Film screening: Letters from Brno
2025-10-30 17:30 - 19:00 (Europe/Helsinki) | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join us for the South African premiere of Letters from Brno.

The screening will be accompanied by formal remarks by Deputy Ambassador of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in South Africa, Mr. Petr Čáp, and by writer and producer Karen Kruger.

In December, 1976, during a college break, Karen learned that her mother, Erika Stefanie Turkl (Neumann) was Jewish. This discovery marked the beginning of Karen’s insatiable curiosity about her mother’s family history and the start of a 45+ year journey to uncover her mother’s pastNicholas Winton was the British stockbroker who was responsible for arranging the Kinder transports of 669 Czechoslovakian Jewish children in 1939. Erika and Daisy Turkl were 2 of the 669 “Winton’s children”. In 2009, during a reenactment of the Winton Kindertransport from Prague to London, Karen and her son, Max were able to meet 100 year old Nicholas Winton and personally thank him for saving Erika’s and Daisy’s lives.

Jeffery Gary, a documentary filmmaker, learned of Karen’s project and offered to interview/film her to record her recent research trip “while it was still fresh in her mind.” During the first 2 sessions of filming, Jeffery realized that the story of Karen’s mother’s family had all the components of a documentary film and he suggested that she consider telling the story on film first instead of writing a book.While filming the documentary, Karen imagined how this story could be part of a curricula for Holocaust education.

Heroines of the Holocaust
2025-11-02 21:00 - 22:00
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special online book launch of Heroines of the Holocaust: Reframing Resistance and Courage in Genocide.

Join co-editors Professor Lori Weintrob and Professor Judy Baumel-Schwartz as they introduce this groundbreaking volume, which brings together international scholars to explore new perspectives on women’s rescue and resistance during the Holocaust, and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides.

Two contributing authors, both descendants of Holocaust survivors, will also share insights from their chapters:

Dr Daniela Ozacky Stern delves into the often-overlooked stories of Jewish women partisans during the Holocaust, focusing on the personal narrative of Chaya Shapira Lazar. Through her grandmother’s journey from the Vilna Ghetto to the partisan forests, Dr Ozacky Stern illuminates the complex challenges faced by female resistance fighters navigating between traditional gender roles and revolutionary combat duties.

Dr Steven Meed, son of Vladka Meed (née Feyge Peltel), reflects on his mother’s extraordinary courage as an 18-year-old member of the Bund’s youth organisation in Warsaw during the German invasion of 1939. Recognised for her fearlessness, resourcefulness, and perfect command of Polish, Vladka was entrusted with increasingly dangerous missions on the Aryan side. After liberation, she dedicated her life to speaking and writing—first in Yiddish—about her wartime experiences, ensuring the memory of those who perished and survived would endure with dignity and respect.

This event is presented in partnership with the Wagner College Holocaust Center, the Arnold and Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research at Bar-Ilan University, Remember the Women Institute, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Classrooms Without Borders, and the Rabin Chair Forum.

Online Roundtable: Visual Languages And Mediums Of Holocaust Literature
2025-11-04 19:00 - 20:00
Join us for an engaging online roundtable exploring the visual languages of Holocaust literature. This discussion will examine how literary texts engage with visual elements—and how photography, film, art, and other visual representations of the Holocaust have influenced and been influenced by literature. The speakers will consider a diverse range of works, including graphic novels, to reflect on how visual media shapes our understanding of Holocaust memory and representation.

Speakers:

Daniel H. Magilow: Professor of German, University of Tennessee

Lynn Wolff: Associate Professor of German, Michigan State University

Brad Prager: Professor of German and Film Studies, University of Missouri

Chair:

McKenna Marko: Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Holocaust Literature, University of Leeds

This event forms part of the ongoing series featuring original research from the forthcoming Cambridge History of Holocaust Literature, presented by the project Rethinking Holocaust Literature: Contexts, Canons, and Circulations.

Learn more: Rethinking Holocaust Literature: Public Engagement Programme

87th Commemoration of the November Pogrom
2025-11-09 14:30 - 18:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, the Goethe-Institut, and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung invite you to their annual commemoration of the 1938 November Pogrom (Kristallnacht).

The commemoration will include formal remarks, a candle lighting ceremony, a performance by violinist Sharon De Kock, a screening of the film Das Tagebuch Der Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) (2016), followed by a keynote address from director Hans Steinbichler.

Hans Steinbichler was born in Solothurn, Switzerland, and grew up near Lake Chiemsee. He lives in Munich with his family.

Steinbichler’s graduation film Hierankl (HFF Munich) marked his debut and earned numerous awards, including the Förderpreis Deutscher Film (2003), the Bavarian Film Prize, and the Grimme Gold Award for script and directing.

His second feature, Winterreise (2006), opened the Munich Film Festival and was nominated for the German Film Prize for Best Film, with Josef Bierbichler receiving the Best Actor Lola.

In 2008, Steinbichler directed The Second Woman, starring Matthias Brandt and Monika Bleibtreu, the official German contribution to the Toronto Film Festival. The film earned him another Grimme Prize for directing and was released in French cinemas.

