[Reporter] Max Eisen survived the nightmare of his past by looking forward.
Nowhe's come here.
To step back in time and relive it over and over again.
[Max] My name is Max Eisen.
I was born on March 15 1929 in a town called Moldava nad Bodvou in Czechoslovakia.
[Reporter] This is the extraordinary process of bringing history to life.
I was a busy kid.
I went to public school.
I went to Hebrew school.
[Reporter] A 26 camera set up in a Los Angeles studio
designed to capture every angle of Max's testimony as a Holocaust or Shoah survivor.
To preserve his story and turn it into a living one.
[Max] At first my sort of thoughts it was kind of eerie and that means the end of life.
And you're only on a wall there.
But I sort of come to realize that this is a new technology
and it just could do a very big important job.
[Kia] How are you affected by your experience in the Holocaust?
[Max] Well, it was a loss of family.
It was a whole new ballgame as they say.
Coming back.
How do you pick up the pieces?
[Reporter] Max is the 25th survivor to be interviewed by the University of Southern California's
Shoah foundation.
With the purpose of creating a hologram or a three-dimensional interactive image.
It will be installed in museums
Brought to schools.
Anyone who touches a screen can ask Max a question
and his hologram will answer it.
We train the software behind the system to understand sets of questions
so that when you come up with your own unique individual way
of asking a similar questiom
the software behind it uses machine learning to say
oh I know this question and I know that this question means this answer.
Obviously, did the Holocaust affect your faith?
Yes, obviously you need that one.
[Reporter] Kia Hayes is in charge of the project.
She and her team have come up with nearly a thousand questions
to cover off what anyone might ask Max.
[Kia] Why do you think the Holocaust happened?
Why didn't more people help Jews during the Holocaust ?
[Repprter] Not every survivor is up to the task.
It's not just that they physically can sit for the 5 hours a day for 5 days a week
to tell their story
it's also mentally and emotionally.
Are they able to but do they want to?
So that we know that we're not over burdening them with the amounts of questions
that we're asking.
That's really important to us.
[Kia] All right let's keep going.
[Max] OK.
[Kia] We have more questions.
[Max] It might be hard to believe but there are more.
OK.
[Reporter] Yet however gentle the approach
Kia has to keep Max on track as he unearths the darkest period in his life.
[Kia] Were you ever depressed
or do you think that you ever had PTSD.
[Max] I don't know, I don't think I ever had PTSD.
I always managed to work my way through it.
[Reporter] Max's emotional stamina is remarkable.
Especially for a 90-year-old man.
They come at you with all these millions of questions
and you can't think out what are you going to say.
You need to be fast and I think that's the best way I can perform.
And I hear a question I just give them an answer right away.
[Kia] Max can you share your picture with us?
[Max] Yes, I have a picture here that was given to me when I returned from the camp after liberation.
[Reporter] So much of his story is about loss.
[Max] And you will see my father and my beautiful mother in the center, myself.
[Reporter] A young boy once nestled in a large loving family.
The only one to survive the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.
[Max] Simply losing your entire family and how do you pick up the pieces?
And grandparents uncles aunts cousins they simply disappeared.
And the year later and they were not there when I came home.
[Kia] How do you keep the memory of your family with you every day?
[Max] Well, I think about my mother a lot.
And I think about my brothers.
I know my younger brother --
Everybody knew that he was a genius, what he could have been.
[Kia] All right, thank you.
Guys am I crazy or is his resting pose different?
[Reporter] The whole exercise is grueling.
[Kia] So I was so sorry that was perfect.
I'm gonna ask you to do it again though in this position
[Reporter] Yet there is a detachment.
A distance from his own story.
[Kia] Are you able to speak about everything you remember?
There are certain things that I cannot talk about
for my own self-preservation.
[Kia] Did you tell your children about your experiences.
I believe we told them age-appropriate things and eventually that I think they found out.
I've never actually heard him answer some of these questions before.
Max's son Ed Eisen came along to support his dad.
He says part of his father has always been remote.
He just puts one foot in front of the other.
So this is the way he expects everybody to to be.
That's his understanding of how you deal with things.
[Reporter] Max says he needs to be stoic.
When you were recounting these very awful details
you're not emotional.
Is that deliberate?
Yes, it is deliberate.
I don't want to break down and I don't want to make anybody cry.
I want them to learn, you see.
And I know there are some survivors that cry
and everybody else is crying with them.
So that's not my way of doing things, you see.
[Max] Pinchas, what do you think of your hologram?
It feels a little strange.
When I watch myself but the actual project is so important.
[Reporter] A fellow Canadian survivor Pinchas Gutter was the prototype.
Taking part in this project means max will continue his work after he's gone.
This is amazing to me.
[Reporter] How do you feel about the fact that you're going to be on a screen like that
at the end of this process?
I feel I hope that I'll be giving the right answer.
So I think it's amazing.
It will be gone and we'll be still speaking to you from the other side.
And who would have thought such a thing could happen.
All week, Max has focused on sharing the details.
[Kia] So I kind of want to end this adventre we've been on
by playing piece that you remembered her playing...
[Reporter] Then for the final shot
Kia asks him to listen to a song a neighbor played when he made it home after the war
and found only ghosts.
It's beautiful.
Wow.
Thank you.
[Kia] We're actually going to cancel your flight and not let you go home.
[Reporter] He's spent a draining week facing his own mortality
and he's relieved when it's over.
Mission accomplished.
That's amazing, it's amazing guys -- girls.
[Kia] This is to you.
We promised to do our best by your words and your message
and help you preserve your story.
[Max] As we say may the memory be for a blessing.
[Reporter] It will be at least a year before Max's hologram is ready.
But he's already left a remarkable imprint of his legacy behind.
And just what I needed, wonderful way to finish.
Thank you guys.
[Reporter] Ioanna Roumelioitis, CBC News, Los Angeles.