The SPECS Research Group of UPF in Barcelona, in collaboration with the Bergen-Belsen Memorial/Lower Saxony Memorials in Germany, present:

“Here: Bergen-Belsen, Space of Memory”

This audiovisual installation shows its visitor what once was. Once, Bergen-Belsen was a prisoner-of-war- and concentration camp defined by its huts, watch-towers, roll call square and fences. Here, within these fences, a human tragedy of unimaginable magnitude unfolded. But now, there are only a few remains left to help us to remember. After the liberation, the huts were burned down: These artifacts of cruelty were erased. Now, as members of the generations that followed that tragedy we face a new challenge: How can a beautiful graveyard help us to commemorate? “Here: Space of Memory” brings us into an immediate relation to the historical site today and in the past. It presents a virtual model of the former camp that allows us to imagine what the camp once was.

The installation will be opened from October 28, 2012, until February 2014
and can be visited at the Anne-Frank-Platz of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, as part of the activities to mark the 60th anniversary of the Memorial’s inauguration on November 30, 1952. The installation was opened together with the sound installation “There, Echoes of Memory” located in the passageway next to the memorial’s document center.

SPECS has developed these installations in the framework of the European project CEEDS (FP7, ICT Future and Emerging Technologies, 258749-CEEDS) the aim of which is to develop an application that will optimize the acquisition, storage and presentation of data that represents key aspects of the historical relevance such as the holocaust including its archaeological, social, cultural, psychological, medical aspects. The objective here is to find an interactive narrative structure that allows users to understand the importance of the Holocaust, to identify with its victims and to assign meaning with respect to their own existence.

IMAGES “Here: Bergen-Belsen, Space of Memory”