What Gets Seen, What Gets Silenced: Violence, Complicity, and Memory in the Holocaust
2026-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Helsinki) | 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.

Talking Memory Book Launch Event: Out of the Sky
2026-05-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe with the Author Matti Friedman

The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory conversation marking the launch of Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe.

In 1944, a group of young Jewish men and women – having escaped Europe – made the decision to return. Parachuting into Nazi-occupied territory under a British mission, they went back to the continent that had tried to destroy them. Out of the Sky tells their story: the gap between the mission’s tragic reality and its powerful afterlife in Israeli memory, and the question of what heroism means when it ends in failure.

The programme will feature:

Matti Friedman, author of Out of the Sky, in conversation on the Jewish parachutists of 1944, the archival research behind the book, and the role of narrative in shaping collective memory.

Dr Rochelle Saidel will speak on Haviva Reick (1914–1944), one of three women among the parachutists, who operated in Slovakia during the Slovak National Uprising – aiding Allied airmen, working to rescue Jews, and ultimately captured and murdered by Nazi collaborators.

Shlomit Dagan, CEO of the Hannah Senesh House, will reflect on Hannah Senesh and the ongoing work of remembrance and education.

This event is presented in partnership with the Remember the Women Institute, the Hannah Senesh House, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.

Partner event: Breathwork session with ELTIAR Wellness
2026-06-03 07:45 - 08:30 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join a free community Breathwork session in partnership with ELTIAR Wellness and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre.

The Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre holds space for remembrance, reflection and dialogue around histories of genocide and human rights. Grounded in reflection, the breathwork session invites participants to pause and reconnect – with themselves and with the present moment.

Join us for a restorative experience that combines Conscious Connected Breathing with grounding, down-regulating techniques. This practice helps release tension, restore balance, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity.

Spaces are limited so RSVP is essential.

No experience needed. Open to all.

Talking Memory Commemorative Event: The 80th Anniversary of the “Zivia Conference"
2026-06-07 20:00 - 21:00 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory programme marking the 80th anniversary of the “Zivia Conference” at Kibbutz Yagur: Testimony, Resistance, and Remembrance.

In June 1946, Zivia Lubetkin stood before the United Kibbutz Movement at Kibbutz Yagur and delivered her testimony. A leader of the Jewish underground in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and a central figure in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Lubetkin gave voice to the destruction of Polish Jewry – the struggle for resistance, the human realities behind a history the world was only beginning to reckon with. Eighty years on, her words remain a document of extraordinary moral force.

This programme returns to that moment and to its enduring significance.

The programme opens with remarks from Yigal Cohen, CEO of the Ghetto Fighters’ House.

Prof. Lori Weintrob, Professor of History and Director of the Holocaust Center at Wagner College, will draw on three decades of scholarship to explore how Lubetkin and other women who shaped resistance have been taught – and, too often, overlooked. Her talk considers testimony as both historical record and moral legacy, and what it asks of educators, historians, and the broader public today.

Dr. Batya Brutin of Beit Berl Academic College and WHISC will examine how Lubetkin has been represented visually across the decades: in paintings, murals, stamps, and memorial works in Israel and Poland, sometimes beside her husband Yitzhak Zuckerman, sometimes as part of a collective, and sometimes alone. Across these varied depictions, a consistent portrait emerges – of determination, resilience, and inner strength to which artists across generations have returned.

Ruth Kupperberg of the NYC Commission on Human Rights and the Wagner College Holocaust Center will read from Lubetkin’s own testimony, bringing her voice directly into the room.

This event is presented in partnership with the Holocaust Center of Wagner College, WHISC (Women in the Holocaust International Study Center), Remember the Women Institute, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.

Register Here

Online Film Screening: Après Coup (Afterwards)
2026-06-11 18:00 - 19:30 | Online
To commemorate the 100 days of remembrance of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung invite you to an online screening of Après Coup (Afterwards), followed by a with director Susan Solomon.

Après Coup explores the persistence of trauma among adults who survived genocide as children. It centres on the experiences of orphans of two genocides separated by fifty years – the Holocaust in France and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – and asks: what might the orphans of these genocides have to say to each other today?

In November 2019, Solomon and Mutarabayire-Schafer brought together three orphans of the 1942 deportation of Jews from France and three orphans of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda for a dialogue at the Mémorial de la Shoah in Paris, arguably the first encounter of its kind. Their conversation was not about genocide itself, but about what came afterwards: growing up without parents, without roots, and the deep loneliness that persists long after the events that shaped their lives. A table in a small room at the Mémorial serves as the film’s focal point – the place from which participants move outward into their daily lives in Paris, and the place to which they return, again and again, to pick up the threads of a conversation that has no easy ending. Without warning, the past pierces the present.

Susan Solomon is a producer and co-director of Après Coup and Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto. Born in Montreal, she attended a school in which half the children came from families partially destroyed in the Holocaust. A historian of medicine, her work focuses on the trauma of child victims of genocide. She co-directed the documentary In Search of Roubakine, shown at the Solzhenitsyn Festival in 2012.

