World War II, The Pope & Artificial Intelligence

The College of Business & Technology, the Center of Technology & Empowerment and the College of Arts & Sciences invite you to attend the first Halle Foundation Visiting Scholar presentation on Sept. 30 at 5 p.m. in the Magnolia Ballroom. Drs. Armin Stein and Katrin Bergener from the University of Munster in Munster, Germany, and Directors of the European Research Center for Information Systems, will present their AI and Digital Humanities research project.

Presentation Overview

During World War II, the German Nazi regime systematically organized and executed a genocide against the Jewish population. The National Socialists referred to the "Final Solution" ("Endlösung der Judenfrage") as a euphemism for their brutal policies. Initially, starting in 1939, this entailed the exclusion, disenfranchisement and expulsion of Jews. However, from 1941 onwards, under the pretext of legitimacy rooted in the German constitution, between 5.6 and 6.3 million Jews were murdered through mass killings, gas chambers, starvation and physical exhaustion.

Many Jews turned to the Catholic Church, specifically to Pope Pius XII, seeking guidance, shelter and advice. The Vatican archives contain 17,386 letters of request, totaling 56,329 pages of correspondence, mostly handwritten.

Our project breaks new ground by applying Artificial Intelligence and, for the first time, Process Mining techniques to analyze these historical documents. We aim to 1.) digitize, 2.) apply Optical Character Recognition and 3.) connect these letters to gain insight into the experiences and decision-making processes of individuals during this period. By leveraging Process Mining methods, we will uncover novel patterns, relationships and contextual information, providing historians with unprecedented insights into the Holocaust. This innovative approach has the potential to revolutionize the field of historical research and our understanding of this tragic event. In this presentation, we will discuss the initial stages of our project, which is currently in its startup phase, and explore the possibilities and challenges of using Process Mining in this unique and sensitive context.