Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, director of the Landecker Institute for Digital Memory at the University of Sussex, told UN News: “The landscape of memory formation is incredibly dispersed and diverse at the moment. And the more digital we become, the more diverse it will become.”
As Holocaust survivors age and first-hand testimonies become rarer, educators, researchers, and designers are increasingly turning to new technologies to engage younger generations far beyond museums and classrooms with story-driven games and immersive virtual spaces that preserve memory, foster empathy, and allow users to not only observe history but also interact with it.
The Landecker Institute for Digital Memory at the University of Sussex participated in a panel discussion on “Technology, Memory and the Future of Holocaust Remembrance” at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
The question is no longer whether new technologies should be used, but whether they will be used thoughtfully enough to ensure that memory endures for generations to come, as these modern tools raise new and sometimes uncomfortable questions about interactivity, responsibility, and historical truth.
From taboo to tool: “Video games and the Holocaust are mainstream”
Long considered the last taboo of Holocaust representation, video games are now increasingly part of the conversation, with research-driven approaches starting to bring studios closer to work with historians, educators and archives, opening the door for designers like Luc Bernard, who created The Light in the Darkness, a video game about a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied France.
There is no Hollywood ending. I decided to show the true story of how most Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
“There’s no Hollywood ending. We decided to show the real story of how most Jews were murdered during the Holocaust,” Bernard said. He is currently working on a director’s cut, funded by Billing and META, that will include his original vision and include additional scenes that delve deeper into the story.
“This is no longer a taboo subject,” Bernard said. “Video games and the Holocaust dominate.”
“Light in the Darkness” has reached an audience far beyond traditional educational settings, he said, with the average gamer age being 35 for players in countries such as Saudi Arabia, which are deeply connected to the story.
“People relate to the characters, and it resonates with them more than a movie about the Holocaust,” he says. “That’s really the power of video games and other art. It’s how you direct it.”
Game designer Luc Bernard participated in a panel discussion titled “Technology, Memory, and the Future of Holocaust Remembrance” held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Building resilient digital memory
Ms Richardson-Walden, whose work brings together educators, researchers, policy makers, technology companies and memory institutions around the world, said the current situation requires a fundamental rethinking of how Holocaust memory is created and maintained in the digital age, from interactivity to what it means for users to engage with the past in these spaces.
Indeed, she added that cooperation is essential, including to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust can be restored, even in increasingly digital formats.
“If we don’t all come together, we are wasting resources and spreading our human resources, money, technology and time very thinly,” she warned, adding that one of the biggest risks lies not in the technology itself, but in how digital projects are financed.
Additionally, she said short-term efforts, from apps to virtual exhibitions, are often expensive and quickly become obsolete as software changes cause the project to “break and disappear” along with the digitized materials, metadata and knowledge behind it. “It’s all gone now.”
Rethinking interactivity and risk: “You can’t change the story”
Instead, Richardson-Walden called for investment in shared digital infrastructure. Aligned databases, common standards, and persistent digital expertise within an organization enable memory organizations to quickly adapt to the emergence of new technologies, whether in gaming, virtual reality, or artificial intelligence (AI).
Interactivity is often misunderstood, she said, especially in discussions about video games, where there are concerns that users can change what happened in the Holocaust.
“But anyone in the games industry understands that that’s an agency fantasy,” she says. “You can’t change the story.”
Light in the Darkness: Director’s Cut.
AI risks: Keeping up with the world of technology
At the same time, Ms Richardson-Walden warned of the real risks in the current digital environment, particularly with the rapid uptake of generative AI. Holocaust-related content is widely distributed online, making it vulnerable to monetization without historical understanding or ethical oversight.
“People know that Holocaust works well online,” she explains. “The Holocaust is a popular topic. People know about it. People want to talk about it. That’s great, but it’s also a problem in this field, because it means you can monetize it.”
Listen to an interview with Professor Victoria Grace Richardson-Wold.
