A virtual Holocaust museum – The Voices of the Forgotten – has been approved to be built in Fortnite, a popular video game.
The Voices of the Forgotten houses galleries detailing the events of Kristallnacht, and life in Jewish ghettos.
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(Photo: Luc Bernard)
It also has a Hall of Historical Figures, which celebrates those who resided Nazi rule. Marianne Cohn, a German-born French resistance fighter, and Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Europe, are both featured.
The museum also has an exhibition dedicated to Sephardi Jews who died during the Shoah, and celebrates Sultan Mohammed V, who refused to sign off on plans to ghettoise Morroco’s quarter of a million Jews.
The designer of the museum, Luc Bernard, told the JC: “Fortnite is more than a game – it’s a platform”. With 400 million users worldwide, he hopes that the museum will widen access to Holocaust education.
According to him, 80 per cent of Americans have never visited a Holocaust museum, and Bernard sees this as part of a trend. “Kids don’t want to go to museums,” he said. “They get bored”.
Bernard continued: “We need to adapt to digital, because digital can reach everyone”. The designer sees his museum as a “proof of concept” which he hopes will inspire other digital projects. He built The Voices of the Forgotten “to show how quickly a digital museum can be built, and how effective it can be”.
The response to the museum, Bernard said, has been “99.99 per cent positive”.
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The Voices of the Forgotten also seeks to remember Sephardi Jews
This is not his first foray into digital education. Earlier this year, he designed The Light in the Darkness – the first video game about the Holocaust.
The Light in the Darkness follows a French-Jewish family as France falls under Nazi control.
Bernard told the Jewish Chronicle: “I've been shocked at the number of British people who played it who didn’t know the basics of the Holocaust”. He continued: “In the UK, where Holocaust education is mandatory, that’s a problem”.