In 2010, he directed Blue of the Sky, featuring Juliane Köhler and Hannelore Elsner, which won the Bavarian Film Prize (2011) for Best Picture. He subsequently directed several acclaimed episodes of Polizeiruf 110 with Matthias Brandt, garnering multiple awards including the German Television Award.

From 2013 to 2015, Steinbichler served as Professor of Directing at the Cologne International Film School.

In 2016, his feature Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) premiered at the Berlinale, followed by a nationwide release. The film earned Steinbichler the German Director Award Metropolis, while lead actress Lea van Acken received the Bavarian Film Prize. That same year, he was appointed a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

His next feature, An Unheard Woman (2016), starring Rosalie Thomass, won the One Future Prize at the Munich Film Festival, the German Television Award (2018), and the Grimme Prize (2018).

In 2017, Steinbichler directed the ZDF historical mini-series Walpurgisnacht, filmed in Prague and the Czech Republic, followed by Hannes (2021), based on the novel by Rita Falk.

In 2020/2021, he co-directed the third season of Das Boot for Sky, filmed in Prague and Malta, released in spring 2022.

Most recently, Steinbichler completed A Whole Life (2023), an adaptation of the acclaimed novel set in the Alps. The film has been a major box-office success and received multiple nominations for German and Austrian film awards.

Talking Memory Opening Event for "Fanny's Journey"
2025-11-16 21:00 - 22:30 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special online Talking Memory opening event for the new exhibition Fanny’s Journey.

Join us as we celebrate this moving exhibition that brings to life the experiences of Fanny Ben Ami through her expressive and powerful drawings. Fanny’s Journey tells the extraordinary story of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who was born in Germany, grew up in France, and—after the rise of Nazism—found herself responsible for leading a group of Jewish children to safety. The exhibition presents the artworks she created later in life, accompanied by short excerpts from her testimony, illuminating one young girl’s courage, responsibility, and resilience.

The programme will feature:

Opening RemarksProfessor Aryeh Barnea will reflect on the critical work of the OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants – the Children’s Aid Society), the underground rescue network that saved thousands of Jewish children—including Fanny—by sheltering them in children’s homes, placing them with foster families, or helping them escape across borders.

Guest SpeakersLilach Efraim, curator of Fanny’s Journey, will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the development of the exhibition.Greta Barak, archivist at the Ghetto Fighters’ House, will present a selection of OSE documents from the archive that help contextualise the story of Fanny and the children she helped lead to freedom.

This event is presented in partnership with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, Classrooms Without Borders, the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, and Yad LaYeled France.

Book Launch: It Always Seems Impossible
2025-11-27 17:00 - 18:00 | Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop, 1 Duncombe Road, Forest Town, 2193, South Africa
Join us for an inspiring book launch with James Urdang, Founder and CEO of Education Africa, of his new memoir, It Always Seems Impossible: My fight to build and save Education Africa. With a foreword from the Nelson Mandela Foundation and a cover endorsement from Sir Bob Geldof, who calls it “a powerful account from a genuine African hero. Inspiring, urgent, and true”, the book tells the story of how one man’s determination to use education as a tool for social justice transformed thousands of lives – and how that work was nearly destroyed by corporate misconduct.

Urdang traces his journey from being a school underachiever diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia to founding Education Africa, a grassroots organisation that has opened educational opportunities for disadvantaged South Africans. Mentored by Walter Sisulu, entrusted by Nelson Mandela, and supported by figures such as Helen Suzman and Dr Aggrey Klaaste, he built ambitious programmes ranging from the world’s largest national Model UN initiative to large-scale marimba training and early childhood development projects. The memoir also exposes a shocking battle with a global bank that brought Education Africa to its knees, and the role anti-corruption campaigner Lord Peter Hain played in challenging this injustice. At its heart, the book is a testament to resilience, accountability, and the power of education to change lives.

About James UrdangJames Urdang is an award-winning humanitarian, social entrepreneur, and sought-after motivational speaker. For more than three decades he has worked to create meaningful educational opportunities for disadvantaged communities across Africa. He has collaborated closely with Nelson Mandela, spoken at the funeral of Chris Hani, and continues to advocate for equity, dignity, and transformation through education.

A Contrarian’s Tale: Reflecting on Henry Greenspan’s REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors
2025-11-30 21:00 - 22:00 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory book launch event

A Contrarian’s Tale: Reflecting on Henry Greenspan’s REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors

Sunday, 30 November 2025

Opening Remarks:Prof. Debórah Dwork

Guest Author:Prof. Henry Greenspan

You are warmly invited to a special Talking Memory webinar marking the launch of Henry Greenspan’s new book, REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors. The programme will begin with opening remarks by Prof. Debórah Dwork, followed by a conversation with Prof. Greenspan about his decades of work and his reflections on Holocaust testimony as sustained, evolving dialogues. Greenspan will also present a short live performance of an excerpt from REMNANTS.

This event opens the new series, Conversations that Endure: In the Footsteps of Henry Greenspan and Dori Laub.

