How can blockchain preserve Holocaust testimonies from manipulation?

In a world overwhelmed by social media and fake news, conspiracy theories and misleading claims, how will the world remember what truly happened during World War II?

A nationwide survey conducted in 2020 in the United States revealed that over 1 in 10 adults under 40 do not recall ever having heard the word “Holocaust” before. The survey of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z showed that many respondents were unclear about the basic facts of the genocide and that nearly 20 percent of millennials and Generation Z in New York believe Jews caused the Holocaust.

How Holocaust survivors testimonies will be preserved from manipulation and misinformation as time is passing, taking more and more lives as the years goes?

Jonathan Dotan, the Silicon Valley producer/writer and Stanford fellow leading Project Starling found the solution: Using blockchain and distributed ledgers technology (DLT) to effectively store, distribute, and verify the testimonials through sophisticated automated tracking and tracing. This will ensure better educational resources and act as a time proof stamped news portal, in a collaboration with leading blockchain companies Hedera Hashgraph and Filecoin, the USC Shoah Foundation founded by Steven Spielberg, and cryptographers from Stanford Engineering.

Put simply, blockchain is a technology that allows a piece of data to be sent digitally from individual to individual in a way that is secure, transparent, anonymous and without any intervention from a third-party or middleman.

Blockchain networks are decentralized and are therefore not subject to any governmental or centralized authority. They are managed by a global network which has no borders or restrictions.

From the Holocaust to Anti-Rohingya mass violence, this technology will be used to for all genocide survivors testimonies, to preserve the truth of history in a time when the main source of information people have is social media.

Dotan insisted on the necessity to preserve survivor testimony, saying that “Thanks to the willingness of some of the last survivors to share their stories, we’ve been given a valuable gift: a chance to bring the war into sharp focus again by viewing it through their lived experience.”

“Historical memories of atrocities like genocide are important to preserve so we do not repeat those same mistakes.”