Beyond Nuremberg

Beyond Nuremberg: The Tuchyn Story

In the game, players journey back through time and across various historic locations to collect, analyze, and piece together artifacts related to the Holocaust. These artifacts are real documents sourced from the archives at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the University of Connecticut, which houses the Dodd archive and digital repository.

This specific build is a tech demo that demonstrates three locations, an interactive methodology, and some of the gameplay loop. There is also a T-Posed version of Thomas Dodd, one of the lead prosecutors at the International Military Tribunal and a Connecticut state senator.

The prototype also serves as an example of our freely available Unity tool, which allows game developers to query databases on Islandora archives. More content and gameplay will follow in the coming months.

**** We are looking for developers who would like to help us alpha-test this tool. Although we are accessing a specific database, the tool should work with other databases to make interactive apps or games for any platform Unity supports. You will see three locations with different aesthetic approaches: a 1946 Courtroom 600, where the Nazi leadership was put on trial, a 1942 factory space in Tuchyn, Ukraine, and the 2025 Holocaust memorial site.      

The humanities themes shaping our project are 

1. Holocaust history is not static
2. Knowledge of women’s roles and Jewish resistance is key to a fuller understanding of this history 
3. Systems of dehumanization, which feed antisemitism and other forms of racism, involve a civilization’s legal, media, political, economic, and other institutions
4. Justice and truth-seeking are ongoing projects.

Our team is a multidisciplinary group of game developers, historians, students, educators, led by me( Ken Thompson, University of Connecticut), Dr. Clarissa Ceglio (University of Connecticut) and Dr. Anne Parsons (University of North Carolina: Greensboro). 

This project has been graciously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities , the UConn Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute, UNC Greensboro Internal Grants Award , and UNC Greensboro Jewish Studies.