Ella Liberman & Esther Landaw - Artists Who Survived Auschwitz

Ella Liberman was just sixteen when the American troops liberated Auschwitz. From the picture from that day we can see a young teen  with a frozen expression on her face. She became an art teacher in Israel and drew her memories. Esther Landau ( Her self portrait is in left) managed to document the hell on earth. Her drawings are evidence for the human spirit and bravery.

Visitors to the Ghetto Fighters Museum  House virtual tour meet these surviviors.

Michal Hadas, A curator that created the virtual tour in the The Ghetto Fighters House Museum in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagetaot  chose Ella’s and Esther’s stories as part of the Women's Bravery path in the museum. I interviewed Micahal to learn about her curatorial challenges around the exhibition.

Can you share with us two pre-decision that you made before you curated the tour?

We've decided to tell the hidden stories behind the artifacts in the museum.  We focused on people’s stories and their values.

 We searched for humanity at its best, even (and especially) in the darkest of times.  Stories that reveal the bravery of those who insisted to keep their humanity, despite the terrible conditions and the horrible circumstances became the center of the tour.This decision influenced our next decision: creating an experience that focuses on dilemmas.  Those dilemas became the center of the visitors’ experience.

Since we created a virtual tour that is lacking the experience in situ , and the “look and feel”  of an on-sight tour, we have decided to add an element that the physical tour can not “offer” its visitors: A glimpse  into the museum's archive. 

The Ghetto Fighters House Museum has an enormous archive:Personal items, testimonies and documents.  Curating a virtual digital tour gave us the opportunity to share some of those items to the tour. We choose items that are related thematically  to the chosen artifacts in the exhibitions, so that together they will widen the scope of the story, the understanding of the subject, and/or the involvement of the visitors. 

What was your technological challenge?

Our challenge was to combine a virtual tour in the museum and a related artifact from the archive. Therfore , we merged two technologies into the game: For the virtual tour around the museum we used the 3 Vista. The  related items from the archive are integrated into the muse.run

            How did you engage your visitors emotionally?

I believe that in order to engage someone emotionally, whether on-site or on-line, you have to find relevance to their life, invite them to comment from their personal perspective : What would they do ?  What  do they think? How can they understand someone else’s decision making? What will make them act in a certain way?

In addition, we tried to find a variety of stories and narrators, so every visitor could find one that he or she is more related to. We used video and audio testimonies, family photos, and translated letters

For the moment the tour is in HB.

We hope to translate it to other languges.