The Warsaw Ghetto Museum is a modern institution fulfilling a range of functions related to the preservation and presentation of unique knowledge about the history of the Holocaust. Its mission also includes the collection of memory carriers documenting the tragic history of the ghettos and their victims. A key concern in the development of the permanent exhibition, temporary exhibitions, and both popular and scholarly programs at the Museum is the use of digital tools to record, store, and manage Holocaust testimonies.
Within the Echoes project, the role of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum is particularly significant in two respects: first, as an institution that employs oral histories in the design and creation of exhibitions, and second, through its educational activities. In both cases, a range of mutually reinforcing and closely interconnected actions is involved.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum recognizes its unique role in planning, preparing, and testing the cognitive effectiveness of testimonies of the Holocaust designed for interactive engagement. The team of historians, museum professionals, and educators responsible for exhibitions and educational initiatives works on guidelines and principles for transforming oral histories, processed using AI tools, into interactive cognitive instruments. These instruments are employed to construct narratives of the past and to develop modern museum storytelling technologies, applicable both to strategically significant projects such as permanent (core) exhibitions, as well as topic-focused initiatives such as temporary exhibitions.
In its educational activities, the Museum places particular emphasis on establishing a set of best practices regarding the ethical handling of voices and narratives left by Holocaust victims. By combining the expertise and experience of a modern museum team with research practices across multiple domains (history, museology, contemporary education), the team develops principles that can serve as a foundation (code) for working with such materials in other institutions worldwide. Such a document is essential for the safe and socially responsible design of educational initiatives that utilize carefully prepared oral histories.
Tools such as study visits, team discussions, the gathering of experiences from museum practitioners, and dialogues with Jewish communities in the countries participating in the Echoes project are viewed not only as a means of assessing social needs and expectations, but primarily as an instrument for examining ethical sensitivity. These activities help the Museum determine the appropriate boundaries for the use of artificial intelligence systems in work with the oral histories of Holocaust victims.
