Azrieli Foundation Partners With USC Shoah Foundation

The Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program announced a new partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, the Institute for Visual History and Education.

Over the last 13 years, the Azrieli Foundation has collected and published memoirs written by survivors who made their way to Canada after the war. The books, published in English and French, are distributed for free to educational institutions across the country. The Azrieli Foundation is the only bilingual national organization working with educators across the country to help bring first-person survivor accounts into the classroom.

USC Shoah Foundation works to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and hatred-and  the suffering they cause-through the educational use of the lnstitute’s Visual History Archive. Steven Spielberg founded the Institute in 1994 to videotape and preserve interviews with survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust.

USC Shoah will now be housing and distributing all 75 of the survivor stories that have been published by the Azrieli Foundation. Chair and CEO of the Azrieli Foundation Naomi Azrieli explains the depth of the partnership.

“The Shoah Foundation will preserve our collection in perpetuity, which is part of their expertise. For the first time, they will have written memoirs in their collection. Between the thousands of videos that they have produced, and the intimate first-person memoirs that we have published, we will be able to offer a multi-level approach to history. In this way, we hope to create a profound bridge of empathy between students and survivors.”

The partnership was announced at a sold-out book launch hosted by the Azrieli Foundation for Pinchas Gutter’s book, Memories in Focus. Mr. Gutter is the first Holocaust survivor to be immortalized in an interactive three-dimensional projection in the USC Shoah Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony.

About The Azrieli Foundation

For 25 years, the Azrieli Foundation has funded institutions as well as operated programs on the ground in Canada and in Israel. The Foundation supports Holocaust education, scientific and medical research, higher education, youth empowerment and school perseverance, music and the arts, architecture, and quality of life initiatives for people with developmental disabilities. www.azrielifoundation.org

For information, please contact abby@azrielifoundation.org or call 416-322-5928.