New Tech Being Used To Teach Younger Generations About Holocaust

As the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, historians are turning to technology to teach young people about the dark chapter of history, and survivors are preserving their memories with the help of virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

It's a painful path to look back on even 78 years after Auschwitz Nazi death camp was liberated. But a virtual reality headset tour is giving 96-year-old Menachem Haberman a chance to remember how he survived. His mother and six siblings were murdered in the gas chambers. Haberman became emotional after viewing the film "Triumph of the Spirit: 360 degrees.” He says, “It made me feel very bad – all these memories came back to my head.”

Surrounded by his family in Jerusalem, Haberman took the virtual journey alongside dozens of others. The project is aimed to educate young people about the horrors of the Holocaust. “You need to watch it, and when you watch it, it’s like a nightmare that you don’t want to be in,” says 16-year-old David Bitton.

Six million Jews along with at least five million other people perished a the hands of the Nazi death machine in World War II. 86-year-old Ehudith Bracha Serchook vividly remembers the day she almost died. A lost sandal stopped her from boarding a ship that was later bombed by the Nazis.

An Israeli charity group is using artificial intelligence to bring stories like Ehudith’s to life with software that generates images displaying the emotion and trauma survivors faced. As she looked at one of the AI images portraying her as a young girl, Ehudith said she is in despair, but she is still happy because she is alive.

AI software engineer Sol Leffler says, “Each one of them have a unique story and they have been through terrifying stuff, but they are still alive today.”

So far, more than a dozen people have shared their memories and the Chasdei Naomi Association hopes to use AI to capture many more for future generations.

A 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge back in 2020 revealed that one in ten U.S. adults under 40 could not recall hearing the word 'Holocaust' before and 63 percent didn't know the scope of the atrocities.