The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre

The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry
2023-02-23 21:00 - 22:30 UTC | Online
The 1st session will feature Dr. Robert Krell Discussion on Psychiatry and the Holocaust
Classrooms Without Borders, in coordination with Tali Nates, Founder and Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Madene Shachar, Director, “Talking Memory” online lecture series & International Educational Programs the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Esther Toporek Finder, member of the GSI Coordinating Council, Generations of the Shoah and in partnership with Liberation75 is pleased to embark on this new innovative series “The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry”.
This 8-part series will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.
In the first session, Dr. Robert Krell will discuss Psychiatry and the Holocaust, moderated by Tali Nates.
Dr. Robert Krell was born in Holland and survived the Holocaust in hiding. The Krell family moved to Vancouver, Canada where he obtained an MD from the University of British Columbia and eventually became professor of psychiatry. Dr. Krell was Director of Child Psychiatry and also treated Holocaust survivors and their families as well as Dutch survivors of Japanese concentration camps. He has authored and co-edited ten books, twenty-one book chapters and over fifty journal articles. His memoir Sounds from Silence: Reflections of a Child Holocaust Survivor, Psychiatrist and Teacher was published in 2021.
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JHGC Open Day
2023-02-26 14:00 - 16:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda with Dr Nicole Fox
2023-02-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
In the wake of unthinkable atrocities, it is reasonable to ask how any population can move on from the experience of genocide. Simply remembering the past can, in the shadow of mass death, be re-traumatising. So how can such momentous events be memorialised in a way that is productive and even healing for survivors? Nicole Fox’s 2021 book After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press) investigates such questions through extensive interviews with survivors decades after mass violence has ended. After Genocide reveals the relationship survivors have to memorial spaces and uncovers those voices silenced by the dominant narrative—arguing that the erasure of such stories is an act of violence itself.
Nicole Fox, Ph.D., research centres on how racial and ethnic contention impacts communities, including how remembrances of adversity shape social change, collective memory and present-day social movements. She is a professor of criminal justice at California State University Sacramento where she teaches about atrocity crimes, mass incarceration, global criminology and law. Her 2021 book, After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Genocide, focuses on how memorials to past atrocity shape healing, community development and reconciliation for survivors of genocide and genocidal rape. Her most recent project examines bystander intervention, with an emphasis on individuals who conducted acts of rescue during times of social unrest and political violence. Her scholarship has been published in Social Problems, Signs, Social Forces, Deviant Behavior, the Journal for Scientific Study of Religion, Sociological Forum, Societies without borders, among others. Her work has generously been supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Grant, the National Science Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, University of New Hampshire’s Prevention Innovation Research Center, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Society’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline and others. She also serves on the United Nations Economic and Social Council and contributes to the UN Commission for the Status of Women held annually at the UN headquarters.
Booking essential to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Closed Workshop: Teaching and Learning about Genocide
2023-03-01 14:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The complexity of history and memories of Auschwitz
When we talk about Auschwitz today as a memorial site we need to remember that this is a place where many different memories coexist. This is the result of a very complex history of the German Nazi camp. Initially the prisoners and victims of the camp were Poles. Among its prisoners were also Jews, Roma, Soviet POWs and prisoners of other nationalities and minorities. From 1942 the camp became one of the places of the extermination of European Jews and Roma People. Most of the Jews deported to Auschwitz were murdered in gas chambers immediately after arrival. The presentation will discuss different aspects of Auschwitz as a site important to many different groups of people, as well as present new research done by the historians of the Museum about crucial aspects of development of the camp and its two functions: concentration camp and an extermination centre.
When we talk about Auschwitz today as a memorial site we need to remember that this is a place where many different memories coexist. This is the result of a very complex history of the German Nazi camp. The presentation will discuss different aspects of Auschwitz as a site important to many different groups of people, as well as present new research done by the historians of the Museum about crucial aspects of development of the camp and its two functions: concentration camp and an extermination centre.
Pawel Sawicki
Paweł Sawicki, a press officer & educator at the Auschwitz Memorial. He is responsible for the social media activity of the Memorial that is followed on different platforms by over 2 million people. The editor-in-chief of the monthly online magazine Memoria & coordinator of the “Auschwitz. Not far away. Not long ago” exhibition project on behalf of the Museum. Co-author of the “On Auschwitz” podcast & author of the photo album “Auschwitz-Birkenau. The place where you are standing…” that compares 1944 images from Auschwitz II-Birkenau with the authentic site of the Memorial today. A photographer and a former radio journalist. For several years in Polish Radio 2 he authored a documentary feature series “Auschwitz – between crime and sanctity” that used the audio testimonies from the Auschwitz Memorial Archives.
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Teaching about Genocide and Propaganda: A Conversation on Pedagogical Tools and Strategies
This interactive workshop will draw upon primary sources and scientific research that demonstrates how propaganda during war and conflict is used to create a culture of fear and paranoia that can escalate to mass violence. During the workshop we will analyse how propaganda’s clear messages promise clarity, relevance, and benefits, while dehumanising the target population. Participants will have the opportunity to both learn the material and explore a variety of pedagogical tools including hands-on and application-centred classroom activities that keep students engaged and impacted with the content. Participants will walk away with a clear understanding of how to share the knowledge learned, equipped with pedagogical tools and strategies to teach students about the role of propaganda in genocide.
Nicole Fox
Nicole Fox, Ph.D., research centres on how racial and ethnic contention impacts communities, including how remembrances of adversity shape social change, collective memory and present-day social movements. She is a professor of criminal justice at California State University Sacramento where she teaches about atrocity crimes, mass incarceration, global criminology and law. Her 2021 book, After Genocide: Memory and Reconciliation in Genocide, focuses on how memorials to past atrocity shape healing, community development and reconciliation for survivors of genocide and genocidal rape. Her most recent project examines bystander intervention, with an emphasis on individuals who conducted acts of rescue during times of social unrest and political violence. Her scholarship has been published in Social Problems, Signs, Social Forces, Deviant Behavior, the Journal for Scientific Study of Religion, Sociological Forum, Societies without borders, among others. Her work has generously been supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Grant, the National Science Foundation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, University of New Hampshire’s Prevention Innovation Research Center, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Society for the Study of Social Problems and the American Sociological Society’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline and others. She also serves on the United Nations Economic and Social Council and contributes to the UN Commission for the Status of Women held annually at the UN headquarters.

