Hope After Hate

HOPE AFTER HATE

The UCSIM | Center for Simulations & Virtual Environments Research (UCSIM) designed and developed a virtual reality experience based on Hagit Limor’s manuscript “Moniek’s Legacy” for students and community groups, delivered via a fully immersive virtual reality (VR) system. The VR experience features different scenarios with an overarching narrative, and is optimized for the Oculus Quest VR system.

project overview

Hope After Hate: Moniek’s Legacy seeks to fight modern acts of prejudice and hatred by teaching a story of a victim of such hate. This immersive educational tool uses virtual reality and multimedia to bring audiences inside the story of a Holocaust survivor and connect his journey to current events. The project provides a resource for educators seeking to incorporate lessons of humanity and social justice in their classrooms. It creates a platform for civil discussion among community groups to encourage our collective personal responsibility to create a more just society. The project’s guiding light: To ensure history doesn’t stay in the past. Its goal: To empower individuals to speak up and challenge discriminatory acts and language.

scene 0 - tutorial

The player stands in an abstract, minimalist space evoking the furniture warehouse Moniek hid inside to escape selection. Within this refuge, the player learns the controls they will use to navigate this experience. How to pause, adjust subtitles, change scenes, teleport, and interact with the 360 degree viewspheres.

360 degree viewspheres are placed throughout the story. Players can pick them up and peek inside to see 360 video of what each simulated spot looks like today. The footage inside was captured at these historical locations in Poland and Germany in 2019.

Scene 1 - cemetery

The player stands outside the closed front gate of the Czestochowa Cemetery, 1943. The architecture crumbling from recent vandalism stands in contrast to the 360 footage of tombstones overtaken by an 80-year-old forest. An older Moniek Limor approaches the player and asks them to follow him into the cemetery.

While walking through the cemetery, Moniek describes the town he and his ancestors grew up in; Czestochowa, Poland. He tells the tragic story of a group of heroic young men surrendering their lives to save the lives of children. He explains how after he was captured by the Nazis, a German named Director Liht, stepped in and saved his life and 20 others by convincing the Nazi in charge he needed the children to work for him.

Moniek speaks to the player about all the brave people that stood up against evil and hopes they might apply this story to their own life, to find the strength to speak up and challenge discrimination, to prevent what happened then from happening again.

Scene 2 - attic

In the attic scene, the player gets to explore the place where Moniek and his family hid when the Nazis occupied Czestochowa. He shares the touching story of how his brave mother and Uncle Jakob worked together to save his life, once again.

Scene 3 - HASAG

The player appears in the 1940’s train depot of the HASAG labor camp. The towering buildings of what use to be a textile factory ring out with the sound of munitions being manufactured. Moniek shares the story of how he found solace here with his daily chore of taking a Nazi officer’s geese to a nearby pond. He asks the player to look up at the sky like he did, and imagine freedom.

Moniek then describes his final months here. How his cousin Rhuzha snuck him the half loaf of bread that saved his life moments before he was forced into a cattle car and taken to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Scene 4 - BUCHENWALD

The player stands outside the gates of Buchenwald in January 1945. Angry shouts and the barking of german shepherds echo. The player must drop their pouch of family photos on the ground littered with other prisoner’s belongings.

Moniek explains how those who survived the train ride were stripped, shaved, and given a thin, scratchy uniform with a number. He describes his terrible living courters that he shared with 500 other men.

Moniek then tells the story of how he became very ill and prisoner operated “hospital.” There, a Polish political prisoner named Leon risked his life to keep Moniek safe. Leon was like a father to Moniek, and they were together when American soldiers drove through the gates of Buchenwald to free them. Moniek had survived the Nazi hell.

Scene 5 - MEMORIAL

The player arrives in present day Czestochowa at the memorial for Moniek’s family and 40,000 other souls who were stolen by a cattle car to Treblinka. Moniek explains that in the Jewish tradition, you lay a small sone on top of a grave. They stand for endurance. Stones never die. The player can then lay a stone, or like in other traditions, a flower or candle at the base of the memorial.

As the experience comes to a close, Moniek asks the player “How can you use what you learned today and apply this to your own life? Will you find the strength to speak up and challenge hate to prevent what happened then from happening again?”