As an effect of the global COVID-19 pandemic, several Holocaust museums and memorials had to close their facilities for visitors in Spring 2020. With the goal of proposing relevant solutions to this challenge, Dr. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann and research assistant Tom Divon of the Hebrew University’s European Forum and Communication and Journalism Department, examine the many ways individual museums and memorial sites have adapted their programs over the past year.

The research is compiling data and feedback from 32 Holocaust museums and monuments in nine different countries with the goal of better understanding which digital platforms have been used most effectively and were best received.

First results have so far indicated that educators and museum curators have strived to adapt content to be better absorbed via digital means and in so doing provided the motivation for relevant audiences to log on.  Certain museums have opened Instagram and even TikTok accounts, produced online “digital challenges” while others have invested in virtual tours of their facilities. Most of these efforts represent a desire by Holocaust educators to make the history more relevant and accessible to the younger generations who are known to be less emotionally attached to the subject matter. 

This project received funding through a Visiting Fellowship, sponsored by the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the European Forum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and through a group research grant for exploring Digital Holocaust Memory by the DAAD Center for German Studies at the Hebrew University.

Related publications:

Ebbrecht-Hartmann T. and Divon T. (2021) Hashtagging the Holocaust: How COVID Gave Death Camps New Life Online. Haaretz, January 27, 2021.