In 1943, during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Max Glauben was a terrified 15-year-old, hiding with his family in an underground shelter. The hideout was, of course, precarious at best, and sure enough, an informant ratted them out to the Nazis.

Almost immediately, the Nazis deported the Glaubens to the Majdanek extermination camp in Lublin, Poland, where an estimated 78,000 people were killed during the Holocaust.

Glauben was separated from his mother, his younger brother and much of their extended family, who died in the gas chamber at Majdanek (pronounced my-DON-ick). He and his father were transported to a labor camp, which for a while meant hope — temporary, albeit grim, survival. Soon, however, his father was also killed, with only his shoes left on the street as a cruel reminder of the good man who had loved and protected his son for as long as he could.

Glauben calls it his most searing moment, fueling decades of nightmares.

Holocaust survivor Max Glauben poses for a photo before a holographic image of himself in the Dimensions in Testimony interactive exhibit at the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in downtown Dallas. Visitors can sit across from a Holocaust survivor and ask questions. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

But now, 76 years later, thanks in part to his tireless advocacy, there is a new museum in downtown Dallas that honors Glauben's lost family and so many others. It is the 55,000-square-foot, $78 million Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, spearheaded by president and CEO Mary Pat Higgins and funded by local donors, which opens to the public on Sept. 18.

Interactive testimony

Glauben, 91, is sitting in a sleek, interactive theater, listening to and looking at himself — or rather, at his own holographic image. In other words, Max Glauben is looking at Max Glauben detailing the horrors of the Holocaust.

His is an interactive testimony that museum officials say could last until the end of time. Glauben's holographic image is one of 18 interactive testimonies at the museum, taken from Holocaust survivors all over the world. The cost of the Dimensions in Testimony Theater alone is $2.5 million.

On this September morning, Holographic Max and Real Max are wearing the same clothes — a light blue shirt, gray pants, black belt and Skechers with white rims.

Since being interviewed for the project during five long days in August 2018, Glauben marvels at the technology.

Technicians are making final adjustments to a holographic image of Holocaust survivor Max Glauben seen in the Dimensions in Testimony interactive exhibit at the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in downtown Dallas. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

He calls it "the greatest victorious reward for me to be able to do that. I think it might be the performance of the greatest mitzvah a person could ever do. Any living person in the United States, regardless of religion, color or which nation or country they come from, their spouses, their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, could come into this facility and ask a question of Max Glauben about the Holocaust. And he will answer about how he was treated 80 years ago during the darkest period in our history."

While Glauben is talking, a woman enters the room. She's one of dozens of people working feverishly to get the museum open, to button down the details. With Real Max sitting just a few feet away, she asks Holographic Max how he managed to survive, to make it all the way to a museum that honors his darkest memories.

"I survived by cheating," says Holographic Max. "Maybe lying, maybe stealing, maybe outsmarting somebody, maybe doing something that elevated me ... but I didn't do it viciously, I did it by necessity. There are times in life when a small lie or a big lie might make it possible for you to sustain life."

Moments later, Real Max, who is a very funny man, says the answer given by Holographic Max made him feel momentarily Catholic.

"Why?" he says with a grin. "Because I gave my confession."

To complete the task of programming Holographic Max, a team of interviewers asked Real Max more than 1,500 questions. He answered with as much detail as possible to address any conceivable question a visitor might ask, now or centuries in the future.

The holographic project is a partnership between the museum and the USC Shoah Foundation, founded by three-time Oscar winner Steven Spielberg.

Glauben was an obvious candidate, having survived the Warsaw ghetto, five concentration camps and a death march from the Flossenbürg concentration camp to Dachau before being liberated by Gen. George Patton's 3rd Army tank division.

Max Glauben, a Holocaust survivor, shows the words "KL" tattoo, which stands in German for concentration camp, "konzentrationslager," with a "March of the Living" scarf at his home in 2017. (Jae S. Lee / Staff Photographer)

The mark "KL" is tattooed on his wrist, marking him forever as a concentration camp inmate. So, for Glauben, whose mind is as sharp as a razor, a walk through the new museum is like a road show of his own chilling past.

"We lived in Poland. My father was in the newspaper business. As far as politics, we were not involved."

