The Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre initiated Zoom as a medium of communication within the first week of the lockdown.
Dr David Deutsch was in Cape Town for a series of lectures and workshops and with our campus closing on 16 March, a week before the official lockdown, he was unable to present in person, so we used Zoom to engage with this brilliant and talented speaker.
Since then we have offered continuing adult education to our community and beyond through Zoom talks, lectures and enrichment programmes both local and international. This kept us stimulated and able engage in events we would otherwise not have had the opportunity to attend. Our Mervyn Smith Memorial series of lectures with Dovid Katz, a Vilnius based Yiddish and Holocaust scholar was extremely well received, with attendees logging onto them from across the globe.
Other diverse and interesting topics on offer last year were The Namibian Genocide and Remembering Through the Arts presented by Dr Pedzisai Maedza, Dr Bjorn Krondorfer; Dr Monica Rice; Dr Robert Sommer; Dr Lina Pine participated in a panel discussion on The Holocaust & Masculinities: Critical Inquiries into the Presence and Absence of Men which offered attendees another unique lens through which to view this history. We were delighted to host the author of Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, Elizabeth Rosner, and Rabbi Moshe Cohn’s webinar on the Unique challenge to Jewish mothers in the Ghettos offered a rare insight into the role of motherhood in the ghetto.
This is only a glimpse into all that was on offer from the CTHGC, and of course now Zoom has become our everyday means of learning. We look forward to offering much more this year and look forward to seeing all our friends from home and abroad online.
Cape Town Holocaust and Genocide Centre: https://ctholocaust.co.za/, admin@holocaust.org.za
• Published in the print edition of the March/April Pesach 2021 issue. Download the March/April 2021 issue PDF here.
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