Holocaust survivors play CoD WWII with influencers to raise awareness

Zikaron Basalon and McCann Tel Aviv partnered up to host a charity event that saw several Israeli content creators experience CoD WWII alongside Holocaust survivors.

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II at the hands of Nazi Germany. The estimated death total is around six million making it the worst genocide in human history.

Despite its significance, an increasing amount of young people are largely unaware about the atrocities. McCann’s report states that 76% of Israeli teens have never met a Holocaust survivor and 48% of Jews aged 18-29 were completely unaware of the massacre at Babi Yar.

In an attempt to make Holocaust remembrance more accessible for Gen Z, Zikaron Baslon put together a charity event using Call of Duty as the catalyst.

Influencers play CoD WWII with Holocaust survivors

The charity event called Fighting to Remember saw five Israeli influencers play through the Call of Duty: WWII campaign whilst sitting alongside Holocaust survivors. As they played through the story each survivor recited related events.

During one sequence survivor Shimon Greenhouse recalled: “They burst into the ghetto and took us out into the square. They pointed at five people, my father being one of them. We took five steps forward and, from the back, they murdered all of them. My father fell on me, and I was covered in his blood.”

Speaking to IGN Israel producer Danny-Ly Tiser, another survivor recounted: “At a certain night in September, on the Jewish New Year, the Germans came and they took my grandfather and two sisters. All of them were killed in Auschwitz. The strange thing is that we never believe we would be exterminated.”

In addition to the videos published, Fighting to Remember will also feature a documentary series made up of several 15-minute extended versions of each conversation streamed on Amazon Prime Video.

There are also plans to use these conversations in classrooms to better educate young people on the horrors of The Holocaust and what its victims went through.