For more than fifty years, Henry Greenspan—psychologist, playwright, and pioneering oral historian—has been listening to, learning from, and engaging in deep conversation with Holocaust survivors. His work has reshaped understandings of survivor accounts, highlighting how testimony emerges through collaboration, trust, and survivors’ own active choices shaped by the contexts in which they speak.

In REMNANTS and What Remains, Greenspan brings together powerful moments from a lifetime of encounters, illuminating both survivors’ lived experiences and the complex ethical and emotional questions that arise in the work of remembrance. The book also explores the question of what remains after profound loss: survivors’ loss of a world; Greenspan’s loss of his survivor-partners; and, as survivors near the end of their lives, their own diverse and often unexpected views of their “legacies”.

This webinar offers a unique opportunity to hear directly from Henry Greenspan as he reflects on the evolution of his work, the individuals who shaped it, and the continued relevance of these conversations in a world marked by both past and present catastrophes.

You are invited to watch REMNANTS (45-minute performance video) prior to the event:https://youtu.be/Vty8b_euk-k

Register here:https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZlO3XmsJTCyFH79Jj4PNNQ

Time:2 PM EST | 8 PM CET | 9 PM SAST | 9 PM Israel Time

This programme is co-sponsored by the Jean and Shimuel Frankel Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

12th South Africa-Poland Heritage Conference
2025-12-07 14:30 - 16:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The Polish Association of Siberian Deportees in Southeast Africa is collaborating with the Sybir Memorial Museum and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre. Join us for the 12th conference to launch a series of posters depicting the lived experiences of Polish Siberian Deportees – Sybir – Prison of Nations. The recent unveiling of the memorial to the Oudtshoorn Polish WWII refugees and the Oudtshoorn Polish Heritage Trail will also be discussed.

Opening statements will be made by Mr Jacek Chorodowicz, head of the Polish Mission in Pretoria. Recorded presentations will be from Mr Wojciech Śleszyński, Director of the Sybir Memorial Museum, Museum historian Mr Tomas Danilecki and Ms Julita Waś, Museum’s international business development manager. Stefan Szewczuk will launch the posters on behalf of the Sybir Memorial Museum.

Listening as Witnessing: Dori Laub and the Creation of the Fortunoff Archive
2025-12-14 21:00 - 22:00 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to the Talking Memory series

Conversations that Endure: In the Footsteps of Henry Greenspan and Dori Laub

Listening as Witnessing: Dori Laub and the Creation of the Fortunoff Archive

Sunday, 14 December 2025

Opening Remarks:Stephen Naron, Director, Fortunoff Archive

Guest Filmmaker:Ohad Ufaz

You are warmly invited to the second programme in the Talking Memory series, honouring the legacy of Dori Laub — psychoanalyst, Holocaust survivor, and co-founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The event will open with remarks by Stephen Naron, who will reflect on Laub’s pioneering contributions and lasting influence on testimony and trauma studies. Following these remarks, filmmaker Ohad Ufaz will present and discuss the documentary The Listener, co-directed by Ufaz and Micha Livne, which offers a moving exploration of Laub’s life and his profound commitment to listening — conceived as an act of empathy and a bridge between past and present, memory and witness.

A pre-screening of The Listener will be made available to all registrants.

Register here:https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/9V1GcaeFRZqp8GFd3RWIWw

Time:2 PM EST | 8 PM CET | 9 PM SAST | 9 PM Israel Time

This programme is presented in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University, the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and Classrooms Without Borders.

Please note the JHGC and Issy's are closed on 25 and 26 December
2025-12-25 08:00 - 2025-12-26 17:00

Please note the JHGC and Issy's are closed on 1 and 2 January 2026
2026-01-01 08:00 - 2026-01-02 17:00

Beneath the Skin Exhibition Opening
2026-01-18 15:00 - 16:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Mike Fisher is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans Cape Town, Santander (Spain), and the United Kingdom. For over four years, he has been deeply engaged in the development of a sustained body of work rooted in Holocaust memory, testimony, and material witness. This practice is driven by extensive research, creative exploration, and profound personal commitment—marked by what he describes as blood, sweat, and tears.

At the heart of Fisher’s work is storytelling through art as a primary language. He believes art moves the spirit and touches the soul on a level far deeper than words or sound, reaching the core of what it means to be human. His work is not illustrative; it is experiential and material, asking the viewer not simply to look, but to stand, to witness, and to remember.

All works are available for sale. As a self-funded artist, Fisher hopes this body of work will one day be represented internationally within museum and gallery collections, as well as private collections worldwide.

For further information or enquiries, Mike Fisher can be contacted at fishermike@icloud.com.

The opening will include an address by Mike Fisher and a walkabout of the exhibition.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day Commemoration 2026
2026-01-29 18:30 - 21:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
About the Event

The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre invites you to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2026 with an evening of reflection, scholarship, and film.

The programme includes formal remarks, a candle-lighting ceremony, a keynote address by Professor Rolf Wolfswinkel, and a screening of the documentary Lost City—a powerful exploration of complicity, memory, and moral responsibility in wartime Amsterdam.

