In Chap­ter Sev­en of *Revenge of the Tip­ping Point*, titled “The L.A. Sur­vivors’ Club,” the nar­ra­tive focus­es on the lives of Holo­caust sur­vivors in Los Ange­les, pri­mar­i­ly Fred Dia­ment, Siegfried Hal­bre­ich, and Masha Loen. Fred, known as Fred­die, was a “low num­ber” sur­vivor who endured the hor­rors of Konzen­tra­tionslager Sach­sen­hausen and Auschwitz, los­ing his father and broth­er along the way. Despite his trau­mat­ic past, he became a respect­ed CEO in L.A. His dark humor, as not­ed by Rachel Lith­gow from Spielberg’s Shoah Foun­da­tion, stood out amidst his anger and grief. Freddie’s deep friend­ship with Sig, who sur­vived as a phar­ma­cist treat­ing inmates, is high­light­ed through Lithgow’s accounts, empha­siz­ing their insep­a­ra­ble bond, char­ac­ter­ized by both laugh­ter and bick­er­ing.

Fol­low­ing Fred­die’s death in 2004, a dra­mat­ic eulo­gy deliv­ered by Sig had the entire com­mu­ni­ty laugh­ing, reflect­ing their unique cama­raderie. Anoth­er sur­vivor, Masha, also had a grip­ping sto­ry. Sur­viv­ing mul­ti­ple typhus infec­tions, she vivid­ly demon­strat­ed her resilience even dur­ing a Pesach (Passover) cel­e­bra­tion, humor­ous­ly dis­miss­ing tra­di­tion­al dietary restric­tions due to her har­row­ing past.

Fred­die, Sig, and Masha became piv­otal fig­ures in form­ing the Los Ange­les sur­vivors’ club, where they began to share their expe­ri­ences and efforts to remem­ber the Holo­caust. Their small gath­er­ings evolved into a sig­nif­i­cant com­mu­ni­ty, where they curat­ed memen­tos of their mem­o­ries, lead­ing to the estab­lish­ment of the Mar­tyrs Memo­r­i­al Museum—the first Holo­caust muse­um in the Unit­ed States—in 1961.

Over the decades, this project grew into some­thing larg­er, prompt­ing the cre­ation of Holo­caust memo­ri­als across the U.S. The chap­ter ends by high­light­ing the sig­nif­i­cant cul­tur­al shift regard­ing Holo­caust mem­o­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly after less focus on the Holo­caust in ear­ly Amer­i­can his­to­ries.

Lithgow’s expe­ri­ences great­ly empha­size how these sur­vivors cre­at­ed a com­mu­ni­ty, reveal­ing a trans­for­ma­tion in pub­lic per­cep­tion and acknowl­edg­ment of their trau­mat­ic his­to­ry through sto­ry­telling and shared expe­ri­ences .