Digital Witnessing: Towards Holocaust Memory Practice in a Post-Survivor Age: An Investigation into the First Generation of Digital Holocaust Memory Projects

The anticipated arrival of the digital turn in Holocaust Studies is entangled with the inevitable and imminent passing of the survivor community. Thus, the first generation of digital Holocaust memory projects have emerged hoping to preserve survivor testimony in what Lagerkvist (2017) terms “the digital afterlife”. These include recordings of survivor testimony in virtual reality, mixed reality applications at former sites of Nazi persecution, as well as 3-dimensional interactive installations of survivor biographies. Taking these institutional projects as its central focus, this thesis explores a range of case studies including The Last Goodbye VR experience, The Liberation AR mobile application, as well as Dimensions in Testimony. This research also considers videogames as an important media in the growing corpus of digital Holocaust memory projects more widely, and therefore moves beyond the institutional focus to critically consider Call of Duty: WWII. Emerging at the intersection between Holocaust studies and media theory, this work investigates the shift from what Wieviorka (2006) termed the “Era of the Witness” to what is being referred to as the “Era of the User”, as a greater emphasis is being placed on the participant. Indeed, as living memory continues to fade into history, the locus of authenticity is shifting to realm of experience with priority afforded to affect as a form of embodied knowing. Taking a phenomenological approach, this research investigates the positionality of the user within these projects, which invite us to examine, enact, and perform in various ways. In this context, I argue that new media technologies might expand our capacities to witness and open up new possibilities for moral response. Advancing on recent studies which seek to foreground imagination as an essential conduit for memory practice, then, I put forward an understanding of “digital Holocaust witnessing”. In turn, this thesis grapples with notions of performance, embodiment, simulation, interaction, and agency, which are becoming increasingly important as we continue to tangle technology with established modes of memory practice