Seeing Auschwitz Walkabout with Paweł Sawicki
2023-03-02 17:30 - 19:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Paweł Sawicki is a press officer and an educator at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Memorial. He is responsible for the Memorial’s social media, which is followed by over 2 million people on different platforms. He is also the editor-in-chief of the monthly online magazine Memoria & coordinator of the “Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away” exhibition project on behalf of the Museum. Sawicki is the co-host of the “On Auschwitz” podcast, and creator of the photo album “Auschwitz-Birkenau. The place where you are standing…” that compares 1944 images from Auschwitz II-Birkenau with the authentic site of the Memorial today. He is a photographer and a former radio journalist, having worked for several years on Polish Radio 2 and created a documentary feature series “Auschwitz – between crime and sanctity” that used the audio testimonies from the Auschwitz Memorial Archives.
Booking essential to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

The Symbolism of Auschwitz with Paweł Sawicki
2023-03-02 19:00 - 21:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Auschwitz is not only a Memorial Site. It is also a significant element of our civilisation. The word Auschwitz has become a distinctive symbol of terror, genocide and the Shoah. It became a synonym for the greatest fall of humanity’s value system. The presentation will delve into the complex history of the camp and its contemporary role as a symbol of the crimes committed during the war. It will examine the ongoing efforts of the Memorial created in 1947 to preserve the site as a historical monument and educate future generations about the dangers of hateful ideologies and the need for moral responsibility. In addition to showing the most important element of the mission of the Memorial, the presentation will also discuss the challenges of social media and new technologies in the work of such a sensitive and important site.
Paweł Sawicki is a press officer and an educator at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Memorial. He is responsible for the Memorial’s social media, which is followed by over 2 million people on different platforms. He is also the editor-in-chief of the monthly online magazine Memoria & coordinator of the “Auschwitz: Not Long Ago, Not Far Away” exhibition project on behalf of the Museum. Sawicki is the co-host of the “On Auschwitz” podcast, and creator of the photo album “Auschwitz-Birkenau. The place where you are standing…” that compares 1944 images from Auschwitz II-Birkenau with the authentic site of the Memorial today. He is a photographer and a former radio journalist, having worked for several years on Polish Radio 2 and created a documentary feature series “Auschwitz – between crime and sanctity” that used the audio testimonies from the Auschwitz Memorial Archives.
Booking essential to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

