Holocaust Educational Trust
Using new technologies to preserve testimonies from Holocaust survivors
For many years, Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) has sent Holocaust survivors into schools to share their experiences first-hand with pupils. But as time passes, the number of survivors is naturally falling.
In a bid to ensure that these stories are not lost, and to fight back against the global revival of antisemitism and Holocaust denial, HET devised Testimony 360 – People & Places of the Holocaust. This is a free digital education programme for schools that delivers eyewitness testimony from survivors through virtual reality headsets.
HET has taken the filmed testimonies of survivors and turned them into a digital interactive programme powered by an AI search engine. Pupils can ask a question, and the AI selects the correct response from the recorded survivor testimony, creating an authentic and immersive conversational experience.
The testimonies are combined with footage filmed in key locations across Europe, including in concentration camps, and an innovative controller app gives teachers full control over the content shown in the 35 VR headsets, enabling them to adapt lessons as they evolve.
The charity is striving to ensure the programme is made available to schools right across the UK, including those in remote areas.
Since September 2024, the trailblazing programme has run two or three times a week in schools using testimony from one survivor; stories from three more survivors are now being captured and entered into the programme.
The project, which cost over £1m, has engaged more than 1,800 students to date at 68 schools. HET says the programme is of strategic significance for the entire charity, as it is shaping the future of Holocaust education in a post-survivor world. Testimony 360 is sponsored by The Eyal & Marilyn Ofer Family Foundation in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust and the USC Shoah Foundation.
HET is now looking to scale up the programme by setting up a hub model where several schools come to a central location for the lessons; training freelance educators to teach on the charity’s behalf; taking the VR content onto an online platform, and installing the technology into museums.
Charity Awards judge Gemma Gooch, head of charities distribution at Rathbones, highlighted the innovation and scalability of the project, as well as the positive use of AI technology.
Judge Katie Ghosh, chief executive at KIDS, said the trust had effectively “given a gift to the sector, which is so often quite far behind with some of these technologies”.
“Not only is the specific content scalable, but the unique combination of VR and testimony itself could be adapted for education in other contexts.” She also commended the way the charity continually refined the highly sensitive content to ensure its accuracy.
Shane Ryan, senior adviser to the National Lottery Community Fund, said the combination of “urgent need, technological innovation, educational excellence, and ethical implementation makes Testimony 360 truly outstanding”.
CC Reg. no. 1092892
