Cape Holocaust Centre celebrates quarter century of education

Twenty-five years ago Holocaust education didn’t exist in South Africa. Today, it’s an integral part of the national school curriculum, with thousands of pupils and educators visiting the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre (CTHGC) and its sister centres in Johannesburg and Durban each year, and hundreds of workshops training teachers in Holocaust education across the country.

This is due to the vision and insight of CTHGC founder Myra Osrin. A quarter of a century ago, she helped bring an Anne Frank exhibition to South Africa, which toured the country for 18 months. Afterwards, teachers and students kept asking for more. “I realised a Holocaust centre could be of great value to South Africans,” recalled Osrin at an event on 7 August celebrating 25 years of the CTHGC’s role in promoting respect for diversity through education.

It was around that time that Osrin became aware of two “non-Jewish brothers building the first Holocaust centre in the United Kingdom”. Curious, she headed to London and then took “an hour and 20-minute train ride that would change my life”. That journey took her to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Memorial Museum in Nottinghamshire, England. It was there that she found the sons of a Methodist minister, James and Stephen Smith, along with their mother, Marina, who had visited Yad Vashem in 1991 and were so stunned by what they learned that they decided to build a centre that not only memorialised the Holocaust but taught its lessons for humanity.

It was at this point that the Smiths joined forces with the “unstoppable” Myra Osrin, in the words of Stephen Smith, who played an integral role in the creation of the CTHGC and became its patron. Smith went on to become executive director of Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, among his many other roles in Holocaust and genocide education. He joined the CTHGC in celebrating its quarter century of making an immeasurable impact on the lives of South Africans. Today, about 556 000 people have visited the CTHGC, including members of the public, pupils, teachers, civil servants, police, military personnel, businesspeople, activists, and professionals.

Infusing his address with Jewish imagery, Smith began by reflecting on how, “In the book of Genesis, when G-d calls out to Abraham, he responds with a single word: ‘hineni’ [here am I]. Twenty-five years ago, a vision took root in this place when Myra Osrin answered the call and said, ‘Hineni – here am I.’ With her answer to that call came a vision of remembrance, of education, a vision that has grown and flourished.”

He noted that 25 years later, “We have witnessed an entire generation grow. The 15-year-olds who first walked through these doors are now 40. Now their own children come here. These children were born into freedom and democracy, and so it’s here that they understand more about the price of freedom, the vigilance it requires, and the responsibility it bestows upon them.”

He said “hineni” also means “we are here to bear witness”, and paid tribute to the Capetonian Holocaust survivors who have dedicated themselves to sharing their harrowing stories.

He recalled that in 1999, Osrin asked him to interview three survivors in one day: Miriam Lichterman, Henia Bryer, and Pinchas Gutter. “Three families, three homes, almost identical trajectories through the Warsaw ghetto and Majdanek,” said Smith. “That night, I sat on my balcony in Sea Point feeling destroyed. I had always encountered one story at a time. Three was unbearable. That’s when I truly understood that I would never understand.” And yet, he continues to try to understand every day.

That was also when he first met Gutter, who now lives in Canada. “Since then, Pinchas has been my friend, my mentor, my journeyman,” said Smith. “During my recent conversion to Judaism, Pinchas guided me, meeting every Sunday to study the weekly biblical portion. Our friendship, rooted in this place, continues to grow and flourish. It stands as a testament to the power of this centre to forge connections across generations, across experiences, across the divides that too often separate us.”

Said Smith, “The CTHGC asks us to explore what we learn from those who kill. What we learn from those who save. What we learn from those who forgive. The lessons of the Holocaust aren’t confined to one time, one place, or one group of people. They are universal lessons about the fragility of democracy, the dangers of hatred, the responsibility we all share to stand up for human dignity and human rights.”

His thoughts were echoed by Konstanty Gebert, a Polish journalist and a Jewish activist, who recalled the story of a Rwandan genocide survivor who put up pictures of the Holocaust in his apartment and asked his community to come to his home to learn about it. “He was saying, ‘It didn’t only happen to us’,” said Gebert. Recognising each other’s pain allows people to “understand the dramatic history of others”, which is why a centre like the CTHGC plays such an important role in shaping the future.

Ellen Germain, the United States special envoy for Holocaust issues, said it was “an education to be here”, and that the CTHGC’s “dual role of a memorial and an education centre is even more vital today”. Her office is witnessing “the largest rise of disinformation and misinformation” the world has ever seen, and social media and artificial intelligence have created confusion about the world in the mind of the average person. “That’s why it’s so important that facts are protected in institutions like the CTHGC, which also teaches critical thinking,” Germain said. “We need to help our youth become resilient to disinformation.”

The chairperson of the CTHGC and its former director, Richard Freedman, said the centre was a beacon against the “tide of despondency” that had enveloped our world and that it would continue to “foster vigilance and inspire activism on all fronts”. He thanked the talented team that came together to make the centre a reality 25 years ago, many of whom continue to work with it to this day.

The centre’s director, Jakub Nowakowski, emphasised that the past 25 years were “just the beginning”, and that the centre continued to evolve and engage with current challenges. Looking to the future, the CTHGC  would have an exhibition of testimonies from Rwanda, was working with grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and would be leading a tour of Jewish Poland in 2025.

Said Smith, “To be willing to say ‘Here am I’ in a world in which anti-Jewish hate grows and sorrow and mistrust abound – are we willing to be the bridge, to walk into the breach, to shine a light, to be fully human? We’ll never complete this work, but neither shall we desist from carrying it out. As we celebrate this milestone, let’s say, once again, ‘Hineni – here I am.’ Ready to remember, to teach, to learn, to hope, to act, to be the hands that reach out across divides.”