New ways of remembrance

The stage is bathed in a cool, blue light. Fritzie Fritzshall is sitting in a red chair, patiently awaiting questions from the audience. She was deported to Auschwitz when she was 13 years old and survived the ordeal. Today, a group of school students has come to listen to her story. A student asks about religion in the concentration camp. Fritzie Fritzshall looks at the audience and replies.

The non-persistence of memory

Fritzshall died in 2021 at the age of 91 ‒ and yet she can still take questions from students as an interactive hologram on stage at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Chicago. To have her respond to questions from the audience, a software selects a suitable answer from several hundred audio recordings. In 2017, the museum was the first institution to open a Holographic Theater to preserve the stories of Fritzshall and eleven other holocaust survivors for future generations. 

According to data published by the Claims Conference (an organisation which represents Holocaust survivors in material claims), 200,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive today, but their number will decrease by 70 per cent in the next ten years. The website of Erinnern.at, the Austrian programme for teaching and learning about National Socialism and the Holocaust, currently lists 15 persons who are available for school visits. On average, they are 86 years old. 

How do the requirements for history education in school change when the Second World War and the Nazi era become so distant that they begin to fade in the collective memory? How can we preserve this memory once all survivors and witnesses have passed away and can no longer share their stories first-hand with the younger generation? In 2025, 80 years after the end of the Second World War, these questions are more important than ever.

‘Difficult knowledge’

"Teaching about the Holocaust involves engaging with what scholars call ‘difficult knowledge’ – information connected to traumatic historical events that can be emotionally distressing and challenge learners’ existing understandings. Therefore, educators must support not only the transmission of historical information but also learners’ cognitive and emotional engagement with the subject," says Ela Luria from the Centre for Teacher Education at the University of Vienna who conducts research on Holocaust education. 

Traditional methods, such as textbooks, teacher-centred instruction and films often fall short in creating the immersive experiences necessary to evoke the empathy and moral reflection crucial for a deeper understanding of the Holocaust. Especially Holocaust films play an important role in Holocaust education, as they convey historical information and often move audiences deeply. At the same time, these formats typically position learners as passive observers. 

This is where the possibilities of digital learning media come in. "Our research shows that immersive media such as virtual reality (VR) create significantly higher levels of immersion and emotional activation than traditional film," says Ela Luria. "According to embodied cognition theory, the multisensory and immersive qualities of VR can support deeper engagement, because learning is influenced by the way individuals interact with their environment." Once you put on the VR headset, virtual reality immerses you in historical locations and events in 3D from a first-person perspective. "The experience creates a convincing illusion of being present in another environment, allowing learners to engage with the content in an immersive and interactive way," says the educational researcher.

First-hand experience

Together with her colleagues Martin Rothgangel and Zehavit Gross, Ela Luria recently conducted a study examining how virtual reality influences students’ engagement with Holocaust learning materials. The team used a documentary produced by the Spirit of Triumph initiative, filmed at the Auschwitz memorial site during a Covid lockdown, which resulted in unusually empty and quiet scenes. The film includes aerial footage that creates the impression of viewing the site from above, as well as documentary material featuring survivors. The students participating in the study were divided into two groups who were shown the film. The content of the film was identical for both groups; the only difference was the way it was presented. In the VR condition, students watched the same footage through a headset in a three-dimensional format, while the control group viewed the film on a standard 2D screen.

Following the VR experience, the 182 participants completed a questionnaire to measure, based on standardised categories, how strong their experience of immersion was and which emotions they felt. The analysis found that test subjects who took the VR tour of the memorial site experienced significantly higher levels of immersion than the participants in the control group who watched the same film in a two-dimensional format.

In a follow-up qualitative study that has not yet been published, students described a wide range of emotional reactions to the VR experience, including sadness, anger, empathy and even pride. Several participants reported moments of losing awareness of their real surroundings and described a strong sense of being ‘transported’ into the historical environment. According to Ela Luria, these preliminary findings highlight how immersive VR environments can shape emotional and cognitive engagement.

Between immersion and respect

In the school setting, virtual reality cannot stand alone and requires careful pedagogical support, explains Ela Luria. "VR can evoke strong emotional engagement, but it should be used in a way that does not overwhelm or traumatise participants or stylise traumatic events. Teachers play a crucial role in preparing and debriefing the experience with school students, helping them discuss and contextualise what they have seen. They are responsible for maintaining a balance between immersion, respect, authenticity and emotional well-being – a balance that is central to Holocaust education."

The level of responsibility increases with the level of immersion. "For our study we used a semi-immersive experience. This means that users can move themselves, but they cannot move objects. In a fully immersive experience, users can do so, making the experience feel even more realistic. Therefore, the use of this type of immersive experience should be very carefully considered."
 

Learning to remember

Thomas Hellmuth, Professor of Didactics of History at the University of Vienna, addresses yet another problem associated with teaching using emotionalised content. "It gets problematic when students try slip into the role of victims. For example, it is not advisable to ask school students to write letters from the perspective of victims of persecution. We simply cannot put ourselves in their shoes from our present-day perspective, living in our democratic society here in Austria, having never experienced repression as during the Nazi regime." When we forget about that, it is easy to draw wrong parallels to the present. For example, during the Covid lockdowns, some people criticising the measures imposed by governments compared themselves to Nazi victims.