Keynote Speaker

Professor Rolf WolfswinkelProfessor of Modern History (ret.), University of Cape Town & New York University

Born in Amsterdam during the Second World War, Professor Wolfswinkel has published widely on trench warfare in the First World War, the German occupation of the Netherlands, and the Holocaust. He has lectured extensively in South Africa, the United States, and the Netherlands, and is known for his ability to illuminate the human consequences of historical events through rigorous archival research.

About the Film: Lost City

A groundbreaking archival discovery reveals a hidden chapter in the tragic story of Anne Frank and tens of thousands of Dutch Jews: the complicity of the Amsterdam Public Transport company (GVB) in the Nazi deportation system.

Emmy Award–winning filmmaker Willy Lindwer and historian Guus Luijters uncovered an invoice issued by GVB to the German occupation authorities—charging 80 guilders (approximately $4,500 today) for transporting Anne Frank, her family, and many others to their deaths. In seeking payment for these transports, the company became an unwitting accomplice in Nazi crimes.

Presented as a poignant road movie, Lost City features the original tram used to deport 48,000 Jews from Amsterdam—nearly half of the Netherlands’ Jewish population—retracing its route through the city’s hauntingly beautiful yet morally burdened streets. A survivor’s reflection captures the collective indifference of the time:“Everybody knew, everybody saw it, and nobody took action.”

The film offers a profound new perspective on the murder of Amsterdam’s Jews and the city’s enduring loss of its Jewish soul.

Attendance is free but booking is essential.

An Unexpected Find in Amsterdam
2026-01-30 11:00 - 12:30
Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, invites you to a public talk by historian Prof. Rolf Wolfswinkel.

About the event

During a research visit to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Prof. Wolfswinkel made an unexpected discovery: a thin folder of letters from the German Occupying Administration detailing how Dutch libraries were to deal with the books and films of Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front.

Although Remarque himself had escaped to the United States, his work became the target of systematic censorship. The responses of librarians and library boards offer a revealing insight into how institutions and individuals attempted to accommodate — and survive — even the most extreme ideological demands.

This talk explores censorship, compliance, and moral choice under occupation, using this archival find as a lens onto broader questions of power and resistance.

About the speaker

Prof. Rolf Wolfswinkel is a retired Professor of Modern History at New York University and the University of Cape Town. Born in Amsterdam during the Second World War, he has published extensively on trench warfare in the First World War, the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and the Holocaust. He has served as a guest lecturer in the United States, South Africa, and the Netherlands.

Film Screening: The Commandant's Shadow
2026-02-01 14:30 - 16:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
As part of our programmes commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with the British High Commission in Pretoria, invites you to a screening of the documentary The Commandant’s Shadow.

About the Film

The film, The Commandant’s Shadow, follows Hans Jürgen Höss, the 87-year-old son of Rudolf Höss, as he faces his father’s terrible legacy for the first time. His father was the Camp Commandant of Auschwitz and masterminded the murder of over a million Jews. The life of Hans and his family was recently fictionalised in the Academy Award-winning film, The Zone of Interest. Now, The Commandant’s Shadow, tells the story of the real people who lived on site at Auschwitz. While Hans enjoyed a happy childhood in the family villa at Auschwitz, Jewish prisoner, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, was trying to survive the notorious concentration camp. At the heart of this film is the historic and inspiring moment – eight decades later – when the two come face-to-face in Anita’s London living room.

Film Screening: The Shadow of the Day (L’Ombra del Giorno)
2026-02-08 14:30 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
As part of the programme marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute, invites you to a screening of The Shadow of the Day (L’Ombra del Giorno).

About the Film

Set in Fascist Italy, the film tells a quiet but gripping love story unfolding in a time of growing danger. Luciano, a restaurant owner and supporter of the regime—like the vast majority of Italians of the period—believes he can live according to his own rules, insulated from the political turmoil beyond his doors.

As ominous signs gather in the ancient square outside his restaurant, a young woman named Anna appears, carrying a secret. When she is hired to work there, Luciano’s carefully controlled world begins to unravel. From that moment on, nothing is the same. Alongside the external threats closing in, he must confront the greatest danger of all: love.

Tender and tense, The Shadow of the Day is a love story set against the moral compromises and uncertainties of a dark historical moment.

Webinar: Hidden in Plain Sight: A Conversation with Julie Brill
2026-02-12 18:00 - 19:30
About the Book

In Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia, readers encounter a powerful and largely untold chapter of Holocaust history, told through one family’s story and a daughter’s enduring quest to understand the past that shaped her life.

From childhood, Julie Brill struggled to comprehend how her father survived as a young Jewish boy in Belgrade, where Nazis murdered 90 percent of the Jewish population—without gas chambers or cattle cars. Through meticulous research, chance discoveries, and three deeply emotional journeys to Serbia, Brill pieces together her family’s lost history, uncovers long-buried secrets, and restores to her father something the Nazis tried to erase: his own family story.

About the Author

Julie Brill is the author of Hidden in Plain Sight, which Menachem Kaiser has called “a powerful reminder of why our stories—personal, familial, historical—are so crucial.” She has written for Haaretz, The Forward, Kveller, The Times of Israel, Balkan Insight, and Boston’s National Public Radio station, among others. Brill regularly shares her family’s Holocaust history with middle and high school students through 3GNY and is a co-facilitator for Living Link’s WEDU training, working at the intersection of memory, education, and intergenerational dialogue.

