This policy briefing was presented to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance at events held in November/December 2024. You can download the original briefing here. Summary This briefing offers research-informed recommendations to support policymakers and those working in Holocaust memory and education organisations to navigate the place of AI systems in this field. It offers a brief introduction to what AI is, what the possible implications of these systems are for Holocaust memory and education, and then key recommendations. Key Recommendations Good data is needed to better inform publicly available AI systems. The right representation of expertise is needed in the training and supervision of AI systems. A middle-ground is required in terms of guardrails put in place to protect against the misuse of Holocaust history without making it entirely invisible. Digital technology needs to be prioritised and maintained on the agendas of intergovernmental policymakers in relation to Holocaust memory and education. AI should be used to give users access to the complexities and nuances of the past, rather than oversimplified summaries. Definitions AI has become an ‘empty signifier’ (Lindgren 2024) – a catchall term for a wide range of technologies and systems. When approaching this topic from a policy perspective, [...]

The recommendation reports, published as part of the Digital Holocaust Memory Project, underpin the objectives of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. Their findings feed into all of the work that we now do. Foreword Digital games are becoming increasingly significant within Holocaust memory and education as professional memory institutions continue to explore the affordances of integrating digital technologies. The so-called Holocaust gaming taboo (Kansteiner 2017) which has burdened both the mainstream gaming industry and small indie studios seems to show signs of lifting. Scholars have pointed out that major FPS (first-person shooter) franchises such as Wolfenstein and Call of Duty have only teetered on representation of this past, often taking liberty with Nazi themes while placing the Holocaust within the margins or completely eliding the persecution of European Jewry altogether (Hayton 2015; Chapman and Linderoth 2015; Marrison 2020; van dan heede 2023). At the other end of the spectrum, game designers working with small- budget proposals had been “promptly pressured to abandon the project” (Kansteiner 2017, p.111-112) due to the backlash in public discourse, often prompted by professional Holocaust organisations denouncing the very premise of Holocaust games. However, the rising prominence of indie studios such as Paintbucket Games responsible for [...]

The recommendation reports, published as part of the Digital Holocaust Memory Project, underpin the objectives of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. Their findings feed into all of the work that we now do. Foreword Virtual reality and augmented reality experiences play an increasingly significant role in Holocaust memory and education as professional memory institutions continue to explore the affordances of integrating digital technologies into visitor and user experience. There is a rapidly expanding list of projects experimenting with cinematic virtual reality, photogrammetry, digital mapping, 3D modelling, 360-degree on-location survivor testimony as well as a growing portfolio of augmented and mixed reality mobile and tablet applications. Principally being implemented as spatial technologies, several memorial sites and museums are exploring the possibilities of creating 3D graphic reconstructions of former sites of Nazi persecution in AR/VR such as the digital reconstruction of Falstad Concentration Camp, the Here: Spaces for Memory App at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Site, the Sobibor AR exhibit, the project Auschwitz VR as well as the 360-degrees-walks at Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. Going further, some digital initiatives are using VR/AR/MR technologies to zoom in on historical documents, testimonies and artefacts, notable projects include the ARt AR App at the Dachau Memorial [...]

The recommendation reports, published as part of the Digital Holocaust Memory Project, underpin the objectives of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. Their findings feed into all of the work that we now do. Foreword Holocaust collections are becoming increasingly digitised. Whilst digitisation offers many opportunities, especially in terms of preservation and public access to material evidence of this past, it nevertheless also introduces new challenges for Holocaust heritage. Digital technologies offer the potential for more networked connections between institutions, this is not always easy. There is a lack of consistency in vocabularies used for metadata, national and supranational laws affecting digital dissemination differ across the world, and there is unevenness across the sector in terms of resources (time, technological, and human) that can be dedicated to digitisation projects, and digital literacies and capacities. Despite the public misconception that 'the Nazis left little evidence of their crimes', there are large swathes of historical documents and objects that testify to the violences enacted during the Holocaust. The Arolsen Archives, alone, has more than 50 million reference cards and 30 million documents from concentration and forced labour camps, and files on displaced persons. Beyond contemporary evidence of the Holocaust, there are substantial collections [...]

The recommendation reports, published as part of the Digital Holocaust Memory Project, underpin the objectives of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. Their findings feed into all of the work that we now do. Forward The majority of academic research that offers commentary on digital Holocaust projects tends to focus on what is seen by users at the interface. For example, the simulation of human-to-human dialogue in interactive biography projects or avatars in Second Life. Far less attention has been given to the invisible processes that inform what data is retrieved by the user. Artificial intelligence and machine learning already impact Holocaust education and memory, although their influence is more predominant in public online spaces - such as search engines - than within the work of professional institutions dedicated to teaching about and commemorating this past. How might Holocaust organisations harness the possibilities of these technologies for 'good'? What challenges do they need to navigate to achieve this? What support do they need, and from whom, to manage this substantial task? Holocaust education and memory developed within and alongside the so-called broadcast era of seemingly fixed, closed texts. Once a novel is published or a film released, the production process is [...]

The recommendation reports, published as part of the Digital Holocaust Memory Project, underpin the objectives of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. Their findings feed into all of the work that we now do. Forward The social media landscape is ever-changing as is its relationship to Holocaust memory and education. In the earlier days of Facebook and Twitter's dominance, there was a clear divide of opinions in the Holocaust sector. On one hand, some institutions were early adopters (notably the Auschwitz State Museum) and others experimented with the affordances of these platforms such as the team at Grodzka Gate, Lublin extending the analogue practice of school pupils sending letters to child Holocaust victim Henio Zytomirski onto Facebook and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's 'tweet-up' hybrid architecture tour. On the other hand, expressions of hesitance about these participatory spaces informed the need for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's Education Working Group to establish guidelines for using social media in this context (2014). As practice grew, it also became somewhat formalised with most organisations predominantly focusing on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for public engagement work, and most content presenting traditional curation of historical sources with additional narrative, promoting the organisation's offline (or [...]

The recommendation reports, published as part of the Digital Holocaust Memory Project, underpin the objectives of the Landecker Digital Memory Lab. Their findings feed into all of the work that we now do. Forward Testimony has always raised ethical issues, especially in relation to questions of provenance, integrity, ownership, and authenticity. Nevertheless, it has become one of the most powerful sources for Holocaust education. Meeting a Holocaust survivor in- person has been a particular tenet of educational experiences. Looking forward, we face dual challenges: (1) the decline in numbers of living witnesses to the Holocaust, (2) the increasing prevalence of digital technologies. It has been somewhat taken for granted that the latter offers solutions for dealing with the former. Media technologies have been integral to the dissemination of Holocaust testimony since the 1940s. From the attempts to smuggle out material evidence of witnessing atrocities on photographic film to the scraps of paper and writing implements used to document experiences and wishes for the future, from the Oneg Shabbat archives of the Warsaw Ghetto to the 'Scrolls of Auschwitz'. It is however in the immediate post- war period with Boder's wire recordings that spoken testimony of events after the fact began [...]