Reading Call of Duty: WWII as Digital Holocaust Memory
Kate Marrison considers the decline of player agency in Call of Duty: WWII and how it speak to debates about Holocaust etiquette.
Finding Virtuality in Virtual Holocaust Museums
Lockdown is here again, for many of us. As museums, cultural and heritage centres close their doors again, this week’s blog reflects on what is a virtual museum, and offers various links to different experiences that you might want to ‘visit’ (in lieu of in-person trips) or share with students. What is ‘virtual’ about virtual museums? Virtuality is so frequently used interchangeably with digital, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish whether a museum – or indeed any other online experience – is trying to present itself as a virtual experience or a specifically digital one, or indeed both! Attempts to virtually transport users into photographic, videographic, or photogrammetry representations of physical museum sites can often feel like remediations of in-person experiences of visiting museums as we are offered limited navigational paths through the exhibits. The main difference is that online we move representations towards us by clicking on arrows or highlighted content rather than moving our bodies closer to them, as we do in the physical space. Whilst remediated experiences of physical exhibition spaces have become particularly popular during the pandemic, given we cannot see them in-person, there are many forms of virtual museums, some of which are digitally-born [...]
Digital Holocaust Archives – Online Discussion
On Thursday 1st October, we hosted five speakers working on different Holocaust archive projects in Europe. Here are the recordings of that session.
Holocaust Commemoration: Between Digital and Physical Spaces – An Online Discussion
On Thursday, September 24th 2020, speakers from Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Bergen-Belsen and Neuengamme Memorials contributed to an online discussion about the relationship between digital and physical spaces for Holocaust commemoration.
Playing Memories? Digital Games as Memory Media
In our second guest blog, Tabea Widmann from the University of Konstanz discusses the potential of computer games for Holocaust memory.
TikTok #HolocaustChallenge
A few weeks ago on Twitter, I pondered whether there was a place for Holocaust institutions on TikTok, then posts with the hashtag ‘#HolocaustChallenge’ went viral on the platform and hit international headlines. It has taken me a while to come to write something on this topic. As soon as I took some much needed leave (with no internet signal), of course, a major digital Holocaust memory debate took place. Context: From Holocaust Denial to Holocaust Distortion There is increasing and necessary discussion taking place within the Holocaust education sector about not only online Holocaust denial, but Holocaust distortion. Yehuda Bauer, Honorary Chairman of the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) has recently argued in a series of keynote lectures that Holocaust distortion is one of the greatest threats to the work of those who are trying to educate about this past. We see examples of distortion at political levels – such as the controversial ‘Holocaust Law’ in Poland, which tries to prevent acknowledgement that some Polish individuals and communities were antisemitic and/or were responsible for the murder of Jewish individuals during Nazi Occupation of Polish land. We also see examples of distortion through trivialisation of the Holocaust into commercial products such as face [...]
How can we archive online commemorations?
2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of many Nazi concentration camps and the end of WWII. From March, major commemorations planned to be held onsite and in-person were rapidly moved online. Amidst all of the challenges the Covid-19 Pandemic has presented museums, this shift to digital commemoration offers a unique opportunity for us to archive these events for the first time. This blog post considers what it might mean to archive a (digital) event.
“I’m a Holocaust survivor and…” : reflections on the USHMM ‘Next Chapter’ video series
This week’s blog from guest contributor Lauren Cantillon asks how do the videos broaden our ideas of the ‘Holocaust survivor’ figure, while also offering a vision for creating a connective digital Holocaust memory?
Digital Holocaust Memory – Online Discussion
On Wednesday 15th July 2020, we invited a series of academics who work on digital Holocaust memory in different ways to discuss their research. You can see each of their presentations below: Imogen Dalziel is in the final stages of her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, investigating how the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has adapted to the digital museum. Under normal circumstances, she is also part-time Administrator for the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway; a freelance Educator for the Holocaust Educational Trust; and a volunteer for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Over the last academic year, Imogen has also co-taught undergraduate modules on the history of the Holocaust at The University of Birmingham. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0eamOxfcsQ Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls is a Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Genocide Investigation and Director of the Centre of Archaeology at Staffordshire University. Her research in digital Holocaust memory centres on the role of non-invasive survey techniques in the location, documentation and visualization of Holocaust landscapes. As a field archaeologist, she has completed the first archaeological surveys and 3D visualisations of the former extermination and labour camps in Treblinka (Poland), the sites pertaining to the slave labour programme in Alderney (the Channel [...]
Anne Frank Virtual Tour of Bergen-Belsen
A critical walkthrough of an Anne Frank-themed tour of the Bergen-Belsen memorial site.