Talking Memory Book Launch
2026-02-22 21:00 - 22:30 | Online
Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism

The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory conversation marking the launch of Rescue and Remembrance: Imagining the German Collective After Nazism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025).

In this thought-provoking book, Dr Kobi Kabalek examines how postwar German society has grappled with questions of rescue, responsibility, and collective memory after Nazism. His research explores how the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust has been understood, remembered, and represented in Germany from the Nazi period to the present.

The programme will include a short introduction to the book followed by a reflective conversation and audience discussion.

In Conversation

Dr Kobi Kabalek

Holocaust Studies and Visual Studies, Penn State University

Dr Kabalek’s work focuses on Holocaust memory, visual culture, and the ways rescue and responsibility have been interpreted in Germany since 1945.

Harry Legg

PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh

Harry Legg will comment on the book and its contribution to current research on the attitudes and actions of the non-Jewish German population toward Jews during the Nazi regime.

Together, the speakers will reflect on memory, postwar narratives, the commemoration of rescuers, and the ongoing challenges of confronting the past.

Film screening: I Never Said Goodbye
2026-02-24 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
Join us online on Tuesday 24 February at 7PM for a screening of the documentary, “I Never Said Goodbye“, tributing the extraordinary life of Holocaust survivor Héléne Joffe.

The film documents Héléne’s remarkable journey and is testimony to the endurance of the human spirit.

Don’t miss out on this moving story of memory and resilience.

What Gets Seen, What Gets Silenced: Violence, Complicity, and Memory in the Holocaust
2026-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Sylt Foundation for a discussion panel exploring what was seen, silenced, and later remembered about the Holocaust. Through three perspectives – sexualised violence, everyday complicity through stolen homes, and the shaping of heroic memory – the talks reveal how genocide entered ordinary lives and spaces. Together, they invite reflection on violence, responsibility, resistance, and how Holocaust memory is constructed.

“It was everywhere—in Buna, in Auschwitz […] That’s a shame to tell.”: Sexualised Violence during the Holocaust – Larissa-Marie Lömpel

“It was everywhere! In Buna, in Auschwitz … That’s a shame to tell.“ With these words, Sam Lubat captured both the pervasiveness of sexualised violence during the Holocaust and the silence that long surrounded it. This talk discusses both dimensions.

Drawing on recent scholarship, it maps the contexts in which sexualised violence occurred under National Socialist rule: from the mass shootings and pogroms in the occupied East to the ghettos, hiding spaces, and concentration camps of Nazi-ruled Europe. It examines the range of perpetrators – SS personnel, Wehrmacht soldiers, allied forces, and civilians – as well as the complexity introduced by cases of victim perpetration. The lecture then turns to historiography, asking why sexualised violence remained at the margins of Holocaust scholarship for so long. It traces how survivors navigated cultural taboos and institutional barriers when attempting to speak about their experiences, and how scholars – shaped by similar constraints and by a universalised narrative of the Holocaust that left little room for gendered analysis – were slow to engage with the subject. By examining both the phenomenon and its fraught reception in testimony and scholarship, the lecture contributes to an ongoing effort to bring sexualised violence into focus as a distinct and indispensable dimension of Holocaust history.

Larissa-Marie Lömpel holds a BA in History and Gender Studies from the University of Göttingen and is currently completing an MA in Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa. Her research interests include gendered violence, perpetrator–victim relations, and the intersections of historical scholarship and public memory. Her MA thesis examines sexualised violence in the Auschwitz camp complex. Alongside her studies, she has been actively involved in Holocaust education and remembrance. During her undergraduate years, she worked as a guide at the Bergen-Belsen and Moringen memorial sites and completed several internships in Germany and abroad. In 2024/25, she worked as a researcher at the Anne Frank House.

Stolen Homes, Taken Lives: Housing Expropriation and Everyday Complicity in the Holocaust – Indra Wussow

This seminar is based on Wussow’s PhD research on German Baltic settlers resettled by the Nazi regime into Łódź (Litzmannstadt), one of the central administrative sites of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. The talk examines housing expropriation as a key mechanism through which genocide entered everyday life.

At the centre of the seminar is a microhistorical case study: the appropriation of a Jewish family’s apartment by Bruno Carlhoff, a resettled Baltic German who entered the Nazi administration in Łódź. Through archival material including housing files, administrative records, and later testimony, she reconstructs how the Ajzen family was dispossessed of their home, and how that same space was subsequently occupied and normalised by its new German inhabitants.

Focusing on one apartment allows us to follow the Holocaust at a human scale: how removal, reassignment, and occupation were organised; how violence was translated into paperwork; and how perpetrators learned to live comfortably inside stolen spaces. Housing emerges here not as a marginal detail, but as a central site of moral and material transformation—where racial entitlement was made tangible through rooms, furniture, and everyday routines.

Using microhistory as a method, the seminar shows how complicity developed not primarily through ideological fervour or overt cruelty, but through institutional permission, emotional adjustment, and the acceptance of “normal” advantages produced by persecution. By placing a perpetrator and a victim family in the same spatial frame, the talk foregrounds the intimate proximity of genocide and challenges abstract understandings of participation in Nazi crimes.

