A Race Against Time.

Most of the world’s estimated 325,000 Holocaust survivors are in their 70s and 80s; as Spielberg says, the project is in a “race against time.” (Survivors are invited to call the project, toll-free, 800-661-2092.) The technology, typically Spielberg, is so cutting edge that some of it hasn’t even been invented yet. The completed interviews will be digitized–converted to an electronic format that makes it possible to put the interview online. What remains to be developed is the next step: video on demand exists only in prototype. But Spielberg’s team expects the technology to be refined within three years. Total costs may reach $65 million; about $13 million–enough for the first year-has already come in. Contributors include MCA/Universal, MCA chairman Lew Wasserman, Time-Warner, NBC and Spielberg.

The money, the moguls and the high-speed mobilization are making scholars in the field a little nervous. “This is such a vast project,” says Geoffrey Hartman, project director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, which houses 3,000 survivor videotapes. (He estimates that about 6,000 such videotapes already exist in various archives.) “We have tried to transmit to them as much of our experience as we can. We have many hopes and some fears.” Hartman says Spielberg’s project could drain resources from smaller efforts, and he worries about its seriousness of purpose. The Yale ar-chive will continue its videotaping. “We are within a great university that has education and research value,” he says. “Until they demonstrate that they have those same values, it would be disastrous if we simply said, ‘Let them do it’.”

Spielberg’s staff says it has consulted extensively with experts at Yale and elsewhere. The videotapes will be made available to researchers at five centers: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C,, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and Yale. Ultimately colleges and other research facilities will be able to provide students with computer access to the archive. For younger students there may be virtual walk-throughs of concentration camps on CD-ROM. “There will be some skepticism,” concedes senior producer James Moll, an independent filmmaker. “Until it’s finished.”

Larry Lerner isn’t skeptical. The New York physician, one of hundreds of lawyers, journalists. therapists and others who are volunteering to conduct interviews, has just completed a 20-hour training session and is eager to start. “My parents are both European and survived the war,” says Lerner, 37. “They didn’t have a concentration-camp experience, but they definitely had a rough time. Now my great-great-grandchildren will be able to watch somebody like my mother tell exactly what it smelled like, felt like, in a concentration camp.”