LDML Logo
LDML Logo

Indexing the World’s Digital Holocaust Projects: the Historian’s View

by Alex Sessa In 2025, the Landecker Digital Memory Lab will launch the world’s first ‘living database-archive': a perpetual, searchable resource of the world’s digital Holocaust education and commemoration initiatives. As we embark on this monumental project, read about the linguistic and ethical challenges this task brings from the view of our historian-indexer. We live in an age in which the Holocaust is quickly receding from living memory. At a time when the youngest survivors are in their eighties and nineties, lived experience of this past is quickly disappearing. Heritage organisations are, therefore, exploring digital technologies as a means of making Holocaust memory accessible. Here at the Landecker Digital Memory Lab, we have created digital walkthroughs of emerging digital projects at Holocaust sites across Europe, the US and Australia (to date). The purpose of these projects is to enhance understanding of developing trends in Holocaust memory culture to learn and to commemorate. The purpose of our living database-archive is to help professionals working in Holocaust memory and education organisations, and their creative partners learn from existing practice, and to help academics easily access the global range of projects. Our digital recordings offer a guide, or a blueprint for digital projects [...]

By |2024-11-15T08:25:27+00:0014 November 2024|
Read More

AI, Holocaust Distortion and Education

By Prof Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden At a conference in Bucharest last week, our Lab Director Prof Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden presented our position on the extent to which we should be engaging with AI for the sake of Holocaust education. I was invited by the US State Department to contribute to a panel called ‘Holocaust Denial and Distortion – New Challenges’, which focused on AI. I wanted to use the opportunity to emphasise the need for more research-informed engagement in how the Holocaust museum and education sector, and policymakers, deal with AI (and indeed digital media more generally). I was joined on the panel by Historian Jason Steinhauer, Professor of International Law Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias, and Jordana Cutler from Meta, and it was chaired by Ellen Germain, US Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues (all pictured in our banner image). Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden speaking on the panel. Key takeaways are: What are we using AI for? We need to ask ourselves why we want to engage with AI? The question should not simply be ‘what is AI good for in the context of Holocaust memory and education?’ but rather ‘What do we want to achieve in Holocaust memory and education, and [...]

By |2024-11-11T14:38:17+00:007 November 2024|
Read More

Spotlight on Žanis Lipke Memorial

by Dr Kate Marrison In this long-form series, we offer a deep dive introduction to digital projects at a Holocaust organisation. Each month, our ‘spotlight’ institutions will feature in our upcoming living database-archive. The journey to the Žanis Lipke Memorial took us on-foot over the Vanšu Bridge, which crosses the Daugava River, in Riga. A quick online search reveals that the word vanšu refers to the cables suspending its deck, comparing them to nautical rigging (also known as shrouds in English). Upon reaching the other side, we arrived in Ķīpsala Island, which was originally a fishing village, and followed Google Maps down the 150-year-old cobbled streets to discover the entrance to the memorial tucked behind houses at the end of a quiet lane. Aptly described by some as “Riga’s best-hidden museum”, this memorial is dedicated to the memory of Latvian Žanis (or Jānis) Lipke, who saved Jews from the Riga ghetto by hiding them in an underground bunker during the Nazi occupation of Latvia. The 3x3 metres bunker, built in 1942, housed between 8-12 people at a time. In total, between 1941 and 1945, the Lipke Family and their helpers successfully saved the lives of more than 50 Jews. The memorial itself, [...]

By |2024-11-11T14:29:34+00:0030 October 2024|
Read More

Three Phases of Digital Holocaust Memory Development

By Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Through artificial intelligence, machine learning, crowdsourcing, digitisation, VR, AR and computer games, we take you on a tour of some of the world’s most prolific digital Holocaust memory initiatives by way of the theory of the ‘three stages’ of development. To argue that there are three phases of digital Holocaust memory development is not to suggest a clear and simple historical chronology from the 1990s – when digital technologies were first introduced into this arena – to now. Rather, this proposition offers a framework for mapping the different types of approaches organisations take when adopting digital media for the sake of Holocaust memory. These three phases are: the experimental, the normative, and the connective, and they define the different relationships organisations have with digital technology and cultures through their work. Let’s take a closer look at each of them. Experimental Phase This phase acknowledges periods of enthusiasm for a new medium, often led by a ‘what if?’ curiosity among a handful of digital advocates or a desire to shake up the status quo. During this phase, creators are explorative and playful with a medium’s possibilities, they’re not afraid to take risks and can be inquisitive [...]

