Oshpitzin

Spotlight: A Town Called Auschwitz

By Prof. Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden The 27 January 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. These former Nazi concentration and death camps respectively are two of the most visited historical sites in Europe, yet the Jewish history of the town in which Auschwitz lies is far less known. In this month's Spotlight, we take a look at the development of the augmented reality app making visible this past. The Polish town Oświeçim was called ‘Auschwitz’ in German both back in the 15th Century and during the Nazi Occupation. It was also known as ‘Oshpitzin’ in Yiddish. The diverse names given to this town are indicative of its historical multicultural nature. Whilst modest in size, Oświeçim was well-connected by rail, which helped merchants arrive to sell goods in its central market square. These transport links would of course go on to have a more sinister role under Nazi rule, enabling the mass movement of Jews, Roma and Sinti, and other victims from across Europe to Auschwitz I and later also Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II). As major commemorations take place at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to mark the 80th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of prisoners this [...]

Interactivity in Holocaust Memory

When digital media was still being called new media, it was often referred to also as interactive media. The suggestion was, even by those critical of this term, that what distinguished this medium from others was its interactivity even if the interactivity was somewhat illusionary. This of course paved the wave for assertions that pre-digital media was and continues to be passive, whilst digital media introduces radically new ways to turn audiences into active users. Television and film audiences, newspaper and magazine readers, and museum visitors have always been active in one way or another. Digital media may offer new and different forms of activity, but it also continues and introduces methods of ideological control of audiences too. We would best think about interactivity via a number of spectra: From user agency to creator control (although we should never assume users can have fully independent agency in a way that means creators lose all control and vice versa) From cognitive activity to full-body involvement (and vice versa, from simply gestural involvement to bodily engagement which encourages critical thought) From encounter (dialogue) to a more networked, collective form of participation (although again we must be sceptical of the idea of full [...]