USHMM Receives Gift to Advance Holocaust Studies

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has received a $10 million gift from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation to ensure the growth, vitality, and impact of Holocaust studies in the United States and abroad.

USHMM’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies has been renamed the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.

The Mandel Center sponsors new Holocaust scholarship, invests in successive generations of scholars who will lead the field, undertakes multidisciplinary research worldwide, and ensures this history is taught at the highest levels in the United States and around the world. 

The Mandel Center hosts an average of 27 visiting fellows every year from North America, Europe, and Israel, as well as from places such as East Asia and North Africa. These scholars represent  multiple academic disciplines—history, literature, philosophy, economics, law, film studies, and others—reflecting the varied fields in which new Holocaust research is being pursued and through which today’s college students may have their first serious academic encounter with the Holocaust.

“The Mandel family generously helped establish the Museum in its early years, and now through this campaign gift they are helping us lay the foundation for the institution’s future, ensuring the permanence of Holocaust memory, relevance, and understanding,” said Museum Director Sara J. Bloomfield. “As the Holocaust recedes in time and the eyewitness generation diminishes, keeping Holocaust memory alive will depend upon a dynamic field of study. The Mandel Center will be at the forefront of advancing new knowledge about how the Holocaust happened—and was allowed to happen—that will shape how future generations understand its significance and are inspired to act on its lessons.”