The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation held its second annual Student Leadership Summit from June 29 to July 1 in Washington, D.C., where a group of USC student-athletes heard about growing antisemitism from speakers including Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt and a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives in the DMV.
After two days of leadership workshops and learning from guest speakers at the USC Capital Campus in D.C., the athletes traveled to Poland to visit historical sites in Krakow and Auschwitz.
The program’s goal is to recognize and combat antisemitism to promote inclusive communities on college campuses. The 19 student-athletes — who are involved in sports at USC ranging from football and soccer to beach volleyball and water polo — voluntarily participated in the summit.
On July 1, the group gathered to hear speeches by Lipstadt, the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism; Holocaust survivor Irene Weiss; and Robert J. Williams, the executive director of USC Shoah Foundation.
Lipstadt said antisemitism is not solely a threat to the Jewish community; it is a threat to democracy and national and international security.
She attributed antisemitism to “people who want to stir up hatred and cause division in society.” She said stereotyping and biases are the embers that can ignite into flame — acts of terrorism against groups of people.
Weiss, a member of Congregation Olam Tikvah in Fairfax who was born in Czechoslovakia, told her story as a Holocaust survivor who spent eight months in Auschwitz: “I was a witness to something that needs to be remembered.”
At 13, Weiss and her five siblings were taken to a ghetto with no idea that they wouldn’t be returning home. Weiss was photographed by Nazis immediately after being separated from her 11-year-old sister, Edith, and their parents.
“The trauma of the family being torn apart has never, ever left me,” Weiss said.
She eventually survived with another sister, Serena, after the two endured months of forced labor followed by a death march and four more months of forced labor. Weiss immigrated to the United States in 1947 and moved to northern Virginia in 1953, where she taught in Fairfax County Public Schools.
Weiss said she is now seeing history repeat itself post-Oct. 7.
“When I was a child in Auschwitz, I thought when the nightmare was over and we survived, that there would never be any more antisemitism, that this would never happen again,” Weiss said. “But as you know, that didn’t happen. Antisemitism is back again.”
After telling her story, Weiss opened the floor to audience questions, where student-athletes asked about her day-to-day life in Auschwitz and what they could do to prevent the spread of antisemitism today.
Williams, the executive director of USC Shoah Foundation, said he wanted the student-athletes to meet a Holocaust survivor in order to better understand their trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. He was impressed with the students’ attention to Weiss’ story.
“When Irene spoke, it was clear that students were so locked in, engaged, leaning forward,” Williams said. “They asked good questions. They went up to her afterward, kept asking more and more questions. I think it could’ve gone on for hours.”
Weiss said she has faith that the younger generation can make a difference by speaking up and thinking critically.
“I like to talk to young people,” Weiss said in an interview. “They are the people who can make the changes we so desperately need. I think the Holocaust was such a tragedy not just to the Jewish people; I think it was a breakdown of Western civilization. And I think that young people should hear from someone who can tell them firsthand what happened and carry the story.”
Telling her story many decades later is still painful for Weiss, but she believes it’s more important than ever to share her experience as a Holocaust survivor amid rising antisemitism.
“Soon the story will only be in books and in documents,” Weiss said. “I’ve experienced it firsthand. I want to transmit what I experienced so that it will be real to them, [so they] understand that it happened … I am an ordinary person who got caught in a tragedy that has destroyed my family and my people, so I want to pass on that information.”
Garrison Madden, a linebacker and rising junior at USC, said he felt fortunate to hear from a Holocaust survivor.
“I’ve gotten a lot of great insight and definitely become more knowledgeable,” said Madden, who said he came into the summit “not very informed on the topic” of antisemitism.
Williams concluded the series of speakers by emphasizing the importance of combating rising antisemitism.
“Right now, we are facing the most dangerous moment for the Jewish people since 1945; there’s really no argument against that,” Williams said, citing the increase in physical assaults and alienation of Jewish people.
Echoing Lipstadt’s claim that antisemitism is a danger to everyone, Williams said the Buffalo supermarket shooter who killed 10 Black Americans and injured several others in May 2022 was motivated by white supremacist conspiracy theories. The shooter believed in the “Great Replacement Theory,” which falsely claims that white people are being “replaced” in the U.S. as a Jewish conspiracy theory.
Williams used that example to assert that antisemitism is interconnected with other forms of prejudice, as it ties into anti-Black racism: “It continues to cut across all lines.”
He and Lipstadt urged the audience to denounce hatred in any form, noting that his goals — of increasing Holocaust education and improving the way we discuss antisemitism — are not short-term solutions.
“People look up to athletes,” Lipstadt said in her speech, encouraging them to use their platforms as allies. “When you see hatred, when you see antisemitism, speak up. Hatred doesn’t exist in silence.”
