The POLIN Museum, in collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi, has reconstituted the voice of a Jewish woman who survived the Second World War in Warsaw. In a three-hour recording generated thanks to artificial intelligence, Stella Fidelseid talks about life in the Warsaw Ghetto in her own voice. Her three-hour account of the ghetto is available on the museum’s website.

Stefania Milenbach (Stella Fidelseid) was a 24-year-old Jewish woman at the time of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. She was one of the few to survive the uprising and the liquidation of the ghetto. Alone, cut off from the world by a wall, tormented by hunger, disease and fear, she had the choice of surrendering or fighting for her life despite the slim chances of survival. She stayed in the ruins of the ghetto until December 1943, when she crossed the wall and made her way to the so-called Aryan side.

We can listen to the harrowing account she wrote down thanks to artificial intelligence, which reconstructed the author’s voice. It was reconstructed on the basis of archival recordings from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, thanks to the family’s consent.

“Stella Fidelseid emigrated to Brazil after the war. Archival video recordings of her in Portuguese from 1997 have survived. “Based on them, we were able to start work on creating a digital version of the Polish voice”, says Michał Sęk, Chief Creative Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi.

The recordings can be listened to on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, which helps to delve deeper into the content of the memories. QR codes directing to the recording can be found on posters placed throughout December at ten bus stops. In January, the stories will be available to listen to on the project’s website.

Stella Fidelseid is one of the twelve heroines and protagonists of the exhibition ‘A Sea of Fire Around Us. The fate of Jewish civilians during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’. The exhibition evokes the memory of nearly 50,000 civilians hiding in the burning ghetto in 1943. It can be visited until 8 January 2024.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński