The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany announced the launch of its unprecedented, mixed-reality “Inside Kristallnacht” project ahead of the 86th anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass.
On Monday, the Claims Conference piloted the program at a Munich high school and unveiled it to its first US school, the Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn, NY.
The project was supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future and developed with the USC Shoah Foundation, Meta, Makemepulse, and UNESCO.
The immersive “Inside Kristallnacht” experience is based on the story of Holocaust survivor Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, who vividly recounts her memories from the night of November 9, 1938, when she was six years old.
In the experience, Knobloch functions in two roles: the narrator of her own story and the subject of an interactive interview in which users can relive her story while also asking questions that she’ll respond to in real-time.
In the program, Knobloch’s memories start before Kristallnacht and continue through the rounding up and transport of Jews to concentration camps.
Using VR in the classroom
The “mixed-reality” experience features a computer component as well as a virtual reality headset component.
Claims Conference president Gideon Taylor said students have been interested in having VR programs that are not just pure entertainment, which he described as a signpost for the future.
“It’s an inflection point. It’s coming at a time where you’ve got fewer survivors, and you have less and less knowledge about the Holocaust,” Taylor said.
“This is the moment for this technology, this way of thinking. I think we have to find new ways to reach younger generations and the way they think, not the way we may have thought, or young people thought 10, 15, or 20 years ago, even five years ago.”
A time of rising antisemitism and rising hate is the summons to have innovative ways of communicating and educating, Taylor said.
Taylor was struck by the combination of traditional Holocaust education—where survivors engaged directly with students—and immersive technology.
“And this is a moment in time where there’s this small period where there’s this overlap,” Taylor said, “and here it is, in this room.”
Taylor motioned toward the students scattered around the room, who were both talking with the survivors and engaging with the mixed-reality experience.
“They’re interested in talking to survivors; they’re interested in the program. Nobody is raising issues of Israel and the Middle East,” Taylor said, which he thinks speaks to the importance of Holocaust education. “Against the backdrop of everything that’s going on in New York and the world, that’s really important.”
Teaching younger generations
Taylor also wasn’t afraid of students turning the discussion toward Israel or politics.
“Younger people tend to want to learn about the Holocaust; they want to connect with the survivor, to connect through the (mixed-reality) program,” Taylor said.
“There’s a lot of ways to communicate with people about Judaism and the history of Jewish people and the history of antisemitism that people care about. People are interested. People want to learn.”
Lisa Berke has taught multiple sections of Human Rights Literature as an English teacher at Edward Murrow for over a decade. So many students want to enroll in the course that an application is required, and not every student is accepted. Her classes just completed Night by Eli Wiesel, their first book of the school year.
Berke’s course follows the curriculum guidelines from the Museum of Jewish Heritage, which presented Berke with the Holocaust Educator Award in 2022.
Due to COVID-19, it’s been several years since Berke’s students have been able to meet face-to-face with a Holocaust survivor.
Berke told The Jerusalem Post that while her students are emotionally impacted by traditional media interviews, she saw a different focus and look on their faces during Monday's Claims Conference program.
Berke also said teaching the course has felt more important to her every year.
“And every year, there’s another reason for which I feel like I’m going to keep teaching this. As hard as it is, I’m going to do it every day,” she said. “Students need to learn about history and understand what is happening in the world right now. And they don’t know. They come in really unaware.”
Her course acknowledges current events and what’s going on in the world but focuses on the historical aspect. And so far, she said, Israel has not been a major part of the discussion.
“The discussion really focuses on, let’s understand what happened then, and how it can help us make decisions. They learn what antisemitism is as part of the curriculum, part of understanding what happened to the victims in the stories we read,” Berke said. “We make that really clear. All I’ve had is questions about what happened in the past and what we can do to be better citizens.”
The Post spoke with one of Berke’s students, who was equally appreciative of both the conversations with the survivors and the mixed-reality experiences.
The sophomore said it was cool to take a 360-degree tour around Knobloch’s childhood apartment and see what she experienced.
The mixed-reality experience also helped her better conceptualize concentration camps.
“Whenever I see people talk about concentration camps, I always wonder what they look like, because that helps me understand what happened,” she told the Post. “I knew it was horrible... but the [VR] environment also adds to the brutality of it.”
With VR, she felt like she was able to see and touch what happened on Kristallnacht.
“Seeing (Knobloch’s) house and everything after the destruction was just honestly pretty sad and really touching to see through her own eyes,” she said. “Seeing what happened, how it happened, what she experienced, and basically just the aftermath of it, as if it happened (to us, was pretty sad).”