For veteran community leader, Myra Osrin, involvement in 1994 in the staging of the international travelling exhibition, ‘Anne Frank in the World in South Africa’, was an ‘aha moment’. As the Honorary Director of the national tour, which opened at the SA National Art Gallery just a few weeks before South Africa’s first democratic elections, she saw how learning about the Holocaust – in particular its lessons about the dangers of prejudice, racism and stereotyping – could play a role in the transformation process unfolding in the ‘new’ South Africa.
Myra recalls: “Schools were invited to send their students and teachers to view the exhibition and engage in an education programme. One day a teacher told me, ‘You have no idea how important this has been for my students’ self-esteem – this is the first time they have understood that a person can be discriminated against even if he doesn’t have a black skin.’”
The extremely positive response from schools to the exhibition made it clear that a permanent programme was needed.
Not much later, Myra visited the newly-established Holocaust Memorial Centre in Nottingham in England; and so a friendship with the founders, Stephen and James Smith, ensued. “My visit to the Centre highlighted that it is possible to present the complex history of the Holocaust in a compact space, without massive capital expenditure,” she explains.
Planning for a Cape Town centre started in early 1997, and the current Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre (CTHGC) was officially opened in August 1999. And so, this August marks the 25th anniversary of that momentous occasion.
The Centre established its mission as being “teaching about the consequences of prejudice, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and homophobia, and the dangers of indifference, apathy and silence”. As part of this mission, the Centre has developed into a valuable educational facility for school children and their teachers, and its first Education Director, Marlene Silbert, played a leading role in the development of the school programme, working closely with the Western Cape Education Department.
Myra Osrin served as the honorary director in the Centre’s formative years. She was succeeded by the Centre’s first professional director Richard Freedman, who today serves as Chair of the Board. Under Freedman’s directorship the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation was established which served as the umbrella body for the Holocaust and Genocide Centres which opened in Johannesburg and Durban. The Centres have trained thousands of teachers nationally to teach the Holocaust, a subject included in the National Curriculum from 2007.
The current Director, Jakub Nowakowski comments: “Today, we see changing realities, particularly the global surge in antisemitism. This is coupled with an unprecedented wave of Holocaust distortion and the misuse of Holocaust vocabulary, often resulting in negation and the undermining of historical truth. Holocaust and Genocide museums worldwide have a vital role in this context – deconstructing myths and processes that led to past acts of persecution and mass violence, while fostering resilience and instilling a sense of responsibility for the future. And the Cape Town Holocaust & Genocide Centre will not shy away from that task.
Impact of the CTHGC over the past 25 years:
• Hosted over 200 000 learners
• Trained over 15 000 teachers, thousands of SAPS members, military personnel civil servants.
• Visits from over 260 000 individual visitors from South Africa and beyond.
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