Illinois Holocaust Museum to Debut Virtual Reality Films Focused on Holocaust Survivor Stories
The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center recently announced the release of three new virtual reality films that aim to teach visitors about the Nazi atrocities of World War II and the personal stories of how three women survived the Holocaust.
The films, debuting in August, will use 360 video technology and 3D environments to allow audiences to accompany Holocaust survivors Rodi Glass, Marion Deichmann, and Doris Fogel as they share their stories — in the first person and from their point of view — about their lives before, during and after World War II, the museum said in a release.
“As we’re moving away from the Holocaust, we’re also losing more survivors,” said Bernard Cherkasov, CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. “It is the Museum’s mission to ensure their stories remain alive and shared for generations to come. Virtual reality films are such a dynamic tool to do so. You get to walk alongside the canals with them. You get to visit their childhood home with them. It’s quite powerful.”
In the film Walk to Westerbork, guests enter a virtual reality where they can sit with Glass as she celebrates her birthday with her family for the last time and later accompany the Holocaust survivor as she revisits sites she survived in Amsterdam, the Westerbork transit camp and Vittel internment camp. In Letters from Drancy, guests use virtual reality to travel with Deichmann across the borders of Northern Europe during her childhood, crouch next to her and her mother as they hide in a truck from a Nazi guard, and later witness her heartbreaking separation from her mother, the help she received from the French Resistance in Paris and her survival of D-Day in Normandy.
Escape to Shanghai follows Fogel’s journey from Nazi Germany to Shanghai, China, where she made a new life for herself away from Nazi-occupied Europe.
“Childhood memories from the survivors are shared through powerful animated sequences to visualize their deepest memories and highlight the moments seared into their consciousness,” the museum explained in a press release about the three films, adding that they will include archival images, documents and videos.
The movies were filmed in Germany, France, The Netherlands and China. They will debut as part of the Holocaust museum’s Richard and Jill Chaifetz Family Virtual Reality Gallery, and were created by the museum and the award-winning production company East City Films.
“Over the years we discovered how powerfully and how quickly VR can allow someone to understand the experience of another person,” said Ashley Cowan, executive producer of East City Films. “When it comes to [Holocaust] survivors, they have some of the most remarkable stories there are to be told. First and foremost, the audiences will meet three remarkable women. They will learn about their tenacity, their courage, their bravery.”
The three films will be shown on a monthly rotation at the Illinois Holocaust Museum starting next month, with Walk to Westerbork premiering on Aug. 1 followed by Escape to Shanghai in September and Letters from Drancy in October.
Watch a trailer for Walk to Westerbork below.
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