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.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