The JHGC Book Club
2023-03-03 10:00 - 12:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa

Betrayed: Child Sex Abuse and the Holocaust
2023-03-12 20:00 - 22:00 | Online
Guest Speaker: Dr. Beverley Chalmers
Although rarely mentioned, sexual assault of children during the Holocaust occurred far more often than we would like to acknowledge. Children were sexually abused in ghettos, camps, on transit trains, while in hiding, and even when sent to safety outside Europe. They were betrayed by the Nazis, their rescuers, their peers, by those who discounted their experiences after the war, and by Holocaust scholars who do not acknowledge these events and prefer to keep this a closely guarded secret. The challenges involved in studying child sex abuse during the Holocaust will be addressed. Issues relating to maintaining confidentiality, and the value of testimony if it is not made available for study, will be considered. Seeking methods that allow researchers to access and report on such sensitive testimonies remains an essential task if we are to acknowledge the full extent of women’s and children’s lives and honour their experiences.
This programme is in partnership with the Remember the Women Institute, Women in the Holocaust – International Study Center (MORESHET), Wagner College Holocaust Center, Classrooms Without Borders, Rabin Chair Forum Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.
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82nd Commemoration of the Jewish Deportation to Mauritius
2023-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Online
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre in partnership with the Beau Bassin Jewish Detainees Memorial & Information Centre, the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Ghetto Fighters House invite you to join us online for the 82nd Commemoration of the deportation of Jews to Mauritius.
The official programme includes a keynote address delivered by Ghetto Fighters House Archive Manager, Anat Bratman-Elhalel on the Mauritius Exile Collection, a short testimony by Shlomo Handel, and a candle lighting ceremony.
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Guided Tour of "Seeing Auschwitz" Exhibition
2023-03-15 14:00 - 15:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Book your free guided tour with dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za or by calling 011 640 3100 to book your spot!
This 90-minute guided tour is free of charge.

Guided Tour of Exhibition "Seeing Auschwitz"
2023-03-21 11:00 - 12:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa

An evening with Simon Sebag Montefiore
2023-03-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Jonathan Ball Publishers and The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre invite you to an evening with Simon Sebag Montefiore. The acclaimed historian and bestselling author of Stalin: The Court Of The Red Tsar, Jerusalem: The Biography, Young Stalin and The Romanovs, will be in conversation with author and journalist, Terry Shakinovsky, to discuss his latest book The World: A Family History. The story of humanity from prehistory to the present day, told through the one thing all humans have in common: family.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a bestselling writer whose books have been published in forty-eight languages and who has won prizes for both his history and novels. He is the author of the acclaimed Moscow Trilogy of novels Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon, and One Night in Winter. One Night in Winter won the Political Novel of the Year Prize (UK) and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize (UK). Catherine the Great and Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the History Book of the Year Prize at the British Book Awards. Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award (UK), the LA Times Book Prize for Biography (US), Le Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique (France) and the Kreisky Prize for Political Literature (Austria). Jerusalem: The Biography was number one non-fiction Sunday Times bestseller and a global bestseller and won The Book of the Year Prize from the Jewish Book Council (US). It also won the Wen Jin Prize in China awarded by the National Library of China, and to date, the book has sold almost 600,000 copies in Chinese. The Romanovs, 1613-1918 has been a bestseller all over the world including being a New York Times top ten bestseller, and won Lupicaia del Terriccio Literature Prize (Italy). His latest book is The World: a Family History.
He has written and presented five BBC TV series on Jerusalem, Rome, Istanbul (‘Byzantium: a tale of three cities’), Spain (‘Blood and Gold’) and Vienna. He read history at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, where he received his Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Buckingham, he lives in London. Dr Montefiore regularly lectures around the world on history, Russia and the Middle East, and on subjects such as leadership and revolution.
RSVP essential to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Achieving Legal Accountability for WWII Nazi Crimes
2023-03-23 21:00 - 22:30 | Online
“The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry” is an 8-part series that will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.
Eli M. Rosenbaum, will be talking about some of his experiences prosecuting Nazis in the US. He will explore some of the challenges with which the US Department of Justice has had to deal, such as finding documents, witnesses, and more; years and decades after the crimes were committed, in another country and continent.
Eli M. Rosenbaum is the longest serving investigator and prosecutor of Nazi war criminals and other human rights violators in world history. Since 2010, he has served as Director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP).
In June 2022, he was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to serve concurrently as Counselor for War Crimes Accountability, tasked with coordinating efforts across the Justice Department and with other federal agencies and authorities abroad to hold accountable persons responsible for war crimes and other atrocities committed in Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Those efforts are spearheaded by DOJ’s newly created War Crimes Accountability Team, which he heads and which draws on the extensive expertise of HRSP staff, supplemented by contributions of professionals in other Justice Department components. A veteran 37-year Justice Department prosecutor, Rosenbaum served initially as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), eventually serving as OSI’s Director from 1995 to 2010, when OSI was merged into the newly created HRSP. OSI was responsible for identifying, investigating, and taking legal action against perpetrators of World War II-era Nazi crimes of persecution, and its mission was later expanded to include persons complicit in human rights crimes committed in post-WWII conflicts. He is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned undergraduate and MBA degrees, and Harvard Law School. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award and the “Heroes in Blue” award of the Anti-Defamation League.
Dr. Tamir Hod will explore the Israel Police Unit for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes – Holocaust Survivors’ Legal Retribution. In 1958, the Central Office of Judicial Administration for the investigation of Nazi crimes was established in Germany. Documenting the actions of Nazi criminals in preparation for their trial brought the bureau’s representatives to contact the Israeli Police in order to help them gather evidence from Holocaust survivors residing in the country. Consequently, a police unit was needed to deal with the increasing number of inquiries from Germany. For that purpose, the unit for the investigation of Nazi crimes was established in the Israeli Police. Two years later, Adolf Eichmann was captured and brought to Israel. This event deeply affected the sentiments of Israeli society toward the Holocaust. One of the impacts was Holocaust survivors who contacted the unit requesting to provide their testimonies.
Many of the appeals included names of Nazi criminals who could potentially be located and prosecuted. The special police unit comprised almost completely of Holocaust survivors. The survivors played an important role in collecting and documenting the historical records available to us today. Many of the unit members had lost their families in the Holocaust. It may be conjectured that they sought vengeance upon those who committed the crimes. Nonetheless, if indeed they had such feelings, they were translated into long hours of detailed legal work that would lead to proper legal procedures through which it would be possible to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Dr. Tamir Hod is a historian in the field of World War II and the Holocaust, as well as the impact of Holocaust remembrance on Israeli society. The topic of his doctoral thesis was the Demjanjuk trial case in Israel, under the guidance of Prof. Hanna Yablonka. Dr. Hod researched the role the Ukrainian collaborators played in the Treblinka extermination camp. These days, Tamir is working on a book about the Nazi Crimes Investigations Unit in the Israeli Police. The unit, which was founded in 1960, was mainly composed of Holocaust survivors and contributed greatly to various trials in different places around the world against Nazi criminals and their collaborators. Dr. Tamir Hod teaches at Tel Hai Academic College and Western Galilee Academic College.
This programme is in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Generations of the Shoah, and Liberation75.
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Victimisation of Jewish Women Survivors by their Soviet Liberators
2023-03-26 20:00 - 21:30 | Online
Dr. Eglitis’s lecture discusses the occurrence of sexual violence during the liberation, specifically the assaults carried out by Soviet Army liberators against Jewish female survivors. Testimonies and memoirs reveal that some Soviet troops perceived surviving Nazi captivity as evidence of complicity, which fueled a desire for revenge, leading soldiers to seek payment for freedom from women survivors. Evidence from these sources also highlights ongoing brutality against survivors who sought to return home to the USSR, including Soviet filtration camps.
This programme is in collaboration with Ghetto Fighters House, Remember the Women Institute, Women in the Holocaust – International Study Centre (MORESHET), Wagner College Holocaust Centre, Classrooms Without Borders, Rabin Chair Forum Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.
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Kwibuka29
2023-04-12 14:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The High Commission of the Republic of Rwanda in South Africa in partnership with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre invites you to join us in marking the 29th commemoration of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
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Film Screening: "The Stateless Diplomat" - Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
2023-04-23 15:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
In honour of the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Armenian Youth of South Africa invite you to join us for a screening of the acclaimed film, The Stateless Diplomat (2018), and a virtual Q&A with the director, and great-grandaughter of Diana Apcar, Mimi Malayan.
The Stateless Diplomat explores the life of Diana Apcar, an Armenian woman who helped build an international business across Southeast Asia. Faced with the horrors of the Armenian Genocide, Diana fought tirelessly to find sympathy and support for the victims of her ancestral home.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Why Should We Care? The Holocaust and Public Humanities with Professor Björn Krondorfer
2023-04-27 20:00 - 22:00 | Online
3rd session of The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry
“The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry” is an 8-part series that will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.
Professor Bjorn Krondorfer will discuss his experiences with Public Humanities projects that help connect students, teachers and the general public to connect to the history and legacy of the Holocaust.
Prof. Krondorfer is Regents’ Professor and the Director of the Martin-Springer Institute at Northern Arizona University. As Endowed Professor of Religious Studies, he also teaches in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies. His field of expertise is religion, gender, and culture, and (post-) Holocaust and reconciliation studies. His scholarship helped to define the field of Critical Men’s Studies in Religions. . He has curated the art exhibitions Wounded Landscapes (2014) and Echoes of Loss: Artistic Responses to Trauma (2018). In 2019, he has been awarded a one-month residential fellowship at the Santa Fe Art Institute on the theme of “truth and reconciliation.”
This programme is in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Generations of the Shoah, and Liberation75.
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Film Screening: Red Land
2023-05-07 15:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
A film by Maximiliano Hernando Bruno that concentrates on Istria after the armistice of 8 September 1943. Norma Cossetto emerges as a key figure – a young Istrian woman, daughter of a fascist official, student of the University of Padua, barbarically raped and murdered by Tito’s partisans – chosen for this brutal crime only because she was guilty of being Italian.
The film screening will be preceded by a virtual address by Dr Stefano Pilotto, Professor of International Relations at the MIB Trieste School of Management.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Art workshop with Elias Mendel: Touching the Archive
2023-05-17 10:00 - 12:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
A creative engagement with your family stories
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Sylt Foundation, and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung invite you to an interactive art workshop and memory discussion with artist Elias Mendel. The workshop will include a guided tour of his current exhibition, Letters to Yesterday – a collection of work that examines the artist’s German Jewish history through his interventions in an extensive family archive. This will be followed with the opportunity to explore your own family archive through a creative engagement with bought material.
Please bring a story, song, recipe or photo from your family – something that reminds you of ‘home’- to work with.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