The seminar offers an archive-based, concrete perspective on how the Holocaust was lived, enacted, and normalised in cities like Łódź and why attention to stolen homes remains crucial for understanding responsibility, memory, and loss.

Indra Wussow is a psychologist and Holocaust researcher working at the interface of history and psychology, currently completing a PhD on everyday complicity in Nazi-occupied Łódź. She is the director of the Sylt Foundation, and holds a MA in Holocaust Studies from the University of Haifa and a MA in Narrative Therapy from the University of Melbourne.

Zivia Lubetkin: How a Resistance Fighter Became a National Symbol – Andreea-Cristina Stanca

How does a young woman who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising become a symbol for an entire nation? And what gets lost when a human life is turned into a heroic myth?

This presentation explores how the public memory of Zivia Lubetkin was shaped in the first decades of the State of Israel, and how her story became central to a heroic model of Holocaust remembrance. Drawing on Lubetkin’s memoir and scholarship on Holocaust memory and Israeli nation-building, the lecture shows how her image was mobilised to promote ideals of resistance, strength, and Zionist renewal at a moment when Israeli society was seeking unifying symbols. In this process, armed resistance was elevated as a moral ideal, while many other survivors experiences marked by vulnerability, coercion, and “choiceless choices” remained marginalised.

The conversation also traces the shift brought about by the Eichmann Trial, when survivor testimonies reshaped public understanding of the Holocaust and complicated earlier myths of heroism. By returning to Lubetkin not only as a fighter but also as a woman who resisted the Nazis, becoming a public icon and carrying her trauma into postwar life, this talk argues for a more honest and humane memory culture, one that remembers courage without erasing suffering and resistance without turning people into symbols.

Andreea Stanca is engaged in her MA in Holocaust Studies at Haifa University, focusing on Zionism, Holocaust education, antisemitism, and Holocaust memory. She has published widely and is currently working on an article on political antisemitism in Romania. She is currently an intern at the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

ZAPP Fest Performance Showcase
2026-03-14 15:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in collaboration with the South African Poetry Project (ZAPP), invites you to the 2026 ZAPP Fest Performance Showcase

Come celebrate and enjoy the performances of an exciting group of young South African poets as they explore themes of community, identity, and human and animal rights. The poems which will be performed are the product of a one-day poetry workshop facilitated by the South African Poetry (ZAPP), a group of educators and professional poets who are dedicated to fostering a love of reading and writing poetry in schools.

POSTPONED Talking Memory Book Launch
2026-03-15 21:00 - 22:00 | Online
The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Talking Memory book launch event,

The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War,

scheduled for March 15th, has been postponed.

A new date will be announced, and invitations will be resent accordingly.

In the meantime, the Ghetto Fighters’ House extends its heartfelt thanks for your continued support of the Talking Memory programmes.

The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory program marking the launch of The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War.

In this conversation, Dr. Shay A. Pilnik examines how Babyn Yar—where more than 100,000 people, the vast majority Jews, were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators—has been remembered, reshaped, and at times silenced in Soviet literature and culture. Drawing on Russian and Yiddish sources, he revisits both well-known and lesser-known texts to show how Babyn Yar became a contested symbolic site, revealing the tensions between official narratives, suppressed Jewish memory, and acts of cultural resistance.

Speakers

Dr. Shay A. PilnikDirector, Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide StudiesYeshiva University

Dr. Pilnik will discuss the central arguments of his book, focusing on memory, forgetting, and representation in Soviet responses to Babyn Yar, and the ways literature became a space for mourning, testimony, and moral reckoning.

Opening Remarks:Dr. Arkadi ZeltserDirector, Center for Research on the Holocaust in the Soviet UnionInternational Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem

Dr. Zeltser will reflect on the historiography of Babyn Yar and its place within Soviet Holocaust history, addressing how politics, ideology, and archival silences have shaped public understanding of the site.

Guest Speaker:Dr. Marta HavryshkoHistorian and Dr. Thomas Zand Visiting Assistant Professor in Holocaust Pedagogy and Antisemitism StudiesStrassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University

Dr. Havryshko will speak about her research on Babyn Yar, the challenges of commemorating mass violence in contemporary Ukraine, and the ethical and political complexities involved in researching and memorialising the site today.

This programme is in partnership with the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University, The Zekelman Holocaust Centre, Classrooms Without Borders, the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University, and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

Film Screening of AMAZEZE (Fleas)
2026-03-22 15:00 - 17:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
In honour of Human Rights Day, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Sanktuary Films invite you to join us for a film screening of Amazeze (Fleas).

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on documenting and representing dehumanisation, and xenophobic violence in South Africa. Speakers include writer and director Jordy Sank, cast members, and award-winning photojournalist James Oatway, whose work is featured in the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre’s permanent exhibition.

About the film

Tonderai, a young Zimbabwean boy living in a South African township, anxiously awaits his mother’s return from work at nightfall. He fears the worst for her due to a xenophobic mob running rampant that night. He watches over his gravely ill and bedridden younger brother, who becomes desperate for drinking water. With no running water in their shack, Tonderai must lurk like a rodent in the shadows to the communal tap to bring his brother back safe drinking water – In doing so, he must risk his life as his neighbours are attacking foreigners.

