During the MEMORISE project, we had the unique opportunity to share our work, findings, and experiences through various channels. As part of the EU’s Horizon Europe call, we adhered to scheduled reports that encompass so-called deliverables. They include cotent, such as detailed studies, progress reports, and milestone documentation. Unfortunately, only a select few deliverables are publicly accessible. For more insights into the official documents, please refer to the Publicly Published Deliverables section.
As a research initiative, we have disseminated different aspects of our projects at internationally renowned conferences. For a comprehensive list of scientific publications, visit the Overview of Scientific Publications section. Due to publishing rights, we may not offer free access to some manuscripts. However, you can find an embedded list of all free and online available publications in the Scientific Publications section.
Project Deliverables
Overview of Deliverables in MEMORISE
| Deliverable | Deliverable Name | Lead | Delivery Date | Public? |
| D1.1 | Management and Administration guidelines | SDU | 24 Mar 23 | sensitive |
| D8.1 | Communication and dissemination plan | BB | 31 Mar 23 | sensitive |
| D8.2 | Online platforms established | BB | 31 Mar 23 | Here |
| D1.2 | Data Management Plan | SDU | 31 Mar 23 | sensitive |
| D9.1 | H – Requirement No. 1 | SDU | 31 Mar 23 | sensitive |
| D9.2 | POPD – Requirement No. 2 | SDU | 31 Mar 23 | sensitive |
| D1.3 | Risk and mitigation plan | SDU | 30 May 23 | sensitive |
| D9.3 | AI – Requirement No. 3 | SDU | 29 Jun 23 | sensitive |
| D9.4 | OEI – Requirement No. 7 | SDU | 29 Jun 23 | sensitive |
| D1.4 | Policy Brief | SDU | 29 Sep 23 | sensitive |
| D5.1 | Module for user state acquisition and estimation: relevant system indicators, high-level features | SRU | 29 Sep 23 | Here |
| D7.1 | Ethics and Best-practice guideline for virtual engagement with HNP | HUJI | 29 Sep 23 | sensitive |
| D6.1 | Report on Narrative Presentation Techniques | SDU | 15 Nov 23 | Here |
| D2.1 | Requirements for an API for Knowledge Management | SWC | 31 Jan 24 | Here |
| D6.2 | Concept/Specification Paper for Narration & Learning Approaches | SDU | 31 Jul 24 | Here |
| D1.5 | Interim Data Management Plan | SDU | 26 Sep 24 | sensitive |
| D2.3 | APIs for Knowledge Management | SWC | 30 Sep 24 | Here |
| D5.2 | Adaptive User Modelling based on Static Profiles and the first Enriched Knowledgegraph Version | SRU | 30 Sep 24 | sensitive |
| D2.2 | Document Manager for the MEMORISE System | SWC | 01 Oct 24 | sensitive |
| D7.2 | Social Media Concept | HUIJ | 15 Nov 24 | Here |
Publicly Published Deliverables
D2.1 Requirements for an API for Knowledge Management
This deliverable aims to document the set of requirements that are to be satisfied by the APIs serving the data in the MEMORISE System, including their relationship to the envisioned functionalities of the System. This documentation will guide the development process leading to the System, both in terms of individual components and of complete system architecture, by serving both as an agreement of functionality between implementers, and as reference material with regards the overall data architecture. From this list of requirements, unitary and integration tests will be derived, which will drive the development of components and their interconnections. Finally, this document contains the current consensus, among project participants, of the envisioned functionalities and architecture, to the level sufficient to drive implementation at this stage, pending further refinement.
D2.3 APIs for Knowledge Management
This document describes the API for Knowledge Management developed as part of the MEMORISE project. This API is a core component of the MEMORISE System, as it serves as a gateway between the different User Interfaces and the corresponding databases. The functionalities of the System are thus deeply interwoven with the functionalities of this API. This API is built with the FAIR principles in mind in two senses. The first is the data that it gives access to by providing semantic descriptions of data items in accordance with standards. Secondly, the API strives to be reusable by other projects, as it is openly available. Notably, while designed ex-profeso for the MEMORISE System, the API described here is also envisioned to be applicable to other endeavours in which knowledge extracted from documents is to be used to power search and recommendation functionalities.