International Museum Day 2023 tour of the JHGC permanent and temporary exhibitions
2023-05-18 12:30 - 14:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
In celebration of International Museum Day 2023, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre is offering a free tour of our permanent and temporary exhibitions.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

“Holocaust Cinema: How ‘A Film Unfinished’ Questions Archival Footage” with Annette Insdorf
2023-05-18 20:00 - 22:00 | Online
4th programme in the series ‘The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry’
“The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry” is an 8 part series that will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.
The growing genre of Holocaust Cinema includes films made by members of the third generation of survivors in Israel. Annette Insdorf will discuss two exemplary documentaries: “Numbered” (2012, Dana Doron & Uriel Sinai, Israel, 55 minutes) focuses on the tattoos of Auschwitz survivors – who view their numbers in unique ways – as well as the process of recording and representing survivors. “A Film Unfinished” is directed by Yael Hersonski (2010, Israel, 88 minutes). She juxtaposes archival footage of the Warsaw Ghetto – taken by Nazis throughout May 1942 – with a contemporary interrogation of whether images can be trusted.
Annette Insdorf is Professor of Film at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and Moderator of the popular “Reel Pieces” series at Manhattan’s 92Y, where she has interviewed almost 300 film celebrities. She is the author of the landmark study, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (with a foreword by Elie Wiesel); Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski; Francois Truffaut, a study of the French director’s work; Philip Kaufman, and Intimations: The Cinema of Wojciech Has. Her latest book is Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes, currently in its fourth printing.
This programme is in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Generations of the Shoah, and Liberation75.
Click here to register.

