Tribute to Holocaust centres and educators

We had the pleasure last week of congratulating our esteemed associate, Tali Nates, the founder and long-serving director of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre (JHGC), on being awarded the prestigious Goethe Medal. Presented annually by the Goethe-Institut, the cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany, this is an official decoration honouring global public figures deemed to have rendered outstanding services to the teaching of the German language and to international cultural exchange. Tali was chosen for her contributions in the fields of Holocaust and genocide education, dialogue, and memory, both in South Africa and globally. She’s the first South African to receive the award.

Tali’s involvement in Holocaust education is motivated by a deep-seated understanding of the importance of learning from history in order to create a better today and tomorrow, in her words, “to connect the past and the present, and learn lessons for humanity”. This, indeed, is central to the mission of the South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation (SAHGF) and its regional centres in Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg. It’s a message that has special resonance in societies like our own, which must come to terms with their own legacies of divisive conflict, oppression, and injustice.

Though the immediate focus of the SAHGF is to teach about the Holocaust and the rabidly antisemitic ideology that led to it, its broader mission is to use these lessons to teach South Africans across the board about the evils of racism, bigotry, and intolerance and what it can lead to if allowed to fester unchecked. For this reason alone, it has been an invaluable resource to the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) in fulfilling its own mandate of combatting antisemitism and fostering ties of friendship and understanding between our community and the wider society.

In post-apartheid South Africa, demonstrating how prejudice against Jews is, in essence, another form of racism is an effective way of reaching those who might not know much about Jews and their history, but well understand what it means to be demeaned and oppressed on the basis of such immutable physical characteristics as skin colour.

In many cases, offensive behaviour is the result of simple ignorance rather than deliberate malice. Recognising this, the SAJBD frequently advocates a restorative-justice approach to dealing with such cases through which perpetrators are helped to understand why their actions are unacceptable and to make a sincerely apology.

One of the most effective remedies, which we frequently recommend and facilitate, is for those concerned to visit the Holocaust & Genocide Centre for a facilitated session. Over the past week, we have been involved in resolving two instances of offensive behaviour in this way, one concerning Nazi salutes by pupils at Rustenburg High School, and the other a case of Holocaust denialism and pro-Hitler sentiment on the part of a university student. We’re fortunate to have such outstanding institutions as the JHGC and its counterparts in Cape Town and Durban through which we can constructively and amicably resolve issues of this nature. Since the effectiveness of any organisation is dependent on the quality of those who work for it, this, in turn, is a tribute to the passion, commitment, and professionalism of the SAHGF staff in all three centres, as well as the dedicated efforts of the many volunteer educators who have participated in its programmes over the years.

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