D5.1 Module for user state acquisition and estimation: relevant system indicators, high-level features
The objective of D5.1 at this stage is focused on defining the relevant system indicators that will be acquired from users during their interactions with the MEMORISE system, and the higher-level features that will be inferred based on this information. In particular, we identify the indicators that the MEMORISE system will collect, divided into implicit measures, which are obtained automatically in the background, and explicit measures, which require the user’s direct responses. Based on this information, we then also identify a series of higher-level features or user states that the system will infer, based on state-of-the-art techniques. We select all the aforementioned features based on the final objective of providing an individualisation of the user experience to optimise the interaction with the system. Furthermore, we base these decisions on the technical constraints of the system to be implemented, while always preserving user privacy and always requiring the user’s full informed consent for data collection, leaving this individualisation of the experience as an optional aspect of the system, to be decided by each user.
D6.1 Survey on Data-Driven Storytelling
The aim of this report is to provide an overview of existing narrative visualization and “data-driven storytelling” solutions developed specifically for communicating memories of Nazi persecution. We classify related work based on a taxonomy for visualization-based storytelling for cultural heritage, focus on design dimensions that have not yet been discussed thoroughly, and outline future challenges, some of which are addressed in MEMORISE.
D6.2 Concept/Specification paper for narration & learning approaches
The document gives a high-level conceptual overview of visualization-based storytelling tools that are developed within the MEMORISE project. We introduce a triangular definition of visualization-based storytelling for Heritage of Nazi Persecution (HNP)—visitor-driven, expert-driven, and witness driven—and explore design challenges and opportunities. The design concept for each MEMORISE tool is then described addressing these definitions and challenges. By leveraging digital innovation, the document seeks to connect past experiences with future generations, fostering a deeper understanding of Holocaust history and its significance in the collective human experience.
D7.2 Social Media Concept
Based on an initial review of social media strategies developed by similar projects and the evaluation of current practices of the participating organisations, we develop and test a social media concept that corresponds to the main heritage data utilised in the project, connecting to virtual solutions and narrative approaches. The focus will be on the interrelation of heritage sites and heritage documents.
D8.2 Visual Identity and Project Representation
This document provides a general overview of the digital presence and visual identity for the MEMORISE project. It reflects the status at the time of writing this report. Possible modifications and additions might be identified in the future to address future needs in the project. The website is the focal point and hub of the project, outlining information to the public and other researchers. The website will be a dynamic platform and will be maintained and regularly, and updated with news, project activities, videos, and links. It is intended as dual use, to publish general content to the public, but to also link to more technical project outputs.
Overview of Scientific Publications
Full List of Scientific Publications
| Author(s) | Type of Publication | Status | Title | Publisher/Conference | Location | Date | Online Readable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Richard Khulusi, Stephanie Billib, Stefan Jänicke | Paper | Accepted | Exploring Life in Concentration Camps through a Visual Analysis of Prisoners’ Diaries | Information, 2022 | 21.1.2022 | Here | |
| Jiří Kocián, Karin Roginer Hofmeister | Presentation | Presented | Malach Center for Visual History 13th Annual Conference | Prague, Czech Republic | 30.1.2023 | ||
| Jiří Kocián, Karin Roginer Hofmeister | Presentation | Presented | CENTRAL Conference “Notion and Construction of Victimhood in Central East and Southeast Europe” | Vienna, Austria | 9.2.2023 | ||
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Presented | Expanded Memories: Engaging with the History of the Holocaust in the Digital Age | Yad Vashem Partners’ Conference | Jerusalem, Israel | 14.3.2023 | |
