Over the last ten years, several projects have attempted to use virtual reality (VR) to develop simulations that transport users back to the sites of former concentration camps. In my presentation, I will analyse how the simulations attempt to generate a new form of witnessing, drawing on an understanding of VR as an empathy machine. In doing so, I will show how different discourses of memory culture have influenced the simulations, which remediations of other memory media can be found in them, and which methods are used to create presence and immersion. As I will elaborate, a simplified understanding of empathy is expressed in the VR experiences, according to which empathy is only possible through a mirroring of experiences. I will therefore argue that future VR experiences for Holocaust remembrance should be based on a more complex understanding of empathy, one that emphasises gaps in experience and historical alterity rather than attempting to overcome them.