Tackling one of the greatest human tragedies, a new video game has been released in which players adopt roles in a Jewish family torn from their home during the Holocaust and sent to an internment camp.
The Light in the Darkness claims to be the first video game to accurately portray the Holocaust, which took the lives of some six million Jews during World War II.
Numerous games have World War II themes — including the big-selling Call of Duty series — but the fact that the Holocaust is barely mentioned troubled 36-year-old Luc Bernard, developer of the new game.
Photo: AFP
“It’s a bit like denying that it ever existed,” the Los Angeles-based creator said.
The game is available for play on computers, with versions for consoles to be released soon.
Players follow along with a Jewish family as they endure life under France’s wartime Vichy regime only to be arrested in 1942 during the massive Vel’ d’Hiv roundup in Paris and sent to the Pithiviers internment camp.
Photo: AFP
Thousands of Jews were transported from there to death camps like Auschwitz.
“Video games can tell profound, meaningful and universal stories of tragedy and triumph that are more realistic and gut-wrenchingly impactful,” reads a title description at the online Epic Games store.
“Our mission is to connect each new generation with the experiences of those who lived during one of the greatest atrocities in the history of the world.”
There have long been fears that creating such games could tend to trivialize or oversimplify the atrocity, Bern University of the Arts game history specialist Eugen Pfister said.
The blockbuster video game franchise Wolfenstein, which essentially centers on a hero who kills Nazis, has been an exception, but it makes no claims of historical accuracy.
A 2014 edition called Wolfenstein: The New Order has its hero breaking into a fictional internment camp in Croatia. But it is set in an alternate universe in which the Nazis won World War II.
“You see chimneys, wagons and even the selection of prisoners, but there is never any mention of concentration camps or even Jews,” Pfister said of the game.
The genocide horror was addressed more explicitly three years later in a sequel titled The New Colossus.
NO WAY TO WIN
Bernard, who is originally from France, likened his game to an interactive film, but with players having no control over the ultimate storyline as the family heads for a tragic fate.
“I couldn’t make a game where you win at the end,” said Bernard.
“That wasn’t the Shoah, there was no choice,” he added, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.
Bernard’s research for the game included consulting the archives of Holocaust museums in Los Angeles and Washington.
He also spoke with Holocaust survivors and plans to have some of them recount their experiences in an update to the game.
TEACHING THE YOUNG
Bernard set out to make his first Holocaust title about 15 years ago, inspired by the story of his grandmother having been part of an operation to transport Jewish children to Britain during the war.
He abandoned that project due to lack of funding and attacks by critics, who called the concept “disgusting” and “creepy.”
But times have changed, Bernard said.
Pfister compared the shift to the way Hollywood is now seen as being able to make powerful history-based films such as the 1993 hit Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg.
“The consensus today is that Hollywood is capable of making films about the Holocaust,” Pfister said.
“I am optimistic that video games will also find a language to talk about it.”
With players all over the world, video games offer a unique platform to reach a wide audience, especially among young people.
“My goal is to get more developers interested to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive,” Bernard said.
Along with being available free at Fortnite maker Epic Games, The Light in the Darkness is currently on display at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, Washington.
On April 26, The Lancet published a letter from two doctors at Taichung-based China Medical University Hospital (CMUH) warning that “Taiwan’s Health Care System is on the Brink of Collapse.” The authors said that “Years of policy inaction and mismanagement of resources have led to the National Health Insurance system operating under unsustainable conditions.” The pushback was immediate. Errors in the paper were quickly identified and publicized, to discredit the authors (the hospital apologized). CNA reported that CMUH said the letter described Taiwan in 2021 as having 62 nurses per 10,000 people, when the correct number was 78 nurses per 10,000
As we live longer, our risk of cognitive impairment is increasing. How can we delay the onset of symptoms? Do we have to give up every indulgence or can small changes make a difference? We asked neurologists for tips on how to keep our brains healthy for life. TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEALTH “All of the sensible things that apply to bodily health apply to brain health,” says Suzanne O’Sullivan, a consultant in neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and the author of The Age of Diagnosis. “When you’re 20, you can get away with absolute
May 5 to May 11 What started out as friction between Taiwanese students at Taichung First High School and a Japanese head cook escalated dramatically over the first two weeks of May 1927. It began on April 30 when the cook’s wife knew that lotus starch used in that night’s dinner had rat feces in it, but failed to inform staff until the meal was already prepared. The students believed that her silence was intentional, and filed a complaint. The school’s Japanese administrators sided with the cook’s family, dismissing the students as troublemakers and clamping down on their freedoms — with
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) — the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda — he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration. Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people. In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the