Fritzie Fritzshall is standing in a dark hallway, surrounded by what appear to be white picture frames, hanging empty on a black backdrop.
As the frames start to fill with images, Ms. Fritzshall tells us she had promised to tell her story, and those of so many other people who had helped keep her alive.
Suddenly, we’re standing outside her parents’ house, where she recounts the night she was forced to leave her home at the age of 13. Then we’re in the middle of a cargo car on a train, watching it fill up with people that are getting closer and closer.
Next we’re outside, looking at what was once Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, while Ms. Fritzshall tells us about the last time she saw her mother.
To keep her story alive, Ms. Fritzshall and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center created a virtual reality experience that will bring viewers back with her as she walks the grounds of the concentration camp and recounts her life as a teenager.
The technology was demonstrated during the Eradicate Hate Global Summit, a three-day event held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Downtown, which brought together government agencies, academia, tech companies and other industries to seek out ways to prevent violence and extremism.
Virtual reality is still a developing technology. For many people in the U.S., it’s likely most familiar as Facebook’s Oculus Quest, which dominates the market. Other companies could be eyeing the commercial market, including Apple, Microsoft and Pittsburgh game development company Schell Games. But applications go beyond entertainment into areas such as health care and education, as this week’s demonstration at the summit showed.
Ms. Fritzshall describes her aunt, who used to hold her at night and tell her that everything would be better the next day: “Let’s just live until the morning.” She shares her memories of the talk of cooking and family recipes as the women huddled hungry in their bunks. We hear about hundreds of women at the labor camp who lined up to give Ms. Fritzshall crumbs from their bread — hoping to help the young girl survive.
“Virtual reality would allow us to take the viewer on this journey together,” said Susan Abrams, CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which has created VR experiences featuring two survivors. “Technology makes these experiences scalable, so ultimately, millions can have this opportunity to walk in somebody else’s shoes and see the world from their perspective.”
The museum, which brought the experiences to Pittsburgh this week during the summit, is set to debut the VR exhibit in January.
Ms. Abrams participated in a panel Monday discussing the role of technology in the fight against hate, sitting alongside representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Google to talk about how the museum’s tech projects have had an impact on visitors.
“We know when people are engaged in an activity, not passively watching …people feel it viscerally,” she said. “These experiences allow you, the viewer, to walk in somebody else’s shoes, developing that sense of empathy and understanding.”
In 2017, the museum created a holographic experience where visitors could have a conversation with Ms. Fritzshall and other Holocaust survivors. Using 100 cameras, custom voice recognition software and an optical illusion technique called “Pepper’s Ghost,” a hologram of Ms. Fritzshall is able to tell her story and then answer audience questions.
Worried that there was still more they could do to make sure survivors’ stories lived on, Ms. Abrams and her team at the museum recorded the VR experience “A Promise Kept” in July 2019. It was set to debut in 2020 but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, said Andrew Oleksiuk, the media technology specialist at the museum.
“Technology is a really good way to tell stories,” Mr. Oleksiuk said. “The VR specifically allows you to literally see the story through another person’s eyes and it’s visual and immersive.
“We’re actually asking the viewer to do quite a bit, going back in time and there’s illustrations and animations, as well as live action footage, which, again, makes the story come alive for the viewer.”
Virtual reality experiences may be somewhat unnerving. They place you directly in the action, and the movement can feel so real that it has been known to cause motion sickness.
The experience of touring a concentration camp through a headset that makes it feel as if you’re standing next to the tour guide was even more so — both unnerving and incredibly powerful.
In the cargo car, for example, viewers could feel the claustrophobia as people filled every inch of space. In the labor factory, the presence of the other women coming closer to share a crumb of their bread was vivid.
Mr. Oleksiuk acknowledged that the experience is emotional, describing it as education rather than entertainment.
“It is pretty grisly at times, to reflect the actual reality of what happened,” he said.
As one of those experiencing the VR production, the experience was unsettling. My gaze kept drifting to a small gap between my cheek and the headset. I could see a sliver of the carpeted conference room where the museum had set up the exhibit at the summit. That sliver of carpet was a reminder of where my feet still stood.
Lauren Rosenblatt: lrosenblatt@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1565.
First Published: October 21, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: October 21, 2021, 12:51 p.m.
