On a beautiful Minnesota spring day, I sauntered into the lower level of O’Shaughnessy Science Center at the University of St. Thomas’s St. Paul campus to virtually converse with six Holocaust survivors, four of whom had already passed away.
Upon entering a pitch-black room, Pinchas Gutter – one of about 196,000 Holocaust survivors – appeared on a digital wall. Seated, relaxed, and looking directly at me, Gutter seemed eager for our discussion.
With an iPad in hand, I was able to toggle between Guttner, Ben Ferencz, Edith Maniker, Eva Kor, Max Eisen, and Kurt Marx (the other living survivor), who were featured in this interactive display.
The exhibit, Talk with a Holocaust Survivor: The IWitness Interactive Experience, was developed by the USC Shoah Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Steven Spielberg, designed to preserve and share real-life testimonies of Holocaust survivors through digital interviews.
Targeted towards middle and high-school students and educators, IWitness pulls from 53,000 hours of recorded testimonies of survivors and witnesses not only from the Holocaust but also from other genocides, including the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, and the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Housed at the Institute’s Visual History Archive, the technology allows visitors to ask questions and receive video responses, thereby ensuring Holocaust survivors’ stories live on, even after they have passed away.
Participants were recorded from multiple angles over several days and asked more than 1,000 questions, such as: Where did you come from? What did your community look like in the 1920s and early 1930s? What did your family do? How and where did you migrate to?
St. Thomas Offers An Interdisciplinary Approach to Learning
The Shoah Foundation allowed the University of St. Thomas to use the technology behind the platform in connection with the Fall 2025 launch of a new area of study: the Minor in Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program. According to cofounders Kimberly Vrudny, associate dean for the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of Systematic Theology, and Hans Gustafson, director of the Jay Phillips Center for Interreligious Studies and the minor itself, the program was created in response to current events.
“We recognized today’s dangerous warning signs—such as the rise of antisemitism worldwide—and the need for students to understand the history of the Holocaust and other atrocities to help prevent their recurrence,” Vrudny said.
The importance of preserving first-hand testimony and creating opportunities for students to learn is clear with startling statistics on how many Millennials and Gen Z’ers are either unaware or misinformed about the Holocaust. According to a national 2020 study conducted by The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), the U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, 63% of respondents didn’t know the total number of Jews killed and despite tens of thousands of concentration camps and ghettos in Europe during this time, less than 50% were able to name even one.
“It is imperative to be educated about genocide,” said Will McDonough, a junior and one of the first students to enroll. “By taking this minor, I get to be on the front lines of combating antisemitism, which is especially important with so many survivors already gone.”
What Happens to History in the Digital Age?
Todd Presner, Chair and Professor of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, was on-site during my visit, preparing for a lecture on “Holocaust Testimony in the Age of AI: History, Memory, and Ethics,” where he explored what’s both possible and ethical when it comes to using technology to preserve survivor stories.
When asked whether AI was used in developing IWitness, Presner stated the recordings were all from the victims themselves. He explained that AI is used as a search engine to find the most relevant response to a question.
“The interviewers took great care of these participants, understanding survivors experienced physical and mental trauma, including atrocities such as the Mengele experiments conducted on twins and people with disabilities,” Presner said.”
A Minnesota Connection
Advanced technology is not the only way of guaranteeing the past remains in the present. After speaking with several individuals through the IWitness display, I went to the nearby student library to read the stories of Holocaust survivors who made their homes in Minnesota.
Transfer of Memory is an accompanying portrait-based exhibition featuring photographs by David Sherman, along with first-person testimonies on what home life looked like before the Nazi invasion. Survivors shared details on how they were taken, treated, and survived. Each is a story of resilience, yet several said they had kept the Holocaust from their own families due to shame. Given that so many firsthand witnesses are disappearing, these individuals shifted their perspectives so the world would know what really happened.
Vrudny encourages students and community members to visit both exhibits before they close on April 30.
“My hope is that visitors come prepared to slow down, and to open their hearts to take in profound experiences from those whose lives were upended by state-sponsored violence,” Vrudny said.
The exhibit is free and open to the public at the O’Shaughnessy Science Center, Data Visualization Wall. (Visitor Parking Information). The exhibit is open the following times (subject to change):
- Thu, Apr 23 – 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
- Sun, Apr 26 – 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
- Tue, Apr 28 – 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.
- Thu, Apr 30 – 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.