The National Holocaust Centre and Museum has launched a new app based on its Kindertransport exhibition for primary children.

The Journey is an interactive story game in which participants take the role of Leo, a Jewish boy living in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938.

Marc Cave, chief executive of the Nottinghamshire-based centre, said “the content and channels of Holocaust education have got to keep pace with popular culture.

“Holocaust denial and revisionism flourishes on Facebook. Anti-Jewish tropes used by the Nazis are alive and well on Twitter. Yet too much Holocaust and indeed all forms of anti-racism education relies on staid delivery techniques. We have been fighting hate with a blackboard pointer.”

He hoped the app would combine “the traditional virtues of plot, character and good production values with the power of digital interactivity to put our audience right into the story themselves”.

The app was directed by Bright White, animated by Studio Liddell and built by D3T over a three-year period, with funding from the Arts Council and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Its Apple Store launch was marked with a series of NHC&M digital events for Refugee Week this week.

Ruth Barnett, a Kindertransport survivor, said the exhibition gave primary pupils “an experience of what life was like for children of their age at the time of Hitler’s Reich… The possibilities for a user of this app are many times greater than those in the exhibition.”