By |2024-11-11T14:29:45+00:0023 October 2024|
Read More

Spotlight on Melbourne Holocaust Museum

by Victoria Grace Walden In perhaps the most unusual way to return from maternity leave, my first day back involved a 24-hour journey from the UK to Melbourne, Australia (and yes, with the baby!). When I originally got in contact with Anna Hirsh – now Manager of Collections and Research at the museum and the fabulous host of my scholar-in-residence – she was working at what was then called Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre and in 2020 the site closed its doors for a major refurbishment and rebranding. A Long History of Multimedia At that time, staff created a virtual walkthrough of the main exhibition to archive its existence. Now it was closed (as it would have been – pandemic or not), school groups and other visitors could explore its content. This was not just a photo-realist experience of the exhibition space though; it was enhanced by extra video content such as behind-the-scenes moments with curators (Curators’ Corner series) and importantly mini-tours from survivors explaining some of the exhibited materials - much of this additional content came from existing digital projects. Jewish Holocaust Centre Melbourne Virtual Tour The centre was established by a survivor community, opening in March 1984. [...]

By |2024-11-08T16:52:58+00:0026 September 2024|
Read More

Building a Digital Holocaust Memory Lab, Part 2:  Defining Our Values

by Prof Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden In Part 2 of our ‘Building a Lab’ series, our director Victoria explains how we’re establishing ourselves as a research team, moving beyond our objectives and outcomes to focus on the values that inform who we are, how we work, and how we’ll go about achieving them.   It is not very often, in academia, that you get the opportunity to ‘start from scratch’. The launch of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab this year, however, has allowed us to break the mould. Building a new team from the ground up means we’ve had the chance to start by thinking about who we are as a team and what values we want to underpin our work over the next five years –in terms of how we work together and with others, and our outputs. The mission statement of the Lab was set in our project proposal: to ensure the Holocaust sector is better equipped for the digital age. Our work now was to inform this ambitious goal with core values and a clear vision. Over the first few weeks, I led an intensive induction programme for the Lab’s new team to bring us all together and [...]

By |2024-11-08T15:08:27+00:0023 September 2024|
Read More

Beyond the Single Story, Part 2

by Austin Xie, International Junior Research Associate, The University of Chicago, in conversation with Prof Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Austin Xie has spent two months at the Landecker Digital Memory Lab on the University of Sussex’s International Junior Research Associates (IJRA) programme. He tells us about what he’s learned and elaborates on the design of his own Holocaust-themed game, along with the ethical challenges he encountered. Dr Victoria Richardson-Walden: you’ve been working on a practice-based research project considering the challenges and opportunities the medium of computer games might offer to Holocaust memory and education.  What did you learn from studying existing games? Austin Xie: The majority of Holocaust games fall into two categories: Nazi-killing games, and what I’d consider more Holocaust memory games than Holocaust games. They take place after the Holocaust, and usually involve a character trying to uncover the story of a relative by investigating artefacts or talking to people. Their gameplay is that of remembering the Holocaust, rather than the Holocaust itself. Games other than the Nazi-killing ones circumvent the problem of a Holocaust victim/survivor game through a variety of strategies, like setting the game after the Holocaust, creating a fictional world that is an allegory for the [...]

By |2024-11-08T16:55:03+00:0018 September 2024|
Read More

AI and the Future of Holocaust Memory

by Prof Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, in conversation with Dr Mykola Makhortykh and Maryna Sydorova In November, Mykola Makhortykh and Maryna Sydorova from the University of Bern will join the Landecker Digital Memory Lab as visiting researchers. In this interview, our Director, Dr Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden discusses a core focus of their research with them: AI and Holocaust memory. Dr Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden: We're really looking forward to hosting you here in the autumn semester. Mykola, we have of course worked closely together on a number of ventures over the past few years. Your and Maryna's research explores the significance of algorithm organisation of memory culture online. What first inspired you to recognise the significance of algorithms more broadly, and AI more specifically, in relation to Holocaust memory? Mykola Makhortykh: Like it often happens in the creative process, my inspiration for studying the significance of algorithms and AI for Holocaust memory originates in frustration. Back in the day, when I was doing my PhD on the platformisation of Second World War memory in Ukraine, I relied primarily on qualitative methods. However, at some point, it became obvious that I had more data than I could realistically process qualitatively. I [...]

By |2024-11-08T15:51:51+00:0011 September 2024|
Read More

Follow us on social media

Contact

Landecker Digital Memory Lab
University of Sussex
Falmer Campus
Brighton and Hove
East Sussex
BN1 9RH
LandeckerDigitalMemoryLab@sussex.ac.uk

Contact

Landecker Digital Memory Lab
University of Sussex
Falmer Campus
Brighton and Hove
East Sussex
BN1 9RH
LandeckerDigitalMemoryLab@sussex.ac.uk

© Copyright 2024 | Landecker Digital Memory Lab – All Rights Reserved. | Privacy policy

Go to Top