How will we remember the Holocaust when the last of the survivors dies? The Nazis unwittingly helped preserve some of the memories, by meticulously documenting and accounting their genocide - never has murder been so well catalogued. There will, of course, be the plethora of books and movies and articles and poems and plays. But what will the Holocaust mean, when its voices speak only from recordings and recitations? Will things change? What will the world look like thirty-five years from now, in 2045, and what will the Holocaust look like to that world? Ancient history? Boring history? Irrelevant history?
The world of 2045 will be largely unrecognizable to the world of 2010; technological advancements will (hopefully) advance the comfort of living; medical breakthroughs will (hopefully) advance the human race; and socio-geo-political changes will (probably) re-write the map. One hundred years after the liberation of Auschwitz, one hundred years after the guns of World War II fell silent, the scars of the Shoah may exist only in memory and in the hearts and minds of people whose lives were indirectly touched - but the memorials and the graves will be there. With time, Schindler's List and The Diary of Anne Frank might lose their iconic status in popular culture, but the "Arbeit macht frei" sign and that long, long railroad track will still be there.
The world will change, but the memory of the Holocaust never will. Behind every Nazi cliché and every Hitler parody and joke, there are nine million reasons why Auschwitz will scar the human psyche - for better and for worse - for a long time to come.