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David Bayer: My father had a shoe factory and I helped in the factory when I was a kid. I had a sister; she was about 20; a brother, 12 or 13; a little sister, 8-years-old or 9-years-old — 1939. When the Germans came in, all this changed. My parents were shipped away to Treblinka. I didn't see them anymore. I didn't see my sister, didn't see my brother, didn't see nobody.

My mother, my father, everybody was killed .But the people existed. They were in this world. They were living. They had family. They had children. They laughed, they sang, they ate, but now they’ve disappeared completely.

Lisa Yavnai: The Holocaust was one of the most devastating The Holocaust chapters in human history. But, for some victims, records detailing their experiences survived. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has collected over 170 million documents relating to the experiences of victims of Nazi persecution.

Steven Vitto: These documents are that bridge to that momentand to that life that was lived.

Joseph Finkelstein: There's a lot of information that survived the war but no one had access to it and no one really knew about it. And there's a big part of the story of what happened to victims and even facts about survivors that has been unknown for six, seven decades, but now is capable of being known.

On screen type: INTRODUCING THE WORLD MEMORY PROJECT THE POWER OF TRUTH IS IN YOUR HANDS

World Memory Project Lisa Yavnai: It's easy to feel helpless when you thinkabout the Holocaust and the widespread Nazi persecution during World War II. The World Memory Project gives you an opportunity to do something.

Todd Jensen: The Museum's great and very successful atacquiring Holocaust records from all over the world. Ancestry.com has developed tools that make it easy for people to help bring these records online. You download one piece of software and you'll immediately be able to look at an image and start typing the names of the individuals on that document. And that information is saved in our database and made searchable to others.

Ancestrycom Joseph Finkelstein: For 63 years, he did not know what happened to his father. He didn't know how he died or where he died.

Sol Finkelstein: I was a boy, a 14-year-old boy, 15-year-old boy. And my father went to work and then we were in camp together, and then he got lost. I felt an enormous guilt. What if ... what if I didn't leave him, what if I stayed that night and he would be with us. Why did I lose my father after all these years of suffering, and so close to being freed?

Joseph Finkelstein: I received from the Museum a document and on the list was my grandfather's name, his date of birth, his place of birth and — a grave number. So he survived; he survived liberation. He was taken to a hospital in Wels and he died four days later.

Sol Finkelstein: Now I know where my father is. It's not easier that I know, but at least I know.

Steven Vitto: Anybody could relate if you were separated Conclusion from the people that you love and you did not know what was going to happen to them or what does happen to them — the fear, the dread, the agony of not knowing.

Elaine Culbertson: You may not have an ancestor who survived the Holocaust or who died in it, but you can participate in the World Memory Project. I was able to find so much information in these records. Not only did I learn the date and time of my grandfather's death, I learned where he had died, and what he had died from. It made him into a real person for me, not a ghost of the past, someone that I had never met, someone that I was only told stories about. The fact that there were documents to prove that he had once lived, and that he had died, that was an amazing find forme.

On screen: THE POWER OF TRUTH IS IN YOUR HANDS WorldMemoryProject.org United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Ancestry.com English All From United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

David Bayer: I was working in a coal mine called Yavoshna. It's a sub-camp near Auschwitz. One morning we were going to work and one German officer noticed my neck. I was covering up with my, with my collar. He wants to see what, why I'm covering. My neck was swollen up. When he saw it, he took me out of the line and took me, sent me with a Ukrainian soldier to a clinic. And over there they operated on me without anesthetic, without any kind of chemicals, nothing, no pills, no nothing. Tied me up on the table, my legs, my hands and one guy was holding my head--and a doctor cut me. And he was smiling. And I see his face; everywhere I look I see his face. Every time I talk about it I see his face. He was smiling and I was suffering. Terrible. I still have the scar here, on my right side.

When I was at the Museum two years ago, they went to Germany to get all the documentation and they found my files--my name and my tattoo, which is B-74. And the place, and the time when they made the operation... the doctor's name and everything. I couldn’t believe it. I, it's like, everything came back to me--everything--and I'm still thinking about it all the time... that they were going to kill me. They were going to send me back to Auschwitz and put me in the crematorium and he had to write everything down like, like civilized people. I looked for people after the war, I couldn't find nobody. I couldn't find my... I thought maybe my sister survived somewhere, maybe something. No. I, I traveled all over Poland, all over Germany looking for family. Everybody wants... some closure... wants to find out about their family.

Type on screen: In recent years, a 1940s census document was discovered in an old home in Poland. It's the only record David has of being together with his parents, brother and sisters before they were killed.

David: It shows my mother, my father's name, my sisters, my brother, what kind of profession they had. That’s is the only thing I have--is the names, written up in a piece of paper. I have no pictures; I have no ID, no nothing. It's an unbelievable story, but it happened. And I can show the world that it happened.

English All From United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Related

Elaine Culbertson: I don't think that anybody who's the child of survivors can say that they had the average childhood. Both my parents were concentration camp survivors. They came from different parts of Poland and probably would never have met if it had not been for the war.

I always knew what had happened to my parents and especially because I started to ask questions about why I had no grandparents. It became obvious to me that our family was different from everybody else’s and that there were stories there that I needed to understand.

I was here at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as a part of a group of teachers and a bunch of us went up to the Survivor Registry so that I could show them my parent's records. I thought I had seen them all. I was shown a document that was a list of forced laborers.

On that document were the names of my father, my uncle, and my grandfather. I was not surprised that they were in forced labor. What surprised me was that my grandfather's birthdate was on the list.

With both my father and my uncle gone, I had never been able to ask anyone, "When was my grandfather born? How old was he when all of this happened?" And suddenly here it was on this document.

Nobody can fathom what it means when you say six million people died. But everybody understands what it means when you talk about a family and what happened to them. Not only did I learn the date and time of my grandfather’s death. I learned where he had died and what he had died from.

It made him into a real person for me. Not a ghost of the past, someone that I had never met, someone that I was only told stories about. The fact that there were documents to prove that he had once lived and that he had died, that was an amazing find for me.

In Jewish tradition, a son stands for his father or anyone in his family who has died on the anniversary day of the death. My father stood every time he was in Synagogue because he didn’t know the exact date of his father's death. It would have meant a great deal to him to have that information.

When I told my son, he said "Mom, I not only stand for my grandfather, your father, now I can stand for your grandfather as well."