Runtime: 16 minutes

Exhibition opening: Some Were Neighbours
2026-03-29 14:30 - 16:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Choice, Human Behaviour & the Holocaust

2:30 for 3pm

Some Were Neighbours: Choice, Human Behaviour, and the Holocaust, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), explores one of the central questions of the Holocaust: how it was possible. While Nazi leaders planned and directed the genocide of the Jews of Europe, circles of collaboration and complicity rippled throughout governments and societies wherever victims of persecution and mass murder lived.

Focusing on human behaviour, the exhibition examines the motives and pressures that shaped individual choices – including fear, indifference, antisemitism, peer pressure, and the prospect of personal gain. At the same time, it highlights those individuals who did not betray their fellow human beings, reminding us that there is an alternative to complicity in evil acts, even in extraordinary times.

Romanian Holocaust survivor Lyonell Fliss, who survived the Iași Pogrom, will deliver the keynote speech, sharing his insights on collaborators and rescuers.

Urban Class Structure in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Case Studies from Johannesburg and Tshwane
2026-03-31 17:45 - 18:45 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Ph.D Dissertation presentation by DaQuan Lawrence (Howard University)

In honour of Human Rights Month, Howard University Ph.D. candidate DaQuan Lawrence, presents research findings from his dissertation entitled, “Urban Class Structure in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Case Studies from Johannesburg and Tshwane”.

Amid the 32nd anniversary of South Africa’s transition to a democratic and post-apartheid society, Lawrence research consists of an investigation of the class structure in post-apartheid South Africa’s municipalities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. The study seeks to discover how race continues to shape urban class constructions in South Africa, and how the middle class defined in urban South Africa.

Lawrence seeks to construct rudimentary but sophisticated class categories that are informed by South Africans. Utilizing class analysis tools provided by African diaspora scholars the theoretical bases of class in advanced industrialized societies of Western civilization are revised in order to allow application to 21st century, urban South African conditions.

DaQuan Lawrence is an international human rights activist and Sasakawa Young Leaders Foundation Fellow who hails from Harlem, New York. Lawrence currently works as a middle school educator, international freelance journalist and an African Studies Ph.D. candidate at Howard University. With a background in NYC foster homes and experience in urban poverty, he uses public policy research and human rights advocacy to equip young people, marginalized communities, nonprofit practitioners, as well as public and private sector representatives with the tools to change social and economic conditions.

His current research focuses on public policy in Africa, and his dissertation is a qualitative mixed methods study that investigates class and urban segregation through a Marxist, Weberian, and pro- and pan-African conceptual framework. Lawrence seeks to develop new post-Marxist, international class categories based on an African perspective of the global political economy, that can be utilized in both developed and underdeveloped nations. He utilizes his experience to lead the nonprofit he cofounded, Strong Men Overcoming Obstacles Through Hard-work, (SMOOTH) Inc., which is a mentoring, professional development and community service organization for Black males. He is also the founder and CEO of the business consulting firm Lawrence International, and creator of GlobalBlackForum.com, a network that connects the African diaspora across nations, sectors and generations.

Lawrence has worked for Washington D.C.-based nonprofits and international nongovernment organizations such as the Urban Institute and the Center for African Studies at Howard University on policy programs, research, and human rights advocacy. He has experience working on public policy research in Haiti, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, South Africa and in the United States. Lawrence is a graduate of Morgan State University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a delegate for the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.

The event will also be livestreamed here and here

Move with intention
2026-04-13 07:45 - 10:45 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Pilates | 7:45–8:30am Chair Pilates | 10:00–10:45am

Eltiar Wellness in partnership with the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop invite you to join us for a complimentary trial session.

Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop will be offering a free cappuccino and bulka to each participant!

Pilates | 7:45–8:30am

A guided movement practice focused on strength, control, and awareness of the body.

Improves posture and alignment

Builds deep, functional strength, especially in core and stability muscles

Reduces stiffness and physical tension

Supports injury prevention and long-term mobility

Chair Pilates | 10:00–10:45am

A gentle version of pilates done while seated or with support.

Designed for anyone who would benefit from a slower, more supported pace

Suitable for all mobility levels including older individuals and anyone with mobility concerns

Focus on balance and joint movement

Builds confidence in the body

Spaces are limited to 20 people per session. RSVP is essential.

No experience necessary. Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothing. All are welcome.

Art, Memory, and Responsibility: Working Through the Afterlives of the Holocaust
2026-04-16 17:00 - 18:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
5 for 5:30pm

Please join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, in partnership with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Pretoria and the British High Commission in Pretoria, for a panel discussion with art historian and curator Dr Dorothea Schöne and artist Jessica Ostrowicz.

The discussion will explore how curatorial and artistic practice engages with the afterlives of the Holocaust, examining questions of memory, responsibility, and the ways histories marked by persecution and rupture continue to shape contemporary cultural and artistic discourse.