Elias Mendel's "Letters to Yesterday"
2023-05-21 14:30 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join the JHGC and Sylt Foundation for a talk by Elias Mendel about his art and creative process, and a presentation of his artworks made throughout his residency with the Sylt Foundation in May 2023.
This collection of work examines the artist’s German Jewish history through his interventions in an extensive family archive. In recent years Elias and his father Gideon Mendel have become the custodians of a vast collection of documents, letters, objects, and photographs.
In response to the uncovering of his family history, Mendel embarked on a photographic interrogation of Germany’s Holocaust memorial culture. This journey through personal family history is multifaceted and tragic. It deals with the spaces in between: the silences, the complications, and the unspoken. This is a story of one family but is a universal tale, written in different languages, in various documents, across disparate continents and fractured peoples.
This archive traces the Mendel family history in Germany – from the 18th Century through to the Franco-Prussian War, the First World War, bourgeois life in the Weimar Republic, the Holocaust – and then life in apartheid-era South Africa.
Elias Mendel is a London-based multidisciplinary artist working across mediums of photography, animation, and drawing. His practice delves into identity, migration, and generational trauma, and emerges from his own personal family archive.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Special Talking Memory programme marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
2023-05-21 20:00 - 22:00 | Online
The webinar will include a round table discussion about Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Israel with guest speakers: Tamar Herzberg from Yad Mordechai, Noam Leibman from Moreshet, and Anat Bratman-Elhalel from Ghetto Fighters’ House.
This will be followed by keynote speaker, Dr. Avinoam Patt discussing The Battle of Warsaw’s Jews: The Afterlife of the Revolt.
On April 23, 1943, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency delivered the news of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt, relaying a report received in Stockholm the day before with the headline “Nazis Start Mass-Execution of Warsaw Jews on Passover; Victims Broadcast S.O.S.” The timing of the revolt, taking place in the spring of 1943, the deadliest year of WWII for European Jewry, influenced the manner in which it was reported, interpreted, and understood. Through an examination of the ways in which the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was reported in April and May of 1943, we can begin to understand how and why the event was transformed into both a symbol of Jewish resistance, Jewish sacrifice, and Jewish martyrdom during and after World War II. Soon after the revolt was suppressed in May 1943, representatives from the Jewish Labor Bund in New York and the Zionist movement in the Yishuv began to dispute both the heroes of the revolt and its true political and ideological significance. While historians have generally seen the politicisation of the revolt occurring after the war, with the first encounter of the survivors with their new homes, the polemics of 1944 between the Bund and the Labor Zionists (with the role of the Revisionists left out of early narratives) makes clear that within one year of the revolt, the battle for credit in Jewish public opinion meant the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was too great a symbol to relinquish to the political enemy. By the first anniversary after the Uprising (April 19, 1944) Jewish communities organized solemn commemorations in New York, London, Tel Aviv and elsewhere to recall Warsaw as a “fortress of freedom” and as the “Masada of Warsaw.” Responding to this politicization during the war, it was the surviving ghetto fighters themselves who would play a critical role in writing their own “three lines in history.”
This programme is in partnership with the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv, Moreshet Holocaust & Research Centre, Yad Mordechai Museum,
Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.
Click here to register.

Book Launch: Winnie & Nelson Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg
2023-05-25 18:30 - 20:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Jonathan Ball Publishers, and Book Dealers for a launch of Jonny Steinberg’s newest book Winnie & Nelson Portrait of a Marriage. The scholar and award-winning author of Midlands and The Number, will be in conversation with Professor and researcher at WISER Hlonipha Mokoena, about his latest book.
Jonny Steinberg (born 22 March 1970) is a South African writer and scholar. He is the author of several books about everyday life in the wake of South Africa’s transition to democracy. Two of them, Midlands (2002), about the murder of a white South African farmer, and The Number (2004), a biography of a prison gangster, won the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. In 2013, Steinberg was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize.
About the book: One of the most celebrated political leaders of our time, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealised version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband’s politics.
Behind his back, she was trying to orchestrate an armed seizure of power, a path he feared would lead to an endless war. Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique marriage – its longings, its obsessions, its deceits – making South African history a page-turning political biography.
Winnie and Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t affect just the couple at its centre, but an entire nation. It is also a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution, such as whether to seek retribution or a negotiated peace.
Steinberg reveals, with power and tender emotional insight, how far these forever-entwined leaders would go for each other and where they drew the line. For in the end, both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a struggle to define anti-apartheid policy itself.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

