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 that communicate memory of the Holocaust. These ‘walkthroughs’ are complemented by more than one hundred hours of oral history interviews, which are not narratives about Holocaust experiences but rather detail the production processes, and the ethical and practical complexities of bringing digital Holocaust memory projects to the public.
These interviews capture the voices of all the ‘memory-makers’ involved in the creation and dissemination process, from archivists and curators through programmers, designers, project managers and educators.
The collection covers an array of digital projects, from mobile apps, VR and AR experiences, through computer games to digital archives. In the Lab, one of our challenges is how to make these projects readily accessible.
So too, we are tasked with the challenge of ensuring we comply with ethical standards for protecting the contents of these recordings from misuse.
Two hats
As a Senior Research Associate, I am responsible for identifying appropriate finding aids for making our extensive collection of recordings searchable. Here, I wear two hats: one as a historian, and one as an indexer.
From the perspective of a Holocaust historian, I am looking for topics of discussion that relate to both this past and digital technologies. In this respect, my goal is to understand the subject matter being discussed in each recording and document the context of the discussion. So too, I am responsible for understanding the technological modalities employed to communicate Holocaust memory, including augmented reality (AR), apps and social media platforms.
Our Director, Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, has sat with dozens of heritage professionals across numerous commemorative sites, including the Anne Frank House, the Auschwitz Jewish Center, the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, USC Shoah Foundation, Žanis Lipke Memorial and Melbourne Holocaust Museum, to name a few.
The collection includes a series of walkthroughs that demonstrate how these emerging technologies can be used to communicate Holocaust memory. As a historian and researcher, I go through each interview and walkthrough to create a summary of the heritage projects employed and the historical topics with which they are associated.
However, as an indexer, my work requires me to condense these topics into a simple vocabulary, thus making the material searchable. Together with the team, I have created a hierarchy of themes, sub themes, and keywords.
Examining our collection, we have identified four primary themes: ‘Contemporary Holocaust Memory Culture’, ‘Digital Technologies’, ‘Holocaust History’, and ‘Production Procedures and Processes’. Using this system, I review each interview and assign sub themes and keywords, describing the contents of the digital collection.
Creating sub themes and keywords involves a detailed understanding of both the technological topics and historical subjects explored in each interview and walkthrough. When creating a hierarchical keyword system, I ask myself:
- what would someone searching through our collection be looking for?
- what would they like to learn?
- what system enhances the ability to find answers to their questions within our collection?
I am tasked with the challenge of choosing concise keywords that refer to a range of subjects. For instance, the sub theme ‘Authenticity’ is applicable to the themes Holocaust History and Production Practices and Processes; the keyword ‘Questions’ appears under the sub themes ‘Holocaust Education’, ‘Training’, and ‘User Participation’.
Using an indexing system, each theme, sub theme, and keyword is timestamped (or pinpointing a specific time within the recording) to correspond with different subjects referenced throughout each interview and walkthrough.
As an indexer, putting myself in the shoes of a person searching our collection is paramount.
Ethical implications
Creating each keyword has not been without challenges. We decided that words needed to be specific enough that they can be easily understood for searches, yet broad enough to be applicable to multiple subjects.
Additionally, words have ethical implications in the world of memory studies. For instance, historians have criticised the term ‘Kristallnacht’ in recent years, noting that it is a word coined by the perpetrators – not by the victims. Therefore, I use ‘November Pogrom’ to refer to the events of 9 November 1938. However, synonyms are important – would our users have the same sensitivity to this language? What would they search? Do we perpetuate the language of perpetrator if we include the term ‘Kristallnacht’, but do we limit our users’ access if we don’t use it?
A further example is ‘Roma and Sinti’ instead of the more controversial word ‘Gypsy’. In addition to creating a vocabulary that makes our material accessible, it is equally important to be sensitive of the subject matter. Users should be made to feel comfortable when searching through our collection.
As an indexer, putting myself in the shoes of a person searching our collection is paramount.
I am cautious about respecting the privacy of third parties (persons’ and organisations’ refenced within the interviews). Although each of our participants has signed an agreement acknowledging his or her desire to be recorded, we have instances in which reference to third parties raises concerns.
This information may not be immediately apparent during the interview, and therefore requires further review. Within in the index system, I note any references to third parties with corresponding timestamps. We are then tasked with determining whether this portion of the recording can be made available to the public (for instance, if it reveals personal information about an individual or confidential information about an organisation).
Upon review, any information deemed too sensitive to be shared is then muted before the recording is made public. By taking these steps, I seek to ensure our digital assets can be made accessible while ensuring we adhere to GDPR concerns.
Finally, I am mindful that each interview is an oral history – a document of the thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of the individuals being recorded. Therefore, adhering to ethical standards of cataloguing oral history recordings is vital.
Whilst we are not dealing with oral histories of a traumatic past – like traditional Holocaust testimony collections – we are nevertheless, dealing with individuals’ stories about their professional experiences. Upholding a high level of ethical standards is key to respecting these people, who have taken the time to share their experiences.
Want to know more?
Spotlight on Žanis Lipke Memorial
Spotlight on Melbourne Holocaust Museum