether, they have in the range of 57,000 testimonies from victims of genocidal regimes – 54,000 of these from Holocaust survivors – and are anxious to add testimonies from survivors who have not yet spoken to them or any similar organization.
These testimonies will be available online through the websites of all the organizations with which they work in partnership.
As most survivors are in their late 80s or 90s, there is not much time left, said Williams.
All the members of the delegation stressed the importance of making testimonies available to the world, especially with the rise in antisemitism, which President Herzog compared to a geyser rising to the surface.
While acknowledging the importance of fighting antisemitism on every front, Herzog reminded his guests that it is written in the Haggadah, that we will soon be reading on Passover, that in every generation there are those who rise up against us.
There was consensus that Jew hatred is most commonly disseminated through social media, and that some Jews who had never experienced antisemitism before October 7 are experiencing it now.
Williams said that most Americans agree that there is antisemitism, "but they don't know what it is."
Some of the people in the room and their children had experienced antisemitism, and were of the opinion that it derives mostly from ignorance and lack of education. That is one of the reasons that education plays a prominent role in the USC Shoah’s mission.
Also discussed was the UN report on sexual abuse by Hamas, a subject in which Michal Herzog is very involved, and which she has discussed with experts in international law. Both Herzogs are lawyers by profession.