Preserving Conversations with Contemporary Holocaust Witnesses

Abstract

Conversations with Holocaust survivors are an integral part of education at schools and universities as well as part of the German memory culture. The goal of interactive stereoscopic digital Holocaust testimonies is to preserve the efects of meeting and interacting with these contemporary witnesses as faithfully as possible. These virtual humans are non-synthetic. Instead, all their actions, such as answers and movements, are pre-recorded. We conducted a preliminary study to gauge how people perceive this frst Germanspeaking digital interactive Holocaust testimony. The focus of our investigation is the ease-of-use, the accuracy and relevance of the answers given as well as the authenticity and emotiveness of the virtual contemporary witness, as perceived by the participants. We found that digital 3D testimonies can convey emotions and lead to enjoyable experiences, which correlates with the frequency of correctly matched answers.