And yet, he first became aware of Adolf Hitler's perilous push in the pages of his father's paper.

"Even though there were horrible things happening in other places, you don't ever think that it will happen to you. Until it really started happening in 1939 [when World War II began, with Hitler's invasion of Poland], everything we heard was hearsay."

Soon, however, the newspaper owned by Glauben's father was "viciously demolished." Almost overnight, fear became a constant, unwanted companion.

We walk to one of the museum's signature elements, a boxcar such as the kind in which Glauben and millions of others were carted off by rail to their next way station on the train of fate.

Carpenter Jeff Green (right) and lead carpenter Dennis Manske erect a door on the rail car that's on display at the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum. The car was brought to Dallas from Belgium and housed in the Jewish Community Center until now. The car was restored and moved by pieces into the new museum. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Before we reach the boxcar, Glauben points to a photograph on the wall. It is Glauben, standing next to his younger brother, in 1938. He got the photograph from his uncle, who lived in the Middle East, isolated from the Nazi tyranny. His brother, a child with a face of pure innocence, was killed at Majdanek.

The museum's boxcar, which has been fully restored, was used by the Nazis during World War II.

"By the time 1939 came, it wasn't as nice as this car is now. We were discovered in a basement in which we were hiding while the ghetto was burning."

Glauben said more than 100 people stood cramped in the boxcar, whose doors were closed from the outside, with no ability to open them from the inside.

"Two small windows, the ceiling much lower than this and covered with tar paper, because it leaked. The people's humidity — breathing — created bubbles of water on the tar paper. But people were hoping to get just a drip to wet their lips, because it's harder to die of dehydration than it is starvation."

Majdanek is 95 miles southeast of Warsaw. Its story is one of many the museum seeks to tell, via a wall exhibit that defines Majdanek as "the hub of Operation Reinhard." It was first, the exhibit states, a slave labor camp and later a death camp. The camp "confiscated and warehoused Jewish possessions and provided oversight for the Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor death camps." It is one of dozens of exhibits that tell the story of the Holocaust in graphic detail.

Glauben has returned to Majdanek more than once, to celebrate the International March of the Living. Even today, he says, there's a building that contains "seven tons of human ashes. These ashes belong to my family, and also my mom and my little brother."

As we take our tour, it doesn't take long for what he's seeing on the walls to rekindle memories, horrific reminders of what he can't forget.

"I close my eyes, and I see this ... ," he says, his voice trailing off.

He speaks again of the night his father was taken. The Nazis killed dozens of Jews that night, leaving only their shoes on the spot where they had laid their victims the night before.

"You cannot describe the amount of horribleness," Glauben says. "You feel like you're thrown in the middle of the ocean and they say, 'Swim back to shore.' That's how we began our new life, by somehow swimming back to shore and having the gumption to do it."

Gen. George Patton on March 30, 1943. (U.S. Army Signal Corps/Library of Congress)

His happiest moment came when Patton's American tanks arrived to liberate Glauben and thousands of others. That made him happy, as did the birth of his three children, who have produced seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

And yet, despite the happiness, he worries that the horror could happen all over again, even in his beloved America.

To avoid such a monstrous déjà vu, people need to be "upstanders" rather than "bystanders," which he calls the strength of the new museum.

It's why the exhibition goes beyond the Holocaust to include atrocities in other places, such as Bosnia, Rwanda and even the United States, where in Texas Stephen F. Austin wiped out the American Indian tribe called the Karankawa people, whom he believed were cannibals.

Glauben compares the museum to a car wash that helps cleanse the soul. He says there is no better place for such a car wash than Dallas, where a president was killed. But he also sees the city as a place — because of the museum — that can become "the No. 1 city in the country to fight bigotry and hatred and anti-Semitism or whatever is bad in this world. Because of this museum, in Dallas, Texas, this city can help the world become a much better place. And I am grateful to have been a part of it."

As he says, "Now, I have my closure."

Details

Address: 300 N. Houston St.

Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Admission: $16 for adults; $14 for seniors, military, educators and visitors with disabilities; $12 for students (The museum is not recommended for children younger than 12.)

Parking: Available in museum garage on Houston Street at $4 per hour with $12 maximum

Website: dhhrm.org