| Jiří Kocián, Karin Roginer Hofmeister | Presentation | Presented | Czech EHRI node workshop | Theresienstadt Memorial Museum, Czech Republic | 12.6.2023 | ||
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Presented | Witnessing in the Digital Age: Media and Historiographical Perspectives | 16th European Summer University Ravensbrück | Ravensbrück Memorial, Germany | 31.8.2023 | |
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Presented | Hi|storytelling on Instagram: History in Segments | Summer School Film and Immersive Media in Memory Culture | Potsdam, Germany | 4.9.2023 | |
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Presented | 60 Seconds of History? Audiovisual Memory on TikTok | 54th German Historians Day | Leipzig, Germany | 21.9.2023 | |
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Presented | Was heisst und bis zu welchem Ende erleben wir digitale Geschichte? | Forum on Education Policy 2023 | Berlin, Germany | 26.9.2023 | |
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Presented | Going Digital with Difficult Histories: Methoden zur Auseinandersetzung mit digitalen Phänomenen | Ringvorlesung „Methoden der Public History: Interdisziplinäre Begegnungen” | Universität Regensburg (online) | 4.12.2023 | |
| Niek Meffert, Camilla Østergaard, Stefan Jänicke, Richard Khulusi, Esther Rachow, Nicklas Sindlev Andersen | Presentation/Paper | Accepted | A Survey on Storytelling Techniques for Heritage on Nazi Persecution | 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications | Rome, Italy | 27.2.2024 | Here |
| A.Råmark, P. Verschure, E.M. Meerkerk | Presentation | Presented | Memorise. Heritage related to Nazi Persecutions | Symposium: Auschwitz-Birkenau in the 21st century; preserving heritage in a digital age | Nijmegen, The Nethderlands | 21.3.2024 | |
| Esther Rachow | Presentation | Accepted | Mapping the Field of Digital Holocaust Education: Two Interconnected Perspectives | Vienna-Jerusalem Graduate School 2024 | Jerusalem, Israel | 7.3.2024 | |
| Linnéa Richter, Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Submitted | Von damals zu heute – Innovative Tools für digitale Erinnerungskultur: Das Forschungsprojekt MEMORISE | MAI Conference | Jewish Museum, Berlin | 17.5.2024 | |
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Presentation | Submitted | MEMORISE: Kulturelles Erbe digital entdecken | re:publica ’24 | Berlin, Germany | 29.5.2024 | |
| Aliisa Råmark, Héctor López-Carral | Presentation | Presented | Digital Heritage related to Nazi Persecution: Reactualisation of Collective Memory of the Holocaust through a Virtual Interactive Exploration Platform | EHRI Academic Conference – Researching the Holocaust in the Digital Age | Warsaw, Poland | 18.6.2024 | |
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Stefan Jänicke, Nicklas Sindlev Andersen, Noga Stiassny | Presentation | Submitted | Developing digital and virtual approaches to the Heritage of Nazi Persecution: a conceptual guideline | Digital Humanities Conference 2024 | Washington, DC | 10.8.2024 | |
| Stefan Jänicke, Richard Khulusi, Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann | Poster | Submitted | MEMORISE: An Infrastructure to Preserve Memories on Nazi Persecution | Digital Humanities Conference 2024 | Washington, DC | 10.8.2024 | Here |
| Chris Hall, Noga Stiassny, Anja Grebe, Héctor López Carral, Bas Kortholt, Stefan Jänicke | Presentation | Accepted | Using Prisoner Artworks in 3D as an innovative multimodal entry point to engaging with Heritage of Nazi Persecution | Digital Humanities Conference 2024 | Washington, DC | 10.8.2024 | Here |
| Jakob Kusnick | Poster | Accepted | Visualization-Based Storytelling in Holocaust Education: The Integration of Testimonies, Art, and Technology | Digital Humanities Conference 2024 | Washington, DC | 10.8.2024 | Here |
| Esther Rachow | Presentation | Submitted | Digital Humanities Conference 2024 | Washington, DC | 10.8.2024 | ||
| Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Esther Rachow | Presentation | Accepted | Digital Modeling of Difficult Histories: 3-D Models as Digital Environments for Historical Learning | 7th World Conference of the International Federation for Public History | University of Luxembourg | 7.9.2024 | |
| Aliisa Råmark | Presentation | Accepted | Gazing through Prisoner Art: Exploring Gaze within a Digitally Reconstructed Interactive Platform of Kamp Westerbork | 27th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites | Utrecht, Netherlands | 3.11.2024 | |
