Durban’s focus on the youth

LAUREN SHAPIRO

This extended to their keynote speaker, Holocaust survivor Don Krausz who was only a child under the Nazis.  He spoke at the Johannesburg ceremony before getting on a plane to Durban to deliver his stirring address to them.

President of the SAJBD (KZN Council) Jeremy Droyman explains why they put such emphasis on the children:  “We do this with our children to pass on the lessons that we as a people have paid a huge price to learn.”  

Jewish learners from schools across Durban participated in the evening’s programme, singing songs, reciting poems, reading prayers and speeches, and bearing Israeli flags. Youth also accompanied Holocaust survivors and children of survivors, in lighting memorial candles in remembrance of the six million who perished in the Holocaust.

Aidan Francis, of Eden College, Durban, shared his impressions as a regional delegate on last year’s March of the Living programme. “It was life-changing. To see what I saw and experience what I experienced… that is why we will never forget.”

A particular tribute was paid to the Warsaw Ghetto and the various kinds of physical and spiritual resistance that its occupants put up against the Nazi regime.

Through its motivation of education, the evening was an act of peaceful, compassionate resistance to injustice in all its forms.