In the computer game “Shadow Hunters”, prepared on the initiative of the Pilecki Institute in Berlin, players take on the role of prosecutors who begin their work in Flensburg in 1960. They must determine whether Heinz Reinefarth is guilty of the crimes he is accused of or not.
Since August 5, 1944, Reinefarth’s units took part in fights in Warsaw’s Wola district. As a result of the Nazi order to punish all citizens of Warsaw for the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, on August 5-7 of that year, according to different estimates, from 15 to 60 thousand Polish civilians were murdered in Wola. SS general Heinz Reinefarth, also known as the “Executioner of Warsaw” went unpunished after the war. He even became a member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament and mayor of Westerland.
“If the player succeeds, it could lead to Reinefarth’s conviction, but there are other options to end the game. The player moves around the city of Flensburg, interviews witnesses, and faces the hypocrisy of many German judges and prosecutors.” the Chief of the Pilecki Institute in Berlin explained to PAP.
As Radziejowska stresses, the game is about confronting oblivion and discovering the erased history.
We tried to go through the aforementioned game. It seems simple, but also engaging. The game builds tension with a limited time to get the criminal. “Shadow Hunters” requires us to make the right decisions and in addition, it has a huge educational value. We can find out, among other things, how the Warsaw Uprising looked like, why the denazification process turned out to be fiction and trace Reinefarth’s career after the war despite his infamous past.
PAP reports that “Shadow Hunters” refers to classic point&click adventure games. The above project was realized by GD Events on commission of the Pilecki Institute in Berlin, according to the conception of Hanna Radziejowska, Stanisław Niemojewski and Marcin Mitzner.
Pilecki Institute in Berlin plans an official premiere of the game for October this year. Nevertheless, the game is now available for free on www.dieschattenjaeger.de The game was released in two language versions – Polish and German.