Weimar/Hamburg.
Social networks offer opportunities for concentration camp memorials. How they use Tiktok and Co. for their purposes – and what problems there are.
It’s a cold, wet afternoon beech forest. Nevertheless, a number of young visitors have gathered in front of the local youth meeting place. This is not an unusual picture for Holger Obbarius. “We don’t have the impression that interest in the Nazi past is waning among young people,” says the head of the education department at the concentration camp memorial beech forest On the contrary: guests here currently have to wait at least twelve months for an appointment if they want to take part in guided tours or other educational offers. Recently someone even booked for 2028.
The confrontation with the darkest chapter of German Story has a strong presence among 16 to 25 year olds. Studies show this again and again. At the same time, the so-called “Generation Z” sometimes lacks historical knowledge. In order to address this age group, many concentration camp memorials have long relied on modern media. Facebook and Twitter are often old hat, Telegram and above all the video platform Tiktok are the order of the day. The latter wants to encourage memorial sites to integrate digital media into their work with an initiative.
“It’s a big responsibility that we all have. And we take them seriously,” said Tiktok Germany boss Tobias Henning recently at a balance sheet meeting a few days before the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust on Friday.
Neuengamme: Tiktok videos should complement on-site visits
In Neuengamme the initiative is already being implemented. In 2021, the memorial of the concentration camp, where around 100,000 people were imprisoned during the Nazi era and where more than 40,000 prisoners died, opened a Tiktok channel. This made the concentration camp memorial a pioneer nationwide. Shortly before the channel went online, a “Holocaust Challenge” on Tiktok made headlines because users had embodied Nazi victims in their own clips.
As a memory-political institution, you have to counter such phenomena with your own content, says the historian Iris Groschek, who oversees the channel. “We want to reach young people via Tiktok that we might not reach in other ways.” One Holocaust Memorial presents its topics in video clips that are often only 30 seconds long: The response was huge right away – also in the media.
Sure, says Groschek, social media function according to their own laws and cannot be readily used for commemorative purposes. In principle, appearances there, just like those on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, should “replace nothing”. The limit is also where the adequacy or historical accuracy of the videos is questionable. Accordingly, a lot of time is put into the production of the videos, which is done by volunteers from the team in Neuengamme.
Auschwitz has 1.5 million followers on Twitter
Not all memorials are as open to Tiktok as Neuengamme. The platform’s algorithms favored polarizing content, says Pawel Sawicki, social media officer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. “As of today”, Twitter is therefore the most important network for him: the memorial posts short biographies and photos of Nazi victims for 1.5 million followers every two hours, every day. Using social media properly is “quite challenging,” says Sawicki. Because you have to adapt to the brevity of the messages – and still remain serious.
In beech forest Holger Obbarius is a little more skeptical about the whole thing. “Can such a value-based institution as ours be present on a platform that discriminates against queer content, for example?” he asks. Tiktok had confirmed in the past that, for example, comments with terms like “queer” and “gay” were automatically filtered out.
Read here: Many Holocaust survivors die – what becomes of the commemoration?
Social Media: Central Council of Jews insists on “sensible concepts”
Basic openness coupled with profound skepticism. This is how Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, looks at Holocaust remembrance via social media. “As a supplement, not as a substitute for visiting an authentic place,” it makes sense, he tells our editorial team. “If channels are not looked after professionally, they are gateways for revisionists, conspiracy narrators and hate speech,” says Schuster, who diagnoses a “general change in the culture of remembrance”.
The Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, Christoph Heubner, describes digital media as a “necessary new way” to this newspaper. At the same time he warns against “lack of distance” and would like to see school education strengthened. And Felix Klein, the Federal Government Commissioner for Anti-Semitism, explains: “I am very positive about all efforts to present the culture of remembrance in an empathetic way using new media and new methods. As for Tiktok specifically, I’m somewhat divided, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.”
Interview: Auschwitz survivors: “They drove us with whips”
Study: 16 to 25 year olds are very interested in the Nazi past
The fact that young people are very sensitive to Nazi history is also underlined by the current memo youth study by the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility, Future (EVZ) and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at Bielefeld University. 77 percent of the representatively selected 16 to 25-year-old respondents stated that they had a high or very high interest in it, reports EVZ CEO Andrea Despot in an interview with this editorial team. Social media is playing a growing role in this.
According to Iris Groschek, this is shown again and again in memorial work. Guided tours are often attended by young people who have “visited” Neuengamme in advance via social media. Whether in person or on the Internet: It is important to offer those interested reliable sources, says Holger Obbarius. Social networks could fulfill a kind of signpost function here. A tweet or a post then leads to the memorial’s website, where detailed, secure information is freely accessible.
“We have lots of ideas as to what else can be done on social media,” says Iris Groschek. Cooperation with contemporary witnesses is an example. Especially since some of them have long been active on Tiktok.
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