"I am Ella" Book Launch at Issy’s Café and Gifts
2023-05-28 12:00 - 14:00 | Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop, 1 Duncombe Road, Forest Town, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Kwela Books, and Issy’s Coffee & Gifts invite you to join author Joanne Jowell in conversation with third generation Holocaust survivor Courtneigh Cloud Bernstein, in launching I am Ella.
Ella Blumenthal’s story of surviving the Holocaust and building a new life in faraway South Africa is a lesson in resilience, attitude and – perhaps unexpectedly – joy. From the dying embers of the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps; from Poland to Paris, Palestine and eventually Cape Town; from stateless refugee to community pillar, Ella’s 100 years of life have been nothing short of herculean. “I am Ella” is the staggering tale of a real-life superheroine.
Joanne Jowell is the author of the bestselling biographies, On the Other Side of Shame: An Extraordinary Account of Adoption and Reunion (Macmillan, 2008) and Zephany: Two mothers, one daughter. An astonishing true story (Tafelberg, 2019). She lives in Cape Town with her husband and three children. I am Ella: A remarkable story of survival, from Auschwitz to Africa is her seventh book.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Reckonings | Film Screening
2023-05-30 18:30 - 20:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
It’s been said that it felt as if the souls of the six million who were murdered during the Holocaust were in the room with them when the meetings began. They met in secret to negotiate the unthinkable – compensation for the survivors of the largest mass genocide the world had ever known. Survivors were in urgent need of help, but how could reparations be determined for the unprecedented destruction of a people and atrocities suffered by millions? Reckonings explores this fascinating true story set in the aftermath of the Holocaust and leading to the ground-breaking Luxembourg Agreements of 1952.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Roberta Grossman (Who Will Write Our History) and commissioned by the German Ministry of Finance and the Claims Conference, the film is the first documentary feature to chronicle the harrowing process of negotiating German reparations for the Jewish people. It takes viewers from the halls of power in Bonn, West Germany, where fierce debate raged over how to pay wartime debts, to the streets of Jerusalem, where horror about any talks with Germany led to violent protests and a mob storming the Knesset. It profiles Jewish and German leaders who risked their lives to meet in a hidden castle near the Hague to negotiate the impossible . It captures the anger on one side, the shame on the other, and the anguish for all as talks broke down and failure seemed imminent. And it honours the behind-the-scenes figures who forged ahead to continue negotiations, knowing the compensation would never be enough but hoping it could at least be an acknowledgement, a recognition and a step toward healing.
Filmed in six countries and featuring new interviews with Holocaust survivors, world-renowned scholars and dignitaries and the last surviving member of the negotiating delegations, Reckonings powerfully illustrates how political will and a moral imperative can join forces to bridge an impossible divide. By confronting the past, the German and Jewish leaders charted a better future for a desperate and traumatised people. Their actions led to the first time in history that individual victims of persecution received material compensation from the perpetrators.
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Members only walkabout of Eva’s Story: The Promise (closed event)
2023-06-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre invites you to an exclusive walkabout of our returning temporary exhibition Eva’s Story: The Promise led by JHGC Founder and Director, Tali Nates, with video testimony by Eva Schloss.
You are invited to explore the story of Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss and her brother Heinz and his artwork. Born in Vienna in 1929, Eva’s family fled after the Anschluss to Holland and after it too was occupied, went into hiding. During his time in hiding, Heinz quelled his fears by writing poetry and painting. They were all betrayed and deported to Auschwitz. Eva and her mother survived but her father and brother were killed just weeks before liberation.
Please note that this event is only open to JHGC Members, contact Shirley Sapire on shirley@jhbholocaust.co.za before the event to find out more about membership.
RSVP to shirley@jhbholocaust.co.za

