Abstract
Compelled by his obligation to tell his story – a re-telling that involves speaking on behalf of those who were persecuted as well as those who perished – Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter made himself available to technologies that recast his narrative in newly immersive formats. In particular, Gutter embraced the narrative possibilities manifest in Virtual Reality and Interactive Recording of his survivor story. In each iteration of his experience of the Shoah, Gutter functions as a guide who invites visitors to accompany him on his pilgrimage to sites of the Holocaust as well as his painful re-living of his personal story. This paper interrogates how these technologies have enlarged the ways visitors engage the Shoah; the importance of the human and ethical alliance created between the visitors and Gutter; and, lastly, the significance of these efforts to Pinchas Gutter himself. In order to conduct this research, the author conducted interviews with and consulted first-hand accounts from the creators of the Virtual Reality and Interactive Recording and the museum staff who have introduced visitors to these technologies. In addition, the author queried the assessment of these narrative efforts by Gutter himself as well as the analyses of these narrative iterations offered by scholars in news stories, publicity announcements, conference proceedings, and journal articles.
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Notes
- 1.
In addition to using technology to create a type of immortality for specific survivors and their stories, Holocaust institutes, museums, and archives have been preparing for two other distinct constituencies, the elderly with limited mobility who want to visit memorial and commemorative sites and the youth who are engaged by new technologies. Moreover, as we have learned during this pandemic, as a result of a world-health crisis or other emergency, virtual interfaces may replace physical travel and on-site engagement for years to come. Thus, technological innovations have expanded and will continue to multiply how we encounter the history of the Shoah, including emphasizing that the history remains a vital “living” history.
- 2.
There is a common practice of referring to Holocaust survivors by their first names. In part, this practice is due to the fact that, initially, when survivor testimony was recorded, survivors were referred to by their first names and first initial of their surnames – e.g., Pinchas G. This practice was meant to ensure the anonymity of survivors as it wasn’t clear that individuals would want their full names/identities tied to their narratives of the Shoah for posterity. However, this practice impeded research efforts and, thus, it is fortunate that it was abandoned. In addition, referring to survivors by their first names also may be encouraged by the fact that researchers often enter into a testimonial alliance with survivors which, in turn, establishes a deeply felt intimacy. Thus, in this paper, I will refer to Pinchas Gutter alternately by his first name and his surname.
- 3.
He and his wife, Dorothy, have three children: Jan, Rumi, Tanya.
- 4.
Pinchas is particularly fond of audiences aged eight to ten, in large part because he appreciates their candour. One of his favourite questions came from a boy in this age group who asked: Did you ever meet Hitler?
- 5.
His family members are Mendel (his father), Helena (his mother), and Sabina (his sole sibling and twin).
- 6.
Some people move around, personally exploring the different spaces; others, stand still, listening to Pinchas’ story.
- 7.
Arora compares his efforts to Lanzmann’s efforts in Shoah; Lanzmann would push his interviewees by asking them more questions, often intrusive questions. For example, one survivor was offering an account of being forced to exhume a mass grave where his family members were buried. Lanzmann’s barrage of questions – Who did you see?; How did you know it was them?; What time of year was it?; How many bodies were buried there? – prompted the survivor to re-see the exhumation and to re-live confronting the personal and acute devastation of confronting the dead bodies of his mother, his sister, his aunt, and the children of his aunt.
- 8.
This is the photograph you encounter after you walk through the cattle car at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.
- 9.
Every time he speaks of this moment, he is adamant about his inability to recall any memory of her. “I don’t see her”; “I only see her golden braid”; he comments, again and again. Unfortunately, there are no extant family photographs of Sabina that might refresh his memory. And while he has tried, for almost eighty years, to recall a memory of her person, he has been unable to do so.
- 10.
While he is 89 years old as of this writing, he was 85 when the VR project and the 2-D recording were produced.
- 11.
Soon after his arrival at Majdanek, he learned that his father had been gassed and his body sent to the crematorium. “Sometimes I remember that I cried; sometimes I remembered that I did not” (Azrieli Foundation). “I feel a kind of guilt,” he explains because he remains unsure. He wonders: “Did I did I not” [grieve for my father, mother, sister, for my family]? [1]. Memories that are agonizing accompany even fond memories of his family; moreover, memories that are agonizing, it becomes clear, often overwhelm all other memories.
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Gamber, C. (2022). Encountering Pinchas Gutter in Virtual Reality and as a “Hologram”: Immersive Technologies and One Survivor’s Story of the Holocaust. In: Arai, K. (eds) Intelligent Computing. SAI 2022. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 506. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10461-9_25
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