Dr Dorothea Schöne is a Berlin-based art historian and curator, currently serving as Director and CEO of Kunsthaus Dahlem. Under her leadership, Kunsthaus Dahlem – located in the former studio of Nazi-era sculptor Arno Breker – has become an important space for critically engaging with the complex legacies of art and ideology in twentieth-century Germany. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art and curatorial practice. Schöne has received numerous international research grants and fellowships and was awarded the Hans-and Lea-Grundig Prize for her work on artists targeted under National Socialism.

Jessica Ostrowicz is a British artist whose practice explores ideas of home, (be)longing, diasporic displacement, and transgenerational trauma. Working from the perspective of own Jewish family history, her work reflects on the ways experiences of persecution and migration shape personal and collective identities across generations. Her recent exhibition Remaining Without Returning reflects on her family’s history of flight, concealment, and survival during and after the Holocaust, and the lasting presence of this history in contemporary life. Ostrowicz has exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca, Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, and the Nirox Foundation in South Africa.

Through a conversation between curator and artist, this event will consider how contemporary art and exhibition practices engage with difficult histories, and how memory of the Holocaust continues to be interpreted, represented, and worked through today.

Book Launch: Darker Shade of Pale by Deborah Posel
2026-04-19 15:00 - 16:30 | Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop, 1 Duncombe Road, Forest Town, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop invite you to a book launch for Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony by Deborah Posel.

Darker Shade of Pale traces the journey of Jewish families from the Russian Empire to colonial South Africa. Through the story of her grandfather Maurice Posel – an ordinary man whose struggles and disappointments mirror those of countless others – Deborah Posel challenges the common narrative of Jewish immigrant success in South Africa, revealing a more complex and painful reality.

Part memoir, part global history, part meditation on inherited trauma, the book uncovers how preoccupations with status and success travelled from shtetl to colony, and the psychological costs they incurred: the traumas of dislocation, the weight of ambition, and the shame of failure. It explores the ironies of this journeying for literate, working women from the shtetl; the version of whiteness that South Africa assigned to Jews from Eastern Europe, the various ways in which Jews interacted with Black people, and some of the unexpected economic routes they chose, as well as the prejudicial punches that Jewish immigrants had to take – from both the British and the already-assimilated English-speaking Jewish community in South Africa.

Through one man’s unfulfilled hopes, Darker Shade of Pale asks what was truly given and what was taken in the making of new lives.

Deborah Posel is a sociologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town, founding director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER) and UCT’s Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA). She has written extensively on South Africa’s past and present, and on the making of its racial order.

Deborah will be in conversation with Tali Nates, Founder and Executive Director of the JHGC, and Courtneigh Cloud Bernstein.

Talking Memory Programme: Letters from the Afterlife
2026-05-03 20:00 - 21:00 | Online
The Post-Holocaust Correspondence of Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson

The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory conversation with acclaimed writer and translator Goldie Morgentaler as she presents her novel Letters from the Afterlife: The Post-Holocaust Correspondence of Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson.

Letters from the Afterlife tells the story of two women who survived the Holocaust and rebuilt their lives in countries whose language and culture were not their own – one in Canada, one in Sweden. Through the correspondence between them, the book traces what it meant to carry that past forward: the trauma, the alienation, and the quiet, persistent work of making a life.

Extraordinarily little has been written about how women survivors navigated the aftermath. This book is a rare exception.

The programme will feature:

Rochelle Saidel will open the conversation with reflections on the book as an intimate window into postwar women’s experience.

Goldie Morgentaler, writer, translator, and daughter of celebrated author and Holocaust survivor Chava Rosenfarb, will discuss the book, the correspondence at its heart, and what it means to write from inside inherited memory.

This event is presented in partnership with the Remember the Women Institute, the Rabin Chair Forum, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and Classrooms Without Borders.

Sweet Home Sweet: exhibition opening workshop
2026-05-14 17:30 - 19:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre invites you to a participatory workshop to open the exhibition Sweet Home Sweet.

In 1942, Richard Ores buried a jar of photographs in the ground at Płaszów Concentration Camp. After the war, he dug it up. The photographs had survived. The exhibition traces the Ores family across generations, geographies, and loss – exploring what home means when it is something you carry, construct, and sometimes bury for safekeeping.

In this workshop, you are invited to think about your own jar. What would you place in it? What people, places, or objects hold your sense of home? Bring a photocopy of one or two photographs – of a person, a place, an object – anything that feels like home to you. It doesn’t need to be precious or perfect. Together, we will map, reflect, and explore what home means and how we hold it.

Please note: the workshop is limited to 30 people so RSVP is essential

About the exhibition:

Richard Ores was born to a Jewish family in the centre of Kraków. He was fifteen years old when the war broke out. He survived and spent most of the rest of his life in the United States. Even though he lived there for more than fifty years, he continued to feel deeply connected to Poland. He made dozens of trips back to his hometown, often bringing his family with him.

This exhibition tells the story of Richard, his family, and their relationship to Poland over nearly a century. Richard was fascinated with photography and filmmaking his entire life, endlessly documenting his experiences and the people around him. In creating this exhibition, we relied on many of the photos and videos Richard created, as well as interviews with members of his family.
