On July 14, 2016, USC Shoah Foundation traveled to Majdanek Concentration Camp to build an educational virtual experience through the personal story of Pinchas Gutter, a Holocaust survivor. Pinchas, imprisoned at age eleven, was the sole member of his family to escape the camp. Returning to the site of tragedy and survival, Pinchas shared his memories as he walked through the camps for what he vows is his final visit.

The experience gives viewers the possibility to not only hear Pinchas’ words as he recounts the tragedy, but to virtually walk alongside him in the same railway car, gas chamber, shower room and barracks of Majdanek where he and his family were taken.

The details of the events take on a whole new dimension as Pinchas stands inside each vivid environment and recounts his heartbreaking story of suffering and loss.

'The Last Goodbye' user experience was designed as a linear journey through the Majdanek camp, following Pinchas Gutter and hearing his testimony in first person.

To bring this to life required groundbreaking collaboration of the industry’s top talent, who together helped create a capture pipeline. Crafting the virtual environment required dozens of photogrammetry artists and engineers, plus a photorealistic simulation of the concentration camp in the game engine Unity. New techniques were continually experimented with to keep the connection to Pinchas’ testimony.

At the Tribeca Film Festival, the experience was screened within a custom installation created by acclaimed production designer, David Korins. The ultimate goal was to build-in a contemplative pulse that people could naturally attach to their own personal landscape; to connect, not only with the atrocity of concentration camps, but grasp how inhumane man can be when hate is paramount and emerge as a more enlightened individual.

As a response to the outpour of positive press and requests from festivals and institutions, USC Shoah Foundation will not only enter ‘The Last Goodbye’ into their official archive for generations to come, but feature the experience through an international museum tour. ‘The Last Goodbye’ will also be released publicly for the first time ever in May 2017 via Within, a premiere virtual reality platform that will allow users to experience it in room scale VR.