The Swedish version of the installation Dimensions in Testimony will be presented in Malmö at International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism. Prime minister Stefan Löfvén will host the event in Malmö on October 13th and is also planning to visit the installation together with minister of education Anna Ekström.
– This means that knowledge about the worst crimes of the second world war will live on forever, says Tobias Rawet, one of the Swedish survivors who has given his testimony.
Dimensions in Testimony is an interactive installation where we can speak to survivors from the Holocaust, even long after the last survivors have passed away.
In March 2020 The National Historical Museums of Sweden received a mission from the government to develop a version of the installation with Swedish-speaking testimonies. In the summer of 2020 two Swedish survivors from the Holocaust where recorded with advanced video technologies in a studio in Stockholm. The project is creating interactive AI-installations of Tobias Rawet (f. 1936 Polen) och Elisabeth Citrom (f. 1931 Transylvania). The production is a collaboration between The National Historical Museums of Sweden, Jewish Culture in Sweden, and USC Shoah Foundation. The installation is currently in a beta testing phase in collaboration with Malmö Museums.
– I am grateful that the Swedish government chose to support our initiative to produce a Swedish version of Dimensions in Testimony and am proud that Jewish Culture in Sweden is part of this international project. The weeks I spent in the studio together with Tobias Rawet and Elisabeth Citrom where outright life-changing for me, says Lizzie Scheja, CEO of Jewish Culture in Sweden.
Now further training of his system remains, as well as the start of the first alpha tests of Elisabeth Citrom’s interactive biography. This training phase will continue until late spring 2022. For each question being asked the system is being adapted so that the answers given become more and more precise. The documentation method is developed by USC Shoah Foundation, that has its head quarters at The University of Southern California in Los Angeles. To date around 40 people worldwide have been documented and recorded.
The Swedish testimonies from Tobias Rawet och Elisabeth Citrom will be available for the general public starting in 2022. At the Malmö Forum Jewish Culture in Sweden together with The Swedish History Museum is also displaying parts of the exhibition ”Speaking Memories – the Last Survivors of the Holocaust”, highlighting 14 survivors living in Sweden in video interviews and portraits by photographer Karl Gabor, at the commission of Jewish Culture in Sweden.
At the Malmö Forum Jewish Culture in Sweden together with The Swedish History Museum is also displaying parts of the exhibition ”Speaking Memories – the Last Survivors of the Holocaust”, highlighting 14 survivors living in Sweden in video interviews and portraits by photographer Karl Gabor, at the commission of Jewish Culture in Sweden.
Contact
Katherine Hauptman
+ 46 (0)8-519 556 70
katherine.hauptman@shm.se
