Project facts

Duration: 2019-01-01 - 2022-12-31
Project coordinator: LUDWIG BOLTZMANN GESELLSCHAFT OSTERREICHISCHE VEREINIGUNG ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTLICHEN FORSCHUNG
Project consortium: Osterreichisches Filmmuseum Verein (AT), Technische Universitaet Wien (AT), Justus-Liebig-Universitaet Giessen (DE), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IL), Universitaet Bremen (DE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS (FR), RTD Services OG (AT), Stiftung Bayrische Gedenkstatten (DE), Stiftung Niedersachsische Gedenkstatten (DE), Bundesanstalt KZ-Gedenkstatte Mauthausen/Mauthausen Memorial (AT), DFF-Deutsches Filminstitut and Filmmuseum (DE), Max.Recall Information System GMHB (AT)
Funding bodies: H2020-EU.3.6. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies MAIN PROGRAMME H2020-EU.3.6.2.2. - Explore new forms of innovation, with special emphasis on social innovation and creativity and understanding how all forms of innovation are developed, succeed or fail H2020-EU.3.6.3.1. - Study European heritage, memory, identity, integration and cultural interaction and translation, including its representations in cultural and scientific collections, archives and museums, to better inform and understand the present by richer interpretations of the past
Subject areas: Archives, Heritage Management, Heritage values - Identity, ICT tools
Contact: communication@bergen-belsen.de
Budget: € 5 310 791,25
Website: https://www.vhh-project.eu/

Presentation

How do you digitally curate filmic records that bear witness to the darkest chapter in recent European history? The Holocaust has been a central reference point for European history and a 'negative founding muth' of European integration. Now that digital technologies and the internet have profoundly transformed our concepts of history and visual evidence the question of its representation becomes more pertinent. A consortium of 13 Austrian, German, Israeli and French research institutions, museums, memorial sites and technology developpers together with the American partners will develop models and applications to respond to this challenge.

"Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age" is coordinated by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (Vienna), in close collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna). It will explore the potentials as well as the limitations of digital technologies in the ongoing effort to preserve, analyse and communicate historical evidence of the Holocaust, and in particular audiovisual records.

Impacts & Results

The project focuses on filmic records produced by Allied forces and relating to the discovery of Nazi concentration camps and other atrocity sites. Although these films only capture a certain aspect of the Holocaust, some of their images have become canonical. Due to the scarcity of visual records a few images, often presented out of context, have shaped our collective imaginary of the Holocaust. In the course of the project these historical films, which currently are dispersed across archival institutions in the US, Great Britain, Russia and other former Soviet Republics, will be aggregated, digitized, analyzed and annotated. The resulting digital repository will allow researchers to dynamically link film images with photographs, text-based documents and oral histories, as well as with images from subsequent filmic representations of the Holocaust.

"Visual History of the Holocaust" will make groundbreaking use of existing and emerging technologies, including advanced digitization, automated analysis of images and text, time-based annotation and location-based services. It is an aim of the project to establish new contexts of meaning to be explored in history, film and media studies, cultural studies and computer science. Based on this technology-enabled research, new communication strategies will be developed for memorials, musems, and educational institutions. The project is supported by a number of memorial institutions, three of them being part of the consortium: Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, Mauthausen Memorial, and Bergen-Belsen Memorial.