International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 78 years since the Auschwitz death camp, was liberated during World War II and honoring the six million Jewish people who were killed in the Nazi genocide.

Holocaust Museum LA has made it its mission to share stories of victims and survivors, including one woman who built a new life in LA after spending her childhood in hiding.

A group of survivors, who met at Hollywood High School and wanted to preserve the artifacts they had from before, during and after the war, founded the Holocaust Museum LA in 1961.

“When students and visitors first come to the museum, one of the first things you see is a rich collection of artifacts. Most of them were donated by our founding survivors,” said Beth Kean, CEO of Holocaust Museum LA. “It really humanizes this history for them so they can truly understand where racism and prejudice can lead.”

Eva Nathanson was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1941. She spent her childhood in hiding from the Nazi regime after her family was taken away for helping Jewish people. When she came to the U.S. as a teenager, she initially tried to put her past behind her.

“Those of us who went through the kind of life as I went through, we’re all damaged (to) different degrees. And what we do with the damage is what matters, not whether you are damaged or not. I am a very functional human being comparatively, which I couldn’t have been if I wouldn’t have asked for help when I needed it," Nathanson shared. "In 1957, I came to the United States… I wanted to have nothing to do with my past, Hungarian or otherwise. I didn’t feel that I was ready to be among Holocaust survivors because I always felt that that was a dark part of my life, which I never deny, but I didn’t want it to be the focus of my life."

Now, Nathanson shares her story with the world, speaking at the museum and around the country.

“If you don’t know your past, you will never do anything in your present and definitely won’t have a future. And I learned that by denying my past, I had actually caused a lot of issues for myself,” Nathanson said. “Since I joined the Holocaust Museum speakers here, I’ve been openly talking about it going to schools, going to communities. I’ve been traveling anywhere they send me because I really feel that bigotry has to be stopped.”

Holocaust Museum LA is in Pan Pacific Park in the Fairfax District.

It’s open every day and is always free for students. General admission is free on Thursdays and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays.

Watch Kean and Nathanson’s interview above. 

Watch “LA Times Today” at 7 and 10 p.m. Monday through Friday on Spectrum News 1 and the Spectrum News app.