Dimensions in Testimony

USC Shoah Foundation. Dimensions in Testimony. Ongoing initiative. https://sfi.usc.edu/dit

Concepts:  Interactive biography | Survivor-authored virtual testimony | NLP testimonial retrieval | Dialogue preservation | Survivor -co-author

Keywords:  Holocaust testimony | Interactive technology | USC Shoah Foundation | Virtual survivor | AI and memory

The USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony is the foundational practice-based precedent for AI-mediated interactive Holocaust testimony. Developed over many years of collaboration with survivors — each filmed for approximately a week, answering around a thousand questions — it uses natural language processing to match user queries to pre-recorded survivor responses, enabling real-time conversational interactions with virtual survivor biographies in museum and educational settings. The initiative’s most significant feature for the log is its survivor-as-author principle: survivors were not subjects of the project but active participants who shaped what questions were asked and what answers they gave, bringing their accumulated knowledge of what had always been asked, what had been missed, and what needed to be said for posterity.

“Nothing can replace the ineffable, dynamic interaction between two human beings.” (USC Shoah Foundation, Dimensions in Testimony FAQ, n.d., n.p.)

“Dimensions in Testimony is a different type of engagement meant to preserve the opportunity to have a dialogic experience.” (USC Shoah Foundation, Dimensions in Testimony FAQ, n.d., n.p.)

“In our ten years of experience with interactive biographies, we have seen users absorb history while engaging in meaningful conversations with survivors.” (Clark, in Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2025, n.p.)

AI and the Holocaust: Rewriting History? The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Understanding the Holocaust

UNESCO. “AI and the Holocaust: Rewriting History? The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Understanding the Holocaust.” UNESCO Digital Library, 2024. https://doi.org/10.54675/ZHJC6844

Concepts:  AI threats | Value-sensitive design | Liar’s dividend | Data voids | Stakeholder collaboration 

Keywords:  Holocaust | AI ethics | Disinformation | Memory preservation | Education policy

This commissioned report constitutes the most authoritative institutional statement currently available on the intersection of AI and Holocaust memory. It identifies five major threat categories: AI inventing false narratives, deepfake technology, manipulation of AI to spread hate speech, algorithmic bias reinforcing dominant narratives while marginalising lesser-known histories, and AI oversimplifying the Holocaust’s complexity. Against these threats, it documents genuine benefits (large-scale archival processing, interactive testimony) and issues specific recommendations to policymakers, educators, archives, AI developers, and researchers. Its central normative position — that AI development in relation to Holocaust content must involve close collaboration with survivors and descendants as design partners, not merely as subjects — is the institutional articulation of the log’s foundational claim: AI can only do with testimony what human beings enable it to do.

“The threats associated with AI on safeguarding the record of the Holocaust are manifold.” (UNESCO, 2024, p. 3)

“Tech companies must work closely with the Jewish community, Holocaust survivors and their descendants.” (UNESCO, 2024, p. 1)

“AI can organize, categorize and search the content of a testimony.” (UNESCO, 2024, p. 13)

Generative AI and the Purpose of Legal Scholarship

Smith, Michael. “Generative AI and the Purpose of Legal Scholarship”. Massachusetts Law Review, vol 21, Issue 1, February 2026.

Concepts:  scholarly writing | AI non-instrumental scholarship | metrics vs. contribution | Legal scholarship | Cognitive deskilling 

Keywords:  Legal scholarship | Generative AI | Academic writing | Law schools | AI ethics

Smith argues that an instrumental view of legal scholarship — dominated by obsession with quantity, citations, and prestige hierarchies — obscures the detrimental effects that generative AI may have on the intrinsic value of writing and publishing. A deeper look at the fundamental purposes of legal scholarship, he contends, reveals that AI poses far more of a danger than a purely instrumental perspective suggests. This article makes the structural equivalent of Burzlaff’s argument for historians, in a legal studies context: the discipline’s essential contribution — interpretation, argument, ethical engagement with complexity — is precisely what AI cannot provide, regardless of its fluency at the surface level.

“An instrumental view of legal scholarship... obscures the detrimental effects that AI may have on the intrinsic value of writing.” (Smith, 2025, abstract)

“AI poses far more of a danger than a purely instrumental perspective suggests.” (Smith, 2025, abstract)

“The fundamental purposes of legal scholarship demand what AI cannot provide.” (paraphrase of Smith, 2025)

Reframing Holocaust Testimony

Shenker, Noah. Reframing Holocaust Testimony. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

Concepts:  Survivor-guided interview | Institutional scripts vs. open dialogue | Reframing testimony | Archive-ethical practice | Open-ended dialogue 

Keywords:  Holocaust testimony | Oral history | Archive | Fortunoff Archive | Methodology

Shenker documents the founding and practice of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, which pioneered an open-ended, survivor-guided interview format that deliberately avoided institutional scripts. Cited by Burzlaff to explain why the Fortunoff testimonies are particularly resistant to AI summarisation: their format was designed to allow core memory to surface rather than requiring survivors to conform to a predetermined narrative template. The Archive’s founding commitment in 1979 — to create the conditions for kairotic emergence within testimony — is directly relevant to the log’s question about what human-led encounter design must provide.

