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The 'unwinnable' video game that lights a path for Shoah education

The Light in the Darkness has been designed to tell the Holocaust story in an empathetic way that will engage young viewers

June 1, 2023 11:29
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6 min read

I’m “following” a Polish Jewish family along the streets of Paris just before the Nazi occupation.

Walking in their footsteps, I join in playground games with little Samuel before things take a darker turn and we’re packing up the family’s shop. Eventually they are arrested in the 1942 Vel d’Hiv round-up, and deported to a Nazi camp.

This is The Light in the Darkness, a video game about the Holocaust — and there is no sugar-coated ending.

The words “Holocaust” and “game” do not sit well together, and video games that use the genocide either as a backdrop or for the key storyline have been given short shrift by serious reviewers and Shoah educators alike. Until now.

According to Rob Leane, gaming editor at RadioTimes.com, The Light in the Darkness “forces you to consider the terrifying emotional truth of this dark chapter in history... it’s hard to think of another game that has really dug into the horrors and the trauma of the war like this”.

For Luc Bernard, 36, the developer behind the game, it is players’ lack of control over their own destiny that makes his game an appropriate medium through which to tackle the Holocaust.

The point, he says, is not about fun and competition and more about telling stories in the empathetic way that we are used to seeing in film.

Bernard, who is Jewish, has a personal interest in genuine Holocaust education. His grandmother looked after children who came off the Kindertransport in the UK, and he spent hours examining the archives of the Shoah Foundation and the US Holocaust Museum’s website when creating the game.

Having grown up in rural France with little access to Holocaust education beyond Schindler’s List, Bernard is keen to raise awareness and help combat rising antisemitism, and self-funded the hour-long interactive film.