On 12 June the House of Democracy and Human Rights in Berlin hosted a presentation of a project by our good friends and reliable partners, the Gulag.cz Association. “Gulag XR” is a joint initiative of Gulag.cz, the German Memorial and various educational organisations from the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Germany.
A new digital project is designed to help primary and secondary school pupils understand the history of the Soviet terror. Its creators develop immersive learning materials that allow them to experience what it was like to be in the Gulag. All the material is created using interesting teaching techniques, diverse content and new technologies, including virtual and augmented reality.
A distinctive feature of the project is a research diary in the form of a comic strip, which encourages pupils to develop their research skills.
“Gulag XR” reminds us that the Soviet repressions were not limited to Russia or the Soviet Union – they affected many peoples, among them Germans, Poles, Slovaks, Czechs and others. All of them were also victims of Stalin’s totalitarian rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. This fact is still not widely acknowledged in Russian and pan-European historical understanding.