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It's very scary. Matter of fact, it freaks me out so much sometimes I consider throwing all I've planned aside and become an educator to make sure kids won't forget it.
I know that if, or when, the day comes when a child says "stop telling me about it, I don't care and it doesn't evolve me. I don't want to hear about it anymore" - really would be one of the most disappointing days of my life. I've always been close to this issue, I've always cared much about it and I can't imagine what it would be like when it becomes "not relevant". Our memory tends to focus on latest events; it's very easy to forget about it and say there are more urgent issues to deal with. So that's how history becomes just a myth - in 100 years, when the survivors are long gone, and their children are gone, and we are gone, and the old camps will be all decayed, and there would be no one alive to even remember a survivor - people would care less. And as time goes by, past events get less and less important. Who of us can really feel some of what we feel on Yom HaShoa on Ab 9th, for example? Ab 9th is, of course, not as worse - yet it was a terrible tragedy that has changed everything in the Jewish world completely; but Ab 9th is 'old news' - and I'm afraid that one day, so will the Holocaust be. It is terrible, it must not happen - but I know for sure we can't change that fact.
I do think we should, and must, work on documenting every piece of evidence and making sure that other generations will see it. I like the concept of the new museum of Yad VaShem, where the story is told mostly by video shots of survivors telling their own story. Numbers lack meaning - seeing a person that tells you about him and his family is a completely different experience than listening to flat facts. It makes it more alive and vivid - and that's something we should encourage. I do not think people in 100 or 200 years will care about the Holocaust as much as we do; we must make sure it'll take a hell lot of time until they see it as "none of their business".

what will happen is worse than that. poeple will eventually not only regard it as trivial, but even go as far as to deny its existance.

I'm afraid it already is happening - luckily, the laws in most modern countries forbid it.
You know - I'm not sure what scares me more. If people believe it hasn't happened, it is very, very bad - but if they know it has, yet claim they don't give a rat's a**, we have a major problem here.
I don't know if claiming it has never happened will become something most people agree about. It's very possible, people will claim the numbers are not right; but the fact there was systematic murder of Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and so-called "a-socials", is documented not only by survivors but also by the Germans. I think it would take more than just a few hundreds if any, for this claim to be legitimate. I mean, I don't see many crusades deniers.

About your second post - no, of course it wasn't the first time. Hey, the pogroms were there all along, around Russia, Ukraine, Poland - they were just minor incidents in comparison to what you've mentioned. But it was different, I think, because at that time, you could have been saved. It was "convert and live or die as a Jew", right? But during the Holocaust, it was completely different; you could have been born and educated as a Christian, but it's enough that two of your grandfathers (I think it was two?) was Jewish - you have no way to escape the situation. They didn't care about religion really anymore - you could convert to Christianity and it wouldn't matter. I mean, there were churches in Warsaw Ghetto, for example, because many "Christian-Jews" were also imprisoned.
I think it is different, because it wasn't as systematic, because there were ways to escape, because the numbers were lower - maybe I'm just saying this because it's closer to me. That's also possible, and if that's the case, I'm doing what I'm afraid others will be doing 100 years from now (or more, hopefully).


I talk too much. eek

This topic insipired me. For my school's newspaper, which I'm a writer of, I'm doing an editorial about Weisenthal, the significance of his death, and how we need his example to fight not only anti-Semitism, but racial and religious prejudice in all forms in this day and age. If someone could give me a link to a full bio of his, it would be much appreciated.