In 2022, I sat down to interview Holocaust survivor David Schaecter.

David had not slept the night before.

The thought of revisiting the memories he had carried for more than eight decades was almost unbearable. The moment I crossed the threshold of his apartment, he broke down in tears.

For the next eight hours, David took me back to Auschwitz.

He described arriving at the camp as a young boy. He told me how his mother and two little sisters were murdered before his eyes. He recalled hearing machine-gun fire and watching bodies fall into a pit. He remembered realizing, in an instant, that the people he loved most in the world were gone.

Again and again, we stopped filming. There were tears, long silences, and moments when the weight of memory became almost too much to bear. Yet David continued.

What struck me most was not only the horror of what he endured, but the determination that brought him to tell the story anyway.

He did not want the world to look away.

When the interview was finally over, David embraced me. He took my hands in his, looked me straight in the eyes, and made me promise that I would become his voice when he was no longer here.

Months before his death, that promise became one of the most sacred commitments of my life.

Today, I think often about David’s request. Because his question was not simply whether his story would survive. It was who would carry it forward.

And that raises a profound question—one that extends far beyond archives, museums, or family histories.

Who becomes the steward of Holocaust........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)