(JTA) – A new iPhone/iPad app uses advanced technology to tell the Jewish story of Oswiecim, the town in southern Poland where Auschwitz was built.
Oswiecim had a majority Jewish population before World War II. The app is called Oshpitzin – the Yiddish name for the town.
A project of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, a Jewish prayer and study center in Oswiecim, the app includes augmented reality, testimonies of survivors, an audio-guide of the town’s Jewish heritage sites and 3D models of the destroyed Great Synagogue.
“It opens a totally new way of educating about the Jewish history and the destruction caused by the Holocaust,” Auschwitz Jewish Center Director Tomasz Kuncewicz told JTA. “It’s a way which today is the most appealing to the new generations.”
The app, which supplements an Oshpitzin guidebook and web site that are already operating, was unveiled Tuesday. Kuncewicz said it will be available soon at the iTunes app store and will be released later this summer for Android.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