Ethics and Education as Practices of Freedom with Professor Pedro Tabensky
2023-06-06 18:30 - 20:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Adolf Eichmann was a good careerist and a terrible human being. He understood what was demanded of him to succeed professionally in his time. But as Hannah Arendt famously put it in her report on his trial in Jerusalem, he was thoughtless; the inner dialogue central to agential existence was largely absent from his life. Had he been born today, he may have become a successful CEO, banker, politician, or whatnot.
I will argue that mainstream educational institutions globally, and South Africa is no exception, are fostering the mass production of potential mini-Eichmanns. Why so? Because they are, for the most part, training individuals to cater to the needs of the status quo thoughtlessly. We must reconsider what it means to be truly educated. Following John Dewey and others, I will argue that education is the practice of freedom. Eichmann may have been good at making the trains run on time, but he lived a machine-like existence, lacking the reflective capacities that make us truly human.
Pedro Tabensky was born in Santiago, Chile, to refugee parents. His mother is a Holocaust survivor born in Hungary two weeks before the final stage of the final solution. His father, of Polish Jewish ancestry, is a refugee of the Chinese revolution. He has lived a peripatetic life since the age of three, ending up in South Africa in 2001 and meeting his wife, with whom he has two children. Tabensky is the founding director of the Allan Gray Centre for Leadership Ethics (AGLE), Department of Philosophy, Rhodes University (South Africa). He is the author of Happiness: Personhood, Community, Purpose and of several articles and book chapters. Tabensky is also the editor of and contributor to Judging and Understanding: Essays on Free Will, Narrative, Meaning and the Ethical Limits of Condemnation; The Positive Function of Evil; and, coedited with Sally Matthews (his wife), Being at Home: Race, Institutional Culture and Transformation at South African Higher Education Institutions. He has a book, published in 2023 by Routledge, titled Fanon and Camus on the Algerian Question: An Ethics of Rebellion, and is commencing work on another book provisionally titled Ethics and Education as Practices of Freedom coming out with Lexington, probably in 2026.
RSVP: dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

Uncovering Memory - Book Launch
2023-06-11 12:00 - 14:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Uncovering Memory: Filming in South Africa, Germany, Poland and Bosnia/Herzegovina
How can we remember events that we have not experienced but are somehow intertwined in our DNA? How can we go back to actual places of memory and engage with the act of remembering? How can we make the invisible memory that is locked in space and place visible? Hence the tool, the camera. How can we use a still or moving image to translate our experiences, emotions and interactions with the past?
Uncovering Memory is about the role of film in memory and remembering, and how to uncover memories. It takes you on a journey of interactions with historical, political, cultural and personal memory.
Tanja Sakota is an artistic researcher, writer, filmmaker and Associate Professor at the School of Arts, Film and Television Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Terry Kurgan is an artist and a writer based in Johannesburg. Her book, Everyone is Present, was shortlisted for the Photo Arles Book Prize (in France, 2019), selected as a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards (New York, 2019) and won South Africa’s premier non-fiction literary prize, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award (2019).
RSVP to dowi@jhbholocaust.co.za

German Professionals and the Holocaust with Dr. William Frederick Meinecke Jr.
2023-06-15 20:00 - 21:30 | Online
5th programme in the series ‘The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry’:
German Professionals and the Holocaust with Dr. William Frederick Meinecke Jr.
“The Holocaust as an Interdisciplinary Tapestry” is an 8-part series that will engage with scholars and experts who grapple with themes related to Holocaust studies. The series will explore the multifaceted discipline of Holocaust Studies through different lenses. Our experts will challenge us to understand the causes, impacts, and legacies of the Holocaust.
The most significant perpetrators of the crimes committed during the Holocaust are well known: Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, as well as the SS, among others. But less known are the contributions of “ordinary” people—doctors, lawyers, teachers, civil servants, officers, and other professionals throughout German society—whose individual actions, when taken together, resulted in dire consequences. Put simply, the Holocaust could not have happened without them. This programme will explore the motives and contribution of ordinary German professionals and their contribution to the Nazi racial agenda and to Nazi crimes.
William Frederick Meinecke Jr holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland at College Park. The title of his dissertation was, Conflicting Loyalties: The Supreme Court in Weimar and Nazi Germany 1918-1945. In 1992, he joined the staff of the Wexner Learning Centre of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, working on a number of programmes and books. In June 2000 he joined the staff of Museum’s Education Division. For the last twenty years Meinecke Jr has worked with law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors and attorneys in the Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust training programme. He is currently working in the Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education on programming for the Initiative on the Holocaust and Professional Leadership.
This programme is in partnership with Classrooms Without Borders, Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Ghetto Fighters’ House, Generations of the Shoah, and Liberation75.
Register Here.
