Holocaust XR: Immersive Technologies as the Last Act of Testimony - Stephen D. Smith

As the last Holocaust survivors bear witness in an age of deepfakes, avatars, and AI, the authenticity of witness is at stake as never before. Holocaust XR examines immersive and extended reality technologies through the lens of testimonial methodology, ethics, representation, and authenticity.

Written by a principal architect of the field of immersive testimony—Dimensions in Testimony, The Last Goodbye, IWalk—this volume moves from the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and Martin Buber to the technologies of virtual reality and conversational AI, asking a single urgent question: what methods do we use to preserve the agency of the eyewitness in an agentic world? At the book's ethical center is the “first person first” principle: the conviction that survivors must remain co-creators in the final act of witness.

Scholars and students in Holocaust studies, memory studies, digital humanities, and immersive media will find here both a theoretical framework and a practitioner's guide — one that equips readers to navigate the ethical, representational, and technological choices that will define Holocaust memory for generations to come.