Virtual reality to recreate the Nazi concentration camps

A new project of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra allow recreate the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, and disappeared. With support of 3D technology is to reconstruct the historical memory and better understand the horror of the Nazi crimes.

April 1945. One month before the end of the World War II, the 11th Armored Division of the British army entered the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. The remains of the horror of the crimes committed by the Nazis were found. Only in this hall of Lower Saxony, it is estimated that more than 50,000 people died.

Like many Nazi concentration camps, the German army initially tried to hide the crimes committed. Four days before the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Heinrich Himmler agreed that British soldiers could enter the premises, which eventually happen on the 15th of April. During that time, the SS guards forced some prisoners to burn some of the bodies crowded. After the liberation, the camp was destroyed to stop the spread of diseases

The liberation of Bergen-Belsen revealed some of the horror committed in this area in northern Germany. Like many Nazi concentration camps, more than 13,000 people dead lay unburied in Bergen-Belsen. The bodies were located next to the 60,000 individuals surviving on site. Nazi horror also led to the emergence of diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery.

Once freed the prisoners and in order to curb infections, British soldiers decided to burn remains the place. The destruction of many Nazi concentration camps prevented the spread of disease, but may have a secondary effect on the historical memory: oblivion. Although Germany has made an important exercise in memory, as shown in the exhibition Topographie des Terrors Berlin, it is essential to remember the past in order not to erase what happened.

To this end, Paul Verschure, the Department of the Information Technologies i les Comunicacions at Pompeu Fabra , has promoted the creation of the Future Memory Foundation. This initiative, which also involved the German historian Haboo Knoch intended to preserve the memory of the Holocaust leveraging augmented and virtual reality. The objective is to “save the past to shape the future”, as announced by the UPF.

Thanks to the use of new technologies, researchers look to the memory of the horrors is maintained and not be forgotten. For this, the project has developed a application in which you can display the missing Bergen-Belsen enclosure with the help of virtual reality and augmented reality

In the future, researchers aim extend the initial recreation of one hundred Nazi concentration camps, to complete the more than 45,000 places in Europe where Adolf Hitler repression exercised (ghettoes, extermination camps, torture centers, etc. )

In this memory space, rescuing from oblivion the missing Bergen-Belsen, also available audio files of when prisoners were liberated by British troops. The echoes of those Nazi concentration camps are now rescued from oblivion through the use of technology.