As the museum turns 20, officials understand that the demise of those who survived the prison camps as children means looking backward in a different way.



It won't be long before no eyewitnesses remain.



You can read all the documentation of the Holocaust in the world, said Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, "but hearing somebody's voice, sitting across the table or across the room from a human being, there's no true substitute."


"I tell my students annually that they have a special responsibility," he said. "They are the last generation that will be able to say that they personally knew survivors of the Holocaust. It is a big change, just like it was when the last Civil War veteran passed from the scene."

The Holocaust, now "perceived history," will become "received" history, Sarna said. The challenge is that it doesn't recede from memory.

Holocaust educators take heart in the many institutions and younger people committed to ensuring that future generations will know about the 6 million Jews who died; of the concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria set up to carry out Hitler's "Final Solution"; and of the 5 million Roma (Gypsies), gay people and others murdered because the Nazis deemed them, like the Jews, unworthy of life.


"The museum stands as that eyewitness going forward," Saltzman said. "We are the repository of all that evidence, and all of those memories."

From the Washington museum to Jerusalem's Yad Vashem to smaller museums around the world, these institutions preserve history that will soon no longer be passed on firsthand. So, too, does Holocaust literature, from Anne Frank's famous diary to Night, by survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who will give the keynote speech at the Washington museum's anniversary Monday, alongside former president Bill Clinton.


Curriculum programs in schools introduce children in the U.S. and elsewhere to the Holocaust, and these programs will continue, even when survivors aren't part of them anymore.


"I probably wouldn't remember what I had for breakfast, but I remember all that happened to me during the carnage," said Frajman, who now lives in Boynton Beach, Fla., and has been sharing his testimony with schoolchildren for more than 30 years.

But not with young children. "The atrocities are indescribable. I can't address anyone at the elementary school level," he said. "It's too graphic."


Even in the presence of Holocaust survivors, there are people who insist the genocide never happened, Sarna said. The hope, when there are no more survivors, is that the museums and the video archives will make it "impossible for most people to accept the word of the deniers."

In the meantime, as long as he is able, Frajman will tell his story and teach about the Holocaust in hopes of preventing another one. "Yesterday it was directed against the Jews. Tomorrow it could be against Christians, the next day against Muslims — unless people heed and listen," he said.


"Judging by today's young people that I encounter when I go to schools to speak, we are in for a better tomorrow," Frajman said. "They listen. They are very perceptive. They take it to heart."