Bringing local memorials of genocides
to the global audience.
The Situation
The lack of Holocaust education in today’s youth is staggering… and problematic.
The Solution
Virtual Reality can reach young people in an engaging, non-didactic and fundamentally cool way.
What’s more, VR experiences have been shown to powerfully engender empathy in those who participate in them.
This also gives us the opportunity to offer a counter-argument to those who are actively seeking to radicalize youth via technology.
Our first VR Experience
We are starting a series of VR Memorials with the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in Berlin. Our team has created a model-to-scale of the site. This interactive VR documentary will allow youth from around the world to explore the site.
The Holocaust is the most radical and extensive genocide yet, but not the only one that happened in the past. For this purpose we decided on the name of “genocide.global” to represent the bigger threat of genocides and taking the Holocaust, the genocide of the global Jewish people as a primary example.
The virtual model of the memorial site is part of a bigger experience which will allow us to add more content pieces and connect them with each other through a central navigation space. It includes “living rooms” that hold holographic recordings of survivors who tell us parts of their horrific story as well as “cabinets of memories”, with objects the Holocaust survivors shared with us as being especially relevant for them during those threatening times.
Ready to travel
Our goal is to offer this VR experience both as direct-to-customer (D2C) as well as a pop-up museum that can easily travel around North America.
We will tour the VR exhibition to museums, libraries, schools and community centres across the US and Canada to reach institutional audiences.
We will also work with partners to make the downloadable experience available via online channels so that it can easily be incorporated into formal curricula or informal family discussions over the dinner table.
Our Mission
The original goal of the producers in Israel, Germany and Canada is to re-engage North American youth with the slowly fading Holocaust narrative by using the most cutting edge and “cool” digital media techniques to create an immersive experience that engenders lasting empathy. Our approach is akin to a VR translation of the “memory work” principles developed through the Nelson Mandela Dialogues: these call for cooperative documentary storytelling that re-shapes and re-liberates social memory around human-induced tragedies such as the Holocaust. And virtual spaces are considered ideal for creating new orchestrations of stories, facts and points of view that can be shared between generations.
In addition to the two main producers, Zeros to Heroes Media (CA) and Booster Space Events and Consulting (DE), as well as Hugging Israel / NeVer Again VR (IS), we deliberately work with various different individuals and production entities: not only to get diverse input on the concept, but also to explore the challenges and benefits of working with different teams in order to get a project like this done. It is part of the concept to create a project that can host the work of different partners.
The Team
The Producers
ROEY FRIEDMAN
NeVer Again VR
ISRAEL
Roey Friedman has worked in the Israeli tech sector and mentors a number of startups. Being the grandchild of survivors from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Roey founded the NeVer Again VR project to document the Holocaust via authentic testimonies. They’re brought to life through high-def holograms generated with the use of volumetric capture for immersive media.
MICHAEL LIEBE
Booster Space
GERMANY
Michael Liebe is CEO and founder of Berlin’s Booster Space, the company behind gamesweekberlin, QUO VADIS conference, Gamefest, VR NOW Con & Awards, Womenize! and many other events driving to connect business, technology and culture of games, VR and other media.
MATT TONER
Zeros 2 Heroes
CANADA
Matt Toner is a serial entrepreneur, award-winning innovator, and visiting professor of digital media. Working in New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Silicon Valley, he has launched half a dozen startups, brought three skunkworks to life, designed a dozen video games, and created a nationally broadcast animated series.
The Subject Matter Experts
KEVIN KEARNS
Museums
USA
Kevin Kearns has built his career in the design, production and revitalization of museum exhibits for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the International Spy Museum, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Vancouver’s Science World. His role is to define, deepen and execute the business model and to help secure our market channel partners during this development phase.
ELY LYONBLUM
University of Toronto
CANADA
Ely Lyonblum is a co-producer of various arts and culture festivals. His work has been presented and exhibited by the MIT Media Lab, CBC Radio 1, the Smithsonian Institution, the British Library, and various universities internationally. Ely will conceive and guide the development of our immersive soundscape.
ELY LYONBLUM
University of Toronto
CANADA
Ryan Nadel is a senior program manager for Microsoft’s Hololens group: one of Ryan’s most acclaimed projects is his MetaMaus collaboration with Art Spiegelman, a digital re-imagining of Spiegelman’s classic graphic novel, Maus. Ryan will advise our team on emerging trends in VR/AR and act as an advocate for and liaison with the Canadian-Jewish community.
Partners and Contributors to the Prototype Version of the VR Memorial
The prototype version of the VR Memorial experience and the volumetric interview with Hannah Gofrit are funded by:
