Switzerland Launching Holocaust Remembrance App

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
BERLIN (JTA) — A new app to teach youth about the Holocaust will be a centerpiece of Switzerland’s chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Switzerland took over the rotating chairmanship of the 31-member inter-governmental group on March 7 from Romania.
The app, called Fliehen vor dem Holocaust, or Escaping the Holocaust, allows users to learn about the fate of four individuals using multimedia tools.
Educators must take on “the challenge of virtual reality” so youth will grasp that “we are speaking about people,” not merely about numbers, Benno Bättig, secretary-general of Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, said in a ceremony at the Swiss embassy in Berlin.
Founded in 1998, the alliance aims to unite political and social leaders behind the need for Holocaust education, remembrance and research.
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
, editor-in-chief