My Video Follow-Up: Can Holograms of Hope for Genocides Also be Applicable to Psychiatry?

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be untied, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” - Maya Angelou

Yesterday, my weekly video, titled “The Violins and People of Hope and Labor,” focused on the survival of violins in the movie “The Red Violin” and the traveling exhibition of the Violins of Hope. These violins still provide inspiring music despite going through major imagined and real traumas.

I closed the video by turning to the hope that actual survivors of genocide also provide for us, even when most and all survivors from the Holocaust and other genocides die out. That is through new technology spearheaded by the USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony. It was founded by the well-known movie director, Steven Spielberg of “Schindler’s List” fame, and discussed in the New York Times article from December 18, 2018, “Steven Spielberg on Storytelling’s Documentary Power to Fight Hate.”¹ On the Foundation’s Website and at various Holocaust museums, interviews with survivors were recorded before they died that enabled visitors to view them and ask them questions and receive answers as might occur in a live interview.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune had a story by Kelly Haramis about learning from the past.² It talks about a temporary satellite location of the Skokie, Illinois Holocaust Museum which recently opened in downtown Chicago. It has new interviews and stories of trauma survivors.

Among my psychiatrist colleagues, debate continues, often contentiously, about our current wars, the nature of genocides, and how to prevent and address them. Many of us convey that we feel some moral injuries just from hearing about the physical and psychological trauma in the war zones.

The Tribune article indicates that the organization Genocide Watch designates genocidal emergencies in these places, in order: Darfur, Sudan, Nigeria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, North Korea, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, China, Gaza, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.² That commonality surely suggests our ongoing human nature vulnerability to conduct such horror on one another.

The educational potential of the hologram technology seems clear, clear enough that I also wonder if it could be applicable to psychiatry and potential testimony of various patients about their disorders, especially trauma-based ones, and what helped them get better. The same might hold true for the testimony of clinicians. With proper informed consent and confidentiality concerns, like victims of genocidal trauma, perhaps they can teach us about healing beyond lifetimes and written words.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.

References

1. Popescu A. Steven Spielberg on storytelling’s documentary power to fight hate. New York Times. December 18, 2018. Accessed September 4, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/arts/design/steven-spielberg-shoah-foundation-schindlers-list.html

2. Haramis K. Holocaust Museum opens Experience360 downtown with hologram stories of genocide — including a Rwandan survivor’s story. Chicago Tribune. September 3, 2025. Accessed September 4, 2025. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/03/holocaust-museum-satellite-location-renovation-genocide/