A 3D interactive representation of Holocaust survivor Halina Zimm is part of the Virginia Holocaust Museum’s new holographic theater, included in the permanent exhibition “Dimensions in Testimony.” (Photo by Jay Paul)
I start my conversation with Halina Zimm with a simple question: “How did you survive the Holocaust?”
“My father came up with the idea,” she replies from her living room, seated in a chair. “Christians had different papers. My father talked to a woman who gave me the papers from her own daughters. And then I was on my own. I did everything possible to help myself, and I was lucky.”
I follow up with more questions about how she hid in plain sight, working as a housekeeper for a Polish couple, and what she saw during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Zimm has an answer to everything.
Or, rather, a 3D representation of her image does.
Zimm is the subject of “Dimensions in Testimony,” a new permanent exhibition at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Using natural-language processing, a form of artificial intelligence, and the illusion technique known as Pepper’s ghost projections, visitors can engage in lifelike conversations with Holocaust survivors. Zimm is the first of five individuals to be featured at VHM, including two survivors of concentration camps, an American soldier who liberated one of the camps, and a twin who survived Dr. Josef Mengele’s genetic experiments.
The exhibition was developed by the USC Shoah Foundation. To gather footage, Zimm spent six hours a day for five days in front of 19 cameras and answered nearly 1,100 questions. Her answers were compiled — unedited and uncensored — into a dataset, and VHM staff, board members and docents spent more than a year testing and training the AI. Now, when a visitor asks a question, it is translated into search terms that are then matched to a video clip for real-time playback.
“It’s not generative AI,” says Kate Adams, director of public and student programs at VHM. “The answers you get aren’t manipulated in any way. It’s the survivor’s voice.”
The interactive format is the latest effort by VHM, the USC Shoah Foundation and other organizations to collect oral histories from Holocaust survivors. But it also brings an added dimension — one that is increasingly important as the 80th anniversary of the Auschwitz concentration camp liberation approaches in January. Among the five survivors featured in the holographic theater at the VHM, two have died since their testimonies were filmed.
“We need to be prepared for the time when we don’t have these amazing people here,” says Sam Asher, president and executive director of VHM. “[This exhibition] will help the museum maintain some of those histories in a different way, where people will not only be able to hear what they overcame, but really get a feel for their amazing personalities.”
The exhibition allows museumgoers to delve more deeply into a survivor’s story through subsequent visits. Rephrasing questions may yield different responses, while asking about life outside of the war allows visitors to get to know the people behind the stories. With the right prompts, Zimm can share photos of her family, sing her favorite songs from “Hello, Dolly!” and “The King and I,” or tell a joke.
Adams says there’s one question she always encourages guests to ask before they end the conversation: How can I fight hatred today?
So, I ask Zimm.
“It’s our responsibility,” she responds. “If you want to have a better world, we have to do it together. One person, no. Together. Together, we can fight hate and discrimination.”
“Dimensions in Testimony” is on view daily at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, with showings on the hour from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Reservations are required and available at the museum’s front desk.