Amélie Mutarabayire-Schafer is a psychotherapist and co-director of Après Coup who lost the majority of her family in the Genocide against the Tutsi. She is the founder of Subirusuke, an association supporting widows and orphans of genocide, and coordinated psychological support programmes for genocide survivors during the Gacaca trials. She directed Les Dames de la Colline (2014) and co-authored L’Appel de L’Inanga (2023).

Online Book Launch: The Hour of Revenge
2026-06-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Join us for a thought-provoking book talk on The Hour of Revenge, a powerful historical study that re-examines the immediate aftermath of the Second World War through the lived experiences of Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.

In this session, we will explore how the emotional landscape of post-war Europe was shaped not only by trauma and loss, but also by complex responses such as retribution and the desire for justice. While much historical writing has focused on large-scale post-war violence, this book brings attention to the overlooked individual experiences of Polish Jews navigating survival, memory, and rebuilding their lives.

Author Katarzyna Person offers a deeply researched account of how survivors confronted their traumatic pasts while actively participating in the reconstruction of their communities. The discussion will highlight how Polish Jews moved across the shifting boundaries of “East” and “West” Europe before the Iron Curtain, how they negotiated memories of both war and pre-war life, and how they formed emotional and social networks in the aftermath of destruction.

We will also reflect on the book’s broader contribution to understanding post-conflict societies, migration, and identity—showing how connections to lost homelands can express both belonging and exclusion in times of profound change.

Lunch & Learn: Where Memory Lives with Tali Nates
2026-06-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, 1 Duncombe Rd, Johannesburg, Gauteng, 2193, South Africa
Join us for an inside view of the new European Union project, European Sites of Holocaust Memory (ESHEM), with Tali Nates – who serves on its steering committee. ESHEM is the network safeguarding the Holocaust’s historical sites for research, education and commemoration. Attendees will also be given unique insights into our two temporary exhibitions, and are invited to stay for lunch at Issy’s Coffee & Gift Shop to continue the conversation with Tali Nates and the JHGC team.

Talk – free

Lunch (soup, bread & a drink) – R100

Online Commemorative event: Elie Wiesel: Witness, Writer, Moral Voice Marking the 10th Anniversary of His Passing
2026-06-28 20:00 - 21:30 | Online
Ten years after the passing of Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), one of the most influential Holocaust survivors and moral voices of the twentieth century, the Talking Memory International Lecture Series invites you to a special programme exploring his life, legacy, and enduring impact on Holocaust memory and contemporary moral discourse.

The programme will open with remarks by Ambassador Radu Ioanid. It will feature Joel Rappel on the many dimensions of Wiesel’s life and public role; Prof. Michael Berenbaum on Wiesel as writer, public intellectual, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate; Prof. Dina Porat on the questions of identity, mission, and legacy that shaped Wiesel’s postwar life; and Dr. Ana Bărbulescu on how the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania carries forward his vision of memory as an active ethical responsibility.

Join us for a timely conversation honoring a voice that continues to challenge, inspire, and guide us today.

In partnership with the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, A.M.I.R. Organization in Israel, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Tel Aviv, the Wilhelm Filderman Centre for the Study of Jewish History in Romania, Classrooms Without Borders, the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, and the Rabin Chair Forum at George Washington University.

Talking Memory Book Launch: The Ravine of Memory
2026-07-12 20:00 - 21:30 | Online
The Ghetto Fighters’ House invites you to a special Talking Memory programme marking the launch of Dr. Shay Pilnik’s book, The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War.

Our first speaker is Prof. Elissa Bemporad. Drawing on the long history of Jewish life in the lands of present-day Ukraine, she invites us to look beyond familiar narratives of persecution and to consider a more complex historical reality. In her presentation, she claims that any examination of Jewish life in the lands of present-day Ukraine must begin with an important caveat: it would be a mistake to impose a teleology of violence on a long and rich history that generated remarkable religious, political, and cultural contributions to Jewish civilization. While episodes of violence undeniably formed part of this history, relations between Jews and non-Jews were shaped far more often by coexistence, interaction, and mutual entanglement. This caution is particularly relevant in the context of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, which has relied in part on historical distortions. More broadly, it serves as a reminder against reading the Jewish experience in the region retrospectively, as though it were destined from the outset to culminate in persecution and catastrophe.

Our next speaker, Dr. Shay Pilnik, joins us on the occasion of the publication of his new book, Ravine of Memory, which examines the place of Babyn Yar in Soviet literary and cultural memory. In his talk, he 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 and forgotten in Soviet literature and culture, in both Russian and Yiddish. Revisiting well-known works alongside lesser-known texts, he reveals how Babyn Yar became a powerful symbolic site that illuminates both the fragility and the courage of those who bear witness to atrocity.

Our final speaker, Inna Kalenska, will bring us from the historical and cultural landscape explored in Ravine of Memory to the ongoing work of preserving and reconstructing the history of Babyn Yar today. Her presentation examines the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center’s approach to memory work through archival research, digitization, and public engagement. It will focus on the “Names” project and the role of archives in reconstructing individual histories of Holocaust victims. The talk will also reflect on how the ongoing war shapes contemporary memorial practices and influences the ways historical memory is preserved and communicated.

In partnership with the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center 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.
