Ramat Gan, Israel • Under a fluorescent light, an archivist from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial snaps photos and scans into her mobile database the last remnant that a pair of elderly siblings have of their long-lost father — a 1943 postcard Samuel Akerman tossed in desperation out of the deportation train hurtling him toward his demise in the Majdanek death camp.
"It's what we have left from him," said Rachel Zeiger, his now 91-year-old daughter. "But this is not for the family. It is for the next generations."
With the world's community of aging Holocaust survivors rapidly shrinking, and their live testimonies soon to be a thing of the past, efforts such as these have become the forefront of preparing for a world without them.