WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is launching its first crowd-funding campaign in an effort to preserve and digitize more than 200 diaries from Holocaust victims and survivors.

The museum is seeking $250,000 for the project and will begin soliciting donations through Kickstarter on Monday. That’s the birthday of Anne Frank, the most famous Holocaust diarist.

Museum officials say the diaries are important because they offer evidence that the Holocaust happened at a time when Holocaust denial is on the rise.

One diary was kept by Joseph Stripounsky, who was 17 when he fled Belgium with his family. It was so meticulous that his younger brother used it 74 years later to find the French village and farmhouse where his family holed up.