Tell me, Inge…
On 9 October 2023, I took part in a Human Rights Council 54th session side event at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, presenting the mixed reality (XR) Holocaust testimony “Tell Me, Inge…”, a Meta and StoryFile project developed in partnership with UNESCO, the World Jewish Congress, and the Claims Conference. The event was organized by the World Jewish Congress and co-sponsored by Meta, UNESCO, and the permanent missions of Argentina, Australia, Austria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Romania, Rwanda, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the EU delegation.
“Tell Me, Inge…” centers on the memories of Inge Auerbacher, who survived the Theresienstadt Ghetto as a seven year old girl. The production combines conversational AI with virtual reality: it recognizes a visitor’s speech and responds as though in real conversation, with Inge’s answers accompanied by 360 degree animated illustrations. The production team worked closely with Holocaust experts and oral historians to keep the testimony faithful to her actual story, allowing users to explore her childhood memories, her survival through the Shoah, and her reflections on that experience later in life.
I joined the panel alongside Johannes Baldauf of Meta and Ana Luiza Thompson-Flores, Director of the UNESCO Liaison Office in Geneva, moderated by Dr Leon Saltiel of the World Jewish Congress. My own remarks stepped back from this specific project to look at extended reality (XR) in education more broadly, since the Human Rights Council itself traces its origins back to the horrors of the Second World War, which made the setting a fitting place to ask what these tools mean for remembrance and human rights education going forward.
Extended reality can revolutionize how we teach and learn, but like any transformative technology, it comes with its own set of challenges.
On the promise side, I talked through what XR genuinely offers: immersive learning that makes content more engaging and memorable, the ability to break down geographical and physical barriers to reach students anywhere, AI driven personalization that adapts pacing and content to each learner, practical training in virtual environments without real world risk, and new forms of global collaboration between students and educators across cultures.
But I also spent real time on the risks. Personalization depends on collecting personal data, which raises genuine privacy concerns and calls for stronger data protection and transparency. Technology companies need clear policies preventing that data from being used beyond its original educational purpose. XR services need to comply with data protection regimes like the GDPR, with real user consent behind them. Cybersecurity has to be a priority, given what a breach or manipulated content could mean for both user data and the integrity of educational material. And access to XR technology is far from evenly distributed worldwide, so closing that gap has to be part of the conversation from the start, not an afterthought.
For a project like “Tell Me, Inge…” specifically, I raised three considerations that go beyond the usual XR risk list. The first is banalization: as virtual environments become more immersive, there is a real risk that future generations come to experience the Holocaust as something belonging to the virtual world rather than history. The second is dehumanization: Inge could end up being related to as a character rather than as the real person who lived through the horror she describes. The third is emotional impact: immersive technology can generate powerful emotional responses, which is exactly the point when it deepens understanding, but that same power needs real limits so it does not cause harm, particularly on a subject this sensitive.
None of that is an argument against the project. If anything, it is the opposite: technology this powerful, applied to testimony this important, deserves exactly this kind of scrutiny before it scales. Immersive tools can genuinely help carry survivor testimony to generations who will never get to hear it firsthand. Getting there responsibly means building in the safeguards, not bolting them on later.