Memories of the Holocaust are fading – my fiction helps me preserve the past

Richard Zimler is trying to keep the terrible facts alive in the stories he writes

In 1968, when I was 12, I read The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time. Closing the book's cover created an ache of guilt in me because I seemed to be shutting the door on Anne in her hiding place in Amsterdam. I wanted to stay with her and somehow keep her from being sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

A few days later, Anne's diary gave me the courage to speak for the first time to a Hungarian-Jewish neighbour in our New York suburb who had his camp number tattooed on his arm. His name was Aaron Goldberg and he was from Budapest. His wife, Sara, also had an identification number on her arm.