Participants of the UCT Leadership group outside Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow, Poland. Schindler protected Jewish workers from deportation and death, including Tali Nates’s father and uncle.

Introduction

In recent years, we have been amply reminded that “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past”. Protests over statues and monuments have broadened debate about what is remembered and what is not. South Africa, along with much of the world, is grappling with how to confront difficult histories.

With this in mind, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town designed a student study tour of sites of Holocaust history and memory in Poland and Germany. How had both societies dealt with difficult pasts and the challenges of living with the legacies of dehumanisation, oppression, and violence? And what lessons could we apply to South Africa?

This exhibition is not a travelogue. Instead, it reflects on how the tour was experienced by a group of young South African leaders. It offers a glimpse into how learning about the Holocaust and its aftermath—as a history, as a warning, and as a demand for self-refection—can add perspective to the past and present in South Africa.