Jason Isaacs to Front BBC Appeal for Holocaust VR Education

Actor Jason Isaacs, best known for his role as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter, will present this weekend’s BBC Radio 4 charity appeal in support of Holocaust education.

The 62-year-old Liverpool-born actor, who has long described himself as “profoundly Jewish but not in a religious way,” has become increasingly outspoken since October 7, often wearing a yellow hostage pin and speaking out against antisemitism.

Central to the BBC appeal is Isaacs’s meeting with 95-year-old Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, whose testimony has been preserved using revolutionary virtual reality technology. Goldberg’s life story is now the heart of Testimony 360, a project by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) that recently won the 2025 Charity Awards.

Born in Kassel, Germany, Goldberg was deported with his family to the Riga Ghetto in 1941. He survived slave labor, the liquidation of the ghetto, and over eight months in Stutthof concentration camp before liberation during a death march in May 1945.

Goldberg has since spent decades educating younger generations. Through Testimony 360, filmed with hundreds of cameras over five days and drawing on more than 1,000 recorded answers, he will continue to “speak” with students long after survivors are gone.

“Never during those dark days of the Holocaust did I ever imagine that one day I would see myself, and my story, immortalized in this way,” Goldberg said. “I have spoken to thousands of pupils over the years perhaps now I will make it millions.”

Students using VR headsets can not only ask Goldberg questions but also explore digital reconstructions of concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Stutthof, walking virtually through sites of Nazi persecution.

HET chief executive Karen Pollock emphasized the urgency of the work:
“Eighty years on from the end of the Holocaust, with survivors becoming fewer and frailer and with antisemitism at dangerously high levels, our mission is more urgent than ever.”

Isaacs has previously lent his voice to Holocaust education, narrating Out of the Darkness in 2021 and appearing in Jewish Care’s appeal films. By leading this BBC campaign, he hopes to ensure that voices like Goldberg’s will continue to be heard for generations.

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