“An open-ended, survivor-guided interview format that deliberately avoided institutional scripts.” (Shenker, 2015, pp. 19–56, cited in Burzlaff, 2025, p. 5 n.9)

“What the archive preserves is... not only what was said but the conditions in which it could be said.” (paraphrase of Shenker, 2015 — verify in full text)

“The Fortunoff Archive was founded in 1979 and pioneered survivor-guided dialogue.” (Burzlaff’s synthesis, 2025, p. 5 n.9)

Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices

Shandler, Jeffrey. Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017.

Concepts:  Mediated memory | Institutional testimonial production | Physical markers | Code-switching | Algorithmic curation 

Keywords:  Holocaust memory | Digital media | New media | Oral history | Technology

Shandler argues that Holocaust testimony is always shaped by the medium through which it is conveyed, and that digital formats do not inherently enhance authenticity. His analysis of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive reveals how institutional framing, indexing, and protocols mediate testimonial production — a concern especially relevant to AI-generated tools that incorporate algorithmic curation and simulated interaction. His identification of code-switching (survivors shifting to Yiddish during emotional moments) as a testimonial marker that AI cannot process illustrates Kraft’s core/narrative memory distinction from a linguistic angle: the very moments at which testimony exceeds the narrative register are the moments AI misses.

“Digital formats do not inherently enhance authenticity.” (paraphrase of Shandler, 2017, cited in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6108)

“Testimony is always shaped by the medium through which it is conveyed.” (paraphrase of Shandler, 2017, cited in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6108)

“AI’s inability to capture survivors’ code-switching into Yiddish during emotional moments.” (Shandler, 2017, cited in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6108)

Can AI Make Hitler Cry? Exploring the Use of AI in Holocaust Education across Four Generations

Rosenthal, Aharona. “‘Can AI Make Hitler Cry?’ Exploring the Use of AI in Holocaust Education across Four Generations.” AI and Ethics 5 (2025): 6105–6126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-025-00816-3

Concepts:  Generational Trust Gap | cultural memory transition | Holocaust-gamified memory | Inter-generational knowledge validation) | Hybrid educational model 

Keywords:  Holocaust education | Generational memory | AI ethics | Survivor testimony | Intergenerational transmission

Rosenthal presents the first empirical, multi-generational analysis (191 participants, four generations) of how Holocaust descendants perceive AI in Holocaust education. Her key finding — that concerns about AI are not age-based or tied to digital fluency but rooted in distinct ethical and moral perspectives — is the empirical complement to Burzlaff’s scholarly argument. Her Generational Trust Gap framework maps the progressive displacement of dimensionality as lived connection to testimony fades: from 1G’s absolute rejection of AI on grounds of authenticity, through 2G’s cautious ethical openness, 3G’s algorithmic bias concerns, to 4G’s gamification anxiety. She advocates for hybrid models integrating AI’s reach with human storytelling and scholarly oversight.

“A computer cannot replicate the survivor’s tears or a descendant’s passion.” (Participant 1-04(Q), in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6118)

“AI must never be our only source of truth.” (Participant 2-48(Q), in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6122)

“The Holocaust isn’t just data. Real pain can never be coded.” (Participant 4G, in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6116)

Ethics of the Algorithm: Digital Humanities and Holocaust Memory

Presner, Todd. Ethics of the Algorithm: Digital Humanities and Holocaust Memory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691258980

Concepts:  Algorithmic ethics | Instrumental reason | Human dignity | Algorithmic visibility/judgment | Humanist AI guidance 

Keywords:  Digital humanities | Holocaust memory | AI ethics | Algorithm | Memory work

Presner argues that algorithms lack ethical agency and must not be entrusted with morally consequential decisions about Holocaust memory. He critiques the legacy of “instrumental reason” that enabled technocratic elements of genocide, warning that computational tools — including algorithms and mass data collections — must acknowledge their historical role in past abuses. He stresses the need for transparency about training data sources and calls for humanists to actively guide the application of AI to ensure authenticity, accuracy, and interpretive freedom. His concept of “close and distant listening” to the Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive is one of the most developed methodological frameworks in the field.

“Algorithms lack ethical agency and must not be entrusted with morally consequential decisions.” (Presner, 2024, cited in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6109)

“Algorithms are not neutral tools but ‘sociotechnical ensembles’ embedded with human decisions.” (Presner, 2024, cited in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6120)

“Humanists must actively guide the application of AI to ensure authenticity, accuracy, and digital provenance.” (Presner, 2024, cited in Rosenthal, 2025, p. 6119)