| Christopher Brückner, Pavel Pecina | Paper | Accepted | Similarity-Based Cluster Merging for Semantic Change Modeling | 5th International Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change 2024 (LChange’24) | Bangkok, Thailand | Here | |
| Esther Rachow | Presentation | Submitted | The Potential of Space-Oriented Digital Education for Teaching and Learning the History of Nazi Persecution in Austria and Germany | Annual Convention of the Centers for Austrian Studies 2024 | Budapest, Hungary | ||
| Victor Mireles-Chavez | Presentation | Presented | 5th International Data Science Conference (iDSC) | Krems, Austria | |||
| Christopher Brückner, Pavel Pecina | Paper | Towards Semantic Tagging of Segmented Holocaust Narratives | Here |
Online Readable Scientific Publications
Similarity-Based Cluster Merging for Semantic Change Modeling
This paper describes our contribution to Subtask 1 of the AXOLOTL-24Shared Task on unsupervised lexical semantic change modeling. In a joint task of word sense disambiguation and word sense induction on diachronic corpora, we significantly outperform the baseline by merging clusters of modern usage examples based on their similarities with the same historical word sense as well as their mutual similarities. We observe that multilingual sentenceembeddings outperform language-specific ones in this task.
Exploring Life in Concentration Camps through a Visual Analysis of Prisoners’ Diaries
Diaries are private documentations of people’s lives. They contain descriptions of events, thoughts, fears, and desires. While diaries are usually kept in private, published ones, such as the diary of Anne Frank, show that they bear the potential to give personal insight into events and into the emotional impact on their authors. We present a visualization tool that provides insight into the Bergen-Belsen memorial’s diary corpus, which consists of dozens of diaries written by concentration camp prisoners. We designed a calendar view that documents when authors wrote about concentration camp life. Different modes support quantitative and sentiment analyses, and we provide a solution for historians to create thematic concepts that can be used for searching and filtering for specific diary entries. The usage scenarios illustrate the importance of the tool for researchers and memorial visitors as well as for commemorating the Holocaust.
Exploratory Analysis of the Applicability of Formalised Knowledge to Personal Experience Narration
Some of the victims of Nazi prosecution have consigned their personal experiences in the form of diaries of their internment in concentration camps. Such human-centric texts may contrast with the organisation of knowledge about such events that, for example, historians and archivists make. In this work, we analyse six such narrations with the use of Entity Extraction and Named Entity Recognition techniques, present the results of the corresponding exploration, and discuss the suitability of such tools on this corpus. We show that knowledge tools, that have been successfully used to organise documents, can be lacking when describing personal accounts, and we suggest ways to alleviate this.
A Survey on Storytelling Techniques for Heritage on Nazi Persecution
This paper explores Visual Storytelling (VS) as a means of conveying historical narratives, with a particular focus on Heritage related to Nazi Persecution (HNP). We refine and augment existing design spaces in information visualization to broaden the scope and emphasize rich media elements while orienting our refined design space towards VS for HNP. We analyze dimensions central for storytelling focusing on cultural heritage, while digging deeper into aspects relevant for HNP like specific types of text (testimonies, diaries, official documents) and person types (victims, survivors, persecutors). The key contribution of our study is the development of a design space uniquely tailored to HNP, which highlights critical elements and trends from existing storytelling projects, and comprehensively examines the unique challenges and opportunities within VS for HNP. Furthermore, we discuss future directions, enriching the evolving domain of VS by equipping heritage professionals and researchers with practical strategies to craft compelling narratives that aim to engage contemporary audiences and to preserve the historical accuracy and ethical integrity of HNP.
