FEATURE STORY The multisensory nature of the virtual reality experience is singular in the way it meets the challenges of creating understanding of the lethal nature of hate in the minds and hearts of the next generation. CREDIT: COURTESY.
VR HOLOCAUST EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE KEEPS SURVIVORS "ALIVE", BUILDS EMPATHY BY DEBORAH FINEBLUM | JNS.ORG
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ordan Gelfeld has connections. As a docent at the Illinois Holocaust, his grandfather, Mark Gelfeld, was able to get this grandson in for a sneak peek at the museum’s new virtual-reality exhibit. And the experience was nothing short of powerful. “You can read about the Holocaust in books, but with this, you really feel like you’re there with ‘George,’ said the Glenbrook North High School sophomore, referring to a story about a survivor. “Even though you are sitting there in your chair, it feels like you’re in the camp, surrounded by the other prisoners.” Through the magic of multi-sensory virtual reality and surround sound, the headset strapped around his head brings the entire experience to life: the cattle car emptying its exhausted, terrified cargo onto the Auschwitz ramp; the inside of the barracks with no way out; the barking dogs, shouts of the captors and cries of the victims. Organizers at the Illinois Holocaust Museum chose International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 for the official rollout of their new cutting-edge virtual-reality Holocaust experience, titled “The Journey Back.” With 360-degree life-sized projections, once inside the 3D environment, the participant controls their own view of reality, interspersing contemporary footage with memory sequences, and giving the sensation of being on-site with two Chicago-area survivors sharing their stories. The museum is presenting two films in its new virtual reality theater. A Promise Kept tells the story of Fritzie Fritzshall. As a young teen, she made a vow to the other 599 women imprisoned with her in a slave-labor sub-camp of Auschwitz that, if she survived, she’d never 24 24 L’CHAIM L’CHAIMSAN SANDIEGO DIEGOMAGAZINE MAGAZINE• •FEBRUARY FEBRUARY2022 2022
let their fates be forgotten. Returning to Auschwitz with the film crew more than 70 years later, she said: “Standing here today I hear voices. I see people. I feel hunger. I feel cold. I am in the place of death.” At night, one woman might start a song or a prayer, and the others would chime in quietly. “But mostly we shared recipes — gefilte fish, kugels, roasts,” Fritzshall told the camera. “Our stomachs were growling from hunger, but we had to live in a pretend world.” Slabbed with 10 other women on a bunk, “I remember my aunt Bella putting her arms around me and whispering, ‘Tomorrow will be better; let’s just live through the night and you’ll see, tomorrow will be better.’ “ Sadly, her aunt did not survive. The other film, “Don’t Forget Me,” takes viewers on a journey back to Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Ebensee concentration camps with George Brent, who was also a teen when his family was taken from their Hungarian home as his friend happily took his bicycle and neighbors emptied out their home. Nor can he forget the terrifying trip to Auschwitz, where he soon learned “what the two buildings with large chimneys with smoke and fire and a terrible smell” were about, and the rigors of Mauthausen where many men’s backs were broken carrying huge boulders from the quarries up the “staircase of death,” while others gave up and leaped to their deaths. Although Brent knew his mother and brother had been killed on arrival at Auschwitz, he never knew his father’s fate till a year after liberation when the Red Cross located him in a tuberculosis clinic in Germany.
