‘This was real’: Artifacts save Holocaust stories for future

BOWIE, Md. – Holocaust survivors say the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s new conservation and research centre will speak for them long after they’re gone.

About two dozen survivors marked Holocaust remembrance day at the centre’s opening in the suburbs of the nation’s capital Monday.

A small wicker chair designed for a doll but used by a child in hiding is one of thousands of artifacts inside.

Seventy-five-year-old Louise Lawrence-Israels of Bethesda, Maryland, received the chair on her second birthday, as she hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic about five blocks from where diarist Anne Frank also was hiding.

The state-of-the-art facility has 103,000 square feet (9,570 square meters) for artifacts, with room for expansion. The museum’s collection is expected to double in size over the next decade.