Mollie Bowman’s grandmother spoke often about how, after surviving Auschwitz, she met her future husband, an American soldier, at a displaced persons camp. When he proposed, he gifted her parachute fabric to make a wedding dress and vowed to meet her in pre-state Israel, where she was headed. Because she could only travel to the Holy Land with the clothes on her back, she sewed the fabric into her coat’s lining.

Today, Bowman, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, or 3G, is managing director of Living Links, an organization aimed at promoting advocacy and identity among grandchildren. In her new role, Bowman works to ensure that the experience of her grandmother, Penina Bowman, as well as the stories passed down to the one million other 3Gs in the United States are shared and preserved.

“Her voice is living through me,” Bowman said of her grandmother, who was a Hadassah life member in the Atlanta area until her death in 2018.

Created in 2023, Living Links helps train 3Gs to honor their family’s history, counter antisemitism and safeguard Holocaust history through storytelling. Now, the group is partnering with the USC Shoah Foundation to expand its mission. With a lead gift of $1 million, Living Links will expand its speaker-training program, which teaches 3Gs how to present their grandparent’s Holocaust experiences to classrooms and community groups.

“Nothing sticks like a story,” said Jennifer Loew Mendelson, Living Links co-founder and co-president. “This partnership will help us empower 3Gs to tell their stories in meaningful and compelling ways.”

The partnership comes as antisemitism continues to skyrocket and as knowledge of the Holocaust fades. Sixty-three percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 39 don’t know that six million Jews were murdered during World War II, according to a 2020 Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany survey.

Mendelson, a second-generation survivor, remembers when, as a 7-year-old, she asked her father why he had no siblings.

“We were walking under the apple trees in our yard. He let go of my hand, turned around and cried,” she said, noting that he was his family’s sole survivor.

“We are walking vessels of history,” Mendelson said. “Our parents’ and grandparents’ stories shaped who we are. The effects of what happened in the 1930s and 40s live through us.”