History education has changed in recent decades. "Holocaust education used to be heavily moralised. Education relied on the emotional impact of being told about the devastating effects of National Socialism on democracy, human rights and freedom. The assumption was that this would automatically ‘immunise’ students against racism.

By contrast, the focus today is on enabling responsible citizens to commemorate these events in a lasting way. For history education, this means that knowledge in the classical sense, i.e. memorising dates, facts and figures, is less important than the meta level – How was it possible for National Socialism and the Holocaust to occur? How do the developments before and during the Nazi era relate to racism, anti-Semitism and the abolition of democracy? 

Commemoration is democracy education

"In this context, it is important to relate to the present-day experiences of school students," adds the historian, mentioning subject orientation and action orientation as key principles in education. An action-oriented approach to learning incorporates ‘hands-on’ experiences beyond traditional teacher-centred instruction. For example, by jointly analysing historical propaganda material, visiting a memorial site, tracing the fates of victims using Stolperstein memorials (brass stumbling blocks commemorating victims of Nazi terror) in the students’ home towns or organising an exhibition that serves to prepare other classes for a visit to the memorial site.

"Subject-oriented learning," explains Hellmuth, "focuses on pupils as individuals and invites them to reflect on the question of how the topic concerns them. This is crucial because today too we experience social exclusion, albeit in new forms. School students should be able to recognise and address this if it occurs in their own lives." By dealing with history, students thus learn to identify marginalisation and anti-democratic tendencies. "And ideally, they then say, ‘This is not right – what can I do about it?’ That means having the willingness to defend certain values, thus shaping the world that surrounds them. "Therefore, Holocaust education is part of democracy education and enables students to learn from history for their lives today. 

Holocaust education should thus cover more than the Shoa and should aim at addressing past events in a differentiated way, explains Thomas Hellmuth. In times in which anti-Semitism has become a reality at schools again, it is important to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict, says Hellmuth by way of example. "In this context, it is crucial to discuss the various positions and to identify biased views. Not every criticism of Israel constitutes anti-Semitism, and not every act of violence constitutes legitimate political resistance. Not all students will share the same view. But if they continue the discussion after class, we can already count this as a success because some of them might go away with the awareness that it is a complex, multifaceted issue."

Secondary witnesses: the next generation

Despite innovative learning formats and democracy education, one thing is clear – once the last survivors have passed away, something will be irretrievably lost. "Personal encounters with survivors have long been considered the most effective and irreplaceable element of Holocaust education," emphasises Ela Luria. "It allows learners to meet somebody who has actually experienced these events, to hear their voice, to be confronted with their emotions and to experience a form of face-to-face presence that no other media can reproduce."

Thomas Hellmuth stresses that digital replicas, such as holograms, cannot provide this quality of face-to-face encounters. "You can interact with these holograms, which is good and makes sense, but these are not authentic encounters." The pre-recorded answers of an AI-based avatar do not convey spontaneous human impulses that also carry a message – for example, when a Holocaust survivor is not willing to answer a question. 

The second-generation or third-generation descendants of survivors can close this gap. The subjective element lives on in them, says Hellmuth. "They have been shaped by their family history. Many of them actively explore this history because their parents or grandparents did not talk about the past. This is what they can address in classrooms." Erinnern.at, the Holocaust education programme of the Austrian agency OeAD, is currently carrying out a pilot project aimed at testing and evaluating the educational opportunities of learning from the descendants of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. The project results will be published at the end of 2025.

Similar projects have been carried out in other countries as well, using diverse approaches. The German Zweitzeugen association enables anybody interested to become a secondary witness through the intensive examination of the fates of victims of Nazi terror. The volunteers visit educational institutions to share and spread the stories of survivors. The project "B'Guf Rishon (בגוף ראשון)", which translates to "in the first person", is being carried out in Israel: volunteers slip into the role of family members who survived the Holocaust and tell their stories from a first-person perspective. "This approach is designed to help audiences feel closer to the story and to the individuals behind it, potentially creating a strong emotional connection," says Luria.
 

Learning with heart and mind

Virtual reality cannot replace direct encounters with actual human beings, say Thomas Hellmuth and Ela Luria, who adds, "Since the number of Holocaust survivors still alive is shrinking, immersive media can support Holocaust education."

However, in addition we need committed teachers who combine history with action-oriented and subject-oriented learning, as well as people who bring remembrance to schools. "To ensure that pupils are able to make a lasting connection with the learning content, Holocaust education should address the cognitive as well as the emotional dimensions of learning," summarises Ela Luria. In this way, future generations can truly grasp the past and recognize its enduring significance for today and tomorrow.

Fritzie Fritzshall’s hologram looks at the audience and answers, "I had often asked myself what God was doing. Did he see that his people were suffering? But when I went to Auschwitz, there was no God any more."