When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Europe in March 2020, and from there spread throughout the world, among several cultural institutions that closed their doors to visitors were also Holocaust memorials. In contrast to prestigious project that defined digital Holocaust memory before, such as the use of virtual reality and 3-D technology, most institutions relocated on social media platforms establishing #DigitalMemorials or introducing new mediated forms of #RememberingFromHome. Audiovisual media play a central role in the digital commemoration in times of COVID-19 as well as image and moving-image based social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube that turned into engaging commemorative spaces. The project analyses the current shift of Holocaust memory towards social media memory in context of the digital transformation of Holocaust memory in recent years.

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

Related publications:

Ebbrecht-Hartmann T. (2020) Commemorating from a distance: the digital transformation of Holocaust memory in times of COVID-19. Media, Culture & Society. December 2020. DOI: 10.1177/0163443720983276

Ebbrecht-Hartmann T (2020) Entfernte Erinnerung. Wie Gedenkstätten auf die COVID-19 Pandemie reagieren. E-Newsletter International School for Holocaust Studies Yad Vashem, November 15, 2020

Ebbrecht-Hartmann T. (2020) Die Erinnerung an den Holocaust in Zeiten von COVID-19. Eine Bestandsaufnahme, in: Zeitgeschichte-online, September 2020. 

Ebbrecht-Hartmann T. (2020) Transformation of Holocaust Memory in Times of COVID-19. IWM Corona Blog,  May 6, 2020. 

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.

The outbreak of the corona pandemic has serious effects on Holocaust commemoration. Many commemorative institutions (national institutions, memorial museums, memorials) responded to the restrictions with an intensification of digital commemoration activities on a variety of social media platforms, and with constricted on-site commemoration events. Our study focuses on new hybrid forms of commemoration ceremonies in memorials, memorial museums, and state institutions, which were and still are developed in 2020/21.
The pandemic affected commemoration ceremonies that are annually hold from January 27 (liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, International Holocaust Remembrance Day) to April/May, including Yom HaShoah (27 Nissan). Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in spring 2020, many commemorative institutions and memorial sites had to cancel originally planned commemoration ceremonies due to the COVID-19 restrictions, and instead intensified digital activities that changed existing commemorative practices.

We just published our online survey, which collects information on the challenges posed on Holocaust commemoration by the COVID-19 pandemic. With the help of commemorative institutions worldwide, we are trying to understand how the pandemic is changing Holocaust remembrance days and how they are celebrated during COVID-19. If you want to participate in the survey, please contact the project coordinator: Tom Divon (HUJI). 

Our research project is based on the presumption that the new virtual commemoration practices are by no means just a "substitute solution" and differ from previous media communication of traditional commemoration (as it has already been the case in the past, for example with TV broadcasts of liberation ceremonies in Auschwitz Birkenau or at the Mauthausen Memorial).Instead, the virtual formats and the related new media platforms require a fundamental redesign of memorial acts. Thus, our analysis focuses on new hybrid forms of commemoration at memorials, memorial museums, and state institutions.

A project of the Austrian Academy of Sciences/ IKT Institute for Culture Studies and History of Theater and the Hebrew University Jerusalem/European Forum

More information: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ikt/forschung/orte-des-gedaechtnisses-erinnerungsraeume/holocaust-remembrance-in-times-of-covid-19