Towards Building an Infrastructure to Keeping Alive and Conveying the Memories of Victims of Nazi Persecution
On July 10, 2021, Esther Bejarano, one of the few remaining survivors of Nazi persecution and a voice against racism and antisemitism, passed away at the age of 96.1She played a significant role in keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive by sharing her experiences with younger generations, and explained her motivation as follows2: “It is my revenge that I go to the schools, that I tell people what happened back then. So that nothing like that can ever happen again.” As time moves on and contemporary witnesses disappear, it becomes increasingly important to develop new ways of communicating and passing on the memory and legacy of the Holocaust.
Memories on Nazi persecution are preserved in various types of data resources. These include diaries, often written by prisoners during their incarceration in a concentration camp, in which individual experiences of the victims are reported in a chronological order with a close distance from the time when experiences were made by the author.
In a prototype project, a diary exploration interface (Khulusi et al., 2022) has been developed, which provides access to a corpus of ten German diaries of prisoners of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp through a calendar visualization that can be seen in Figure 1. It provides new perspectives such as a collective memory, because diaries can be read in parallel, i.e., one can see what different authors write in the same days or time periods. In addition, A set of diaries can be selected to get insight on how particular groups (e.g., women or men, prisoners from the same barrack) experienced life in the concentration camp. Through sentiment analysis, the changing mood of prisoners can be inspected across time, and a particular concept can be constructed as a set of keywords, and it can be investigated, when prisoners refer to them.
Visualization-Based Storytelling in Holocaust Education: The Integration of Testimonies, Art, and Technology
Storytelling using data visualization has been identified as a potent tool for enhancing, understanding, and engagement with complex and historical events like the Holocaust. Educational enlightenment and inclusive didactics using ultimedia and statistical data are especially important for such highly emotional and ongoing topics.
Using Prisoner Artworks in 3D as an innovative multimodal entry point to engaging with Heritage of Nazi Persecution
Prisoner testimonies exist in written form such as letters, diaries, and transcripts of oral histories. In addition, there is a large corpus of “visual testimonies” in the form of artworks created during and after the events of the Holocaust. In creating digital user experiences for preserving and disseminating these memories, written forms of testimony are typically used most. One notable exception is Art Dachau, (Hammermann et al. 2021) where prisoner artworks are used to accompany a written narrative based on multiple written sources. However, Art Dachau’s virtual experience rather deploys artworks as historical documents like photographs as if they represent some “real” situation, in addition, only artwork snippets are used while full visual testimonies (complete artworks) are not accessible during the digital experience. Like Art Dachau, the focus of our project is using artworks as visual testimonies because they communicate ‘memories’ of victims immediately; unhindered by barriers of written language. Our explorable 3D modelling approach is however different insofar as we pay attention to the deeply subjective, artistic, and aesthetic dimension(s) of individual artworks and artists. By creating 3d model environment using prisoner artworks within “MEMORISE”, (Memorise , EU, 2022) we offer a multiperspectival interpretation of the artworks as a gateway to multi-dimensional experiences of Heritage of Nazi Persecution (HNP). By our novel approach to connecting visual and written testimonies, our project directly addresses the conference theme’s focus on reinvention and responsibility, and reflects them from different perspectives.
MEMORISE: An Infrastructure to Preserve Memories on Nazi Persecution
The rise in anti-Semitism has been discussed in a diversity of realms in the past years (Goldhagen 2013; United Nations 2021; Booth 2022; Steinacher 2023). The level of anti-Semitism has risen even more sharply since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war in October 2023 (Keaten / Kellman 2023). As part of this latest conflict, we witness implicit and direct references to the history of Nazi persecution and accusations that Israel allegedly commits genocide in Gaza. Such accusations prove the importance of increased historical education that sheds light on crimes related to the Holocaust in particular, and on Nazi persecution in general. Considering the recent discourse about the potential failures in Holocaust education, the Horizon Europe MEMORISE project’s mission is to develop new, digitally supported educational strategies to keep memories of Nazi persecution alive, particularly important for a growing digital native generation.
