Who Are the Marcuses?

Who Are the Marcuses? pieces together the lives of Holocaust refugees Lottie and Howard Marcus, an unassuming couple from Great Neck, New York, who retired to a modest two-bedroom apartment in San Diego, California. Howard, formerly a dentist, died in 2014 at age 104. Lottie died less than two years later at age 99. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed the Marcuses had given over half a billion dollars to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev—the largest single charitable donation to the State of Israel since its founding in 1948. Who were these virtually unknown philanthropists who had never publicly revealed their wealth or intentions? How did they accumulate billions by getting in on the early days of the greatest financial services empire ever built? What compelled them and their daughter, Ellen, to give it all away? And why were the Marcuses so captivated by the issue of water scarcity and